Your RPG moment of 2003

[Ashrum the Black]

The Set Up: I'm introducing a new character to the group that night. As the PC's approach the ancient abandoned fortress they happen upon a patrol from the nearby town. they spoke with the patrol and found out from them that a verrik (a red skinned psionic from arcana unearthed) had been seen just ahead earlier. He was an odd duck painter out there alone.

Sure enough they found a verrik played by the new player, he was a bit confused as his character had no painting skill whatsoever, but the players just pushed on thinking I was just being a little more daft than usual.

The Moment: Fast forward to a month later (real time) and the plot has thickened. The characters are on the trial of a group of bandits when they happen upon another verrik traveling in the opposite direction. He speaks with them briefly and introduces himself as a painter, painting the desert landscape and departs. As the characters discussed him and how he might be involved, one of the players looks at the verrik's player and shouts "You're the wrong verrik!" And it dawns on everybody that the person they had been told about had actually been the man that just left, not the player character.

It was great seeing their faces when they realized that the encounters I plan don't always directly involve them and that I'm not as odd as they thought I was. A real break through I thought and I'll always remember "You're the wrong verrik!" It was priceless!

 

[WayneLigon]

In our most recent campaign, a mix of Call of Cthulhu, d20 Modern and the Shadow Chasers mini-game, I had perhaps one of the funniest character deaths I've ever gone through.

We're investigating mysterious goings-on in a resort village outside Las Vegas. Xane (my character) goes to watch the door of the strange woman we ran into at the casinos. He waits and then sees one of the men whom he assumes is working for the mob come up to her door and draw a mark on it with his finger; a blood-red line of light follows his mark and quickly fades.

Now, Xane has seen this before: anyone who can do that is a member of this evil cult and Xane absolutely hates cultists. So he takes his magically silenced pistol and opens up on the guy. The Pistol is a pretty remarkable peice of work; highly magical, the recipient of most of the cash Xane's either stolen or 'found' in the two years of game time previous to this. Until this time, nothing that has been shot by The Pistol has gotten up again.

The 'mob guy' looks annoyed as his flesh-covering reforms itself after the critical hits from The Pistol, and looks at Xane.

Xane pushes his companion aside and bolts down the hallway and takes the stairs four at a time, sprinting for the HumVee outside. The serpent-man Thing follows Xane, now having cast off it's human flesh-bag outer coating to reveal the true horror within. Everyone else goes mad when this horror slithers down the stairs and catches Xane as he's trying to get the door unlocked. Foot-long fangs peirce his body five or six times and his flesh begins to just drop off his bones as the poison takes effect. The rest of the party flees in random directions.

Now by this time, myself and everyone else is just howling with laughter. But then it gets better.

Xane, through some arcane manipulations, had a quasi-familiar, this lizard-like thing that no-one liked or trusted. It's back sleeping in the other car with John the bodyguard, who is waiting for our signal to move in and take off with the Mysterious Woman. Well, all he hears over the radio is screaming and laughing and the kinds of sounds you normally only hear at the site of a gas main explosion or something, so he's becoming quite concerned. Not concerned enough to drive over and see what's happening, though; he's learned from painful experience that sounds like that mean Another Hip Pin for John.

So Xane's consciousness wakes up in the familiar, through the telepathic link they shared. Xane, unfamiliar with the lizard body, wobbles out from under the various gun cases and ammo boxes in the back, crawls up the back seat and whispers 'Joooohhnnn heeellp meeee' in John's ear as John is sitting there listening to screams and cackling and gunfire over the radio.

This doesn't do much for John's mental state and he snaps as the lizard breathes in his ear and talks, which it's never done before. He grabs the lizard and tosses it out the window, onto the blazing hot asphalt. Then he guns the engine, and backs up the truck.

Xane/lizard, momentarily stunned and still disoriented from the body change, tries to get all four legs under him at once as he sees the truck stop.. and then accelerate rapidly towards him. Lizard limbs whirl and spin as the lizard-thing tries to make it to the dubious safety of the ditch but to no avail; fat hard run-flat tires crunch over his body, then the truck backs up and runs over it again. Then John rolls a nat 20 on his Drive to gun the truck on top of Xane's lizard-body and spin the tires over the now-flat lizard, rendering it into a peice of red mulch about four feet long, baking in the Nevada noon-day summer sun.

By now most of us are on the floor. I was crying with laughter as John's player describes his utter panic and mimics grinding the gears.

Best death scene ever.

 

[MikeWilliams]

The high point of 2003 was my Earthdawn rules/Planescape setting campaign. The third game of the campaign, it left my hands as the players explored Sigil. Sure, I had a plot that I'd planned on getting to, but that was secondary to the players exploring this city that was new to them - plot could wait. There was a sense of wonder as they discovered the different aspects of the city that I haven't felt in quite a while, making it one of the best game sessions I'd run in years.

The low point of 2003 was an unsatisfying end in a different campaign. After a battle that had a couple of character deaths in my d20 L5R game, the players decided they'd had enough of dark roleplaying against an insurmountable evil (in this case, the Lying Darkness, for those of you familiar with L5R), and declared they wanted a more light-hearted, high powered fantasy epic. So, the L5R game ended rather than concluded, and we switched to Exalted. However, it didn't really click for me as a GM, and I turned over what I'd written for the Exalted game to another GM. He's ran once in November, not at all in December, and we don't yet have a game scheduled for January. I think I'm going to check and see if that gaming group would be up for some Buffy or Heavy Gear.

 

[Joshua Randall]

As a DM, I had established that there was an order of noble paladins called the Knights of the White Mountain. Gradually, over time, I let it be known that their leadership was becoming more and more dogmatic and Inquisition-like.

So, the PCs were talking with a Knight they knew, and I, as the NPC, kept saying stuff like: "It is the goal of the Knights of the White Mou-- I mean, the Knights of Truth -- to blah blah blah." The second time I did this, both players glanced nervously at each other, their eyes widening.

Ah... bliss....

Wait. Does it make me a bad person that I derive bliss from evoking fear and paranoia?

 

[guedo79]

Boston Game day!
Meeting Mike Merals, P-kitty, and most of the Enworld crew. Learning Jack Vance's Dying Earth and playing a rocking game of Spycraft. I never enjoyed 6 hours of driving(there and back) so much in my life.

 

[Storminator]

GenCon. Great Cleave, ogre strength, reach. See avatar.

PS