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View Full Version : Cherished Memories - Favorite Players/GMs/Sessions/Campaigns



Blazen
2011-07-20, 06:36 PM
While the negative stuff is certainly fun to read, let's talk about the good times.

Just post your fondest memories here. Was there a really good campaign you remember? Did one of your characters perform a sacrifice so awesome that he is now talked about in legends? Maybe you met lifelong friends, or your significant other while bonding over a particularly bad D&D session.

For me one of my favorite campaigns was a Battlestations game. It was just the fact that we all got along really well. The DM gave us a exciting missions with a decent challenge. None of the characters overshadowed another. I played a Scientist cockroach who could science his way through everything. Another guy played an ace marine cockroach. The leader of the party was a pilot who was all hands (literally). We never argued about rules, we never got in each others way, and we developed a huge number of in jokes.

NikitaDarkstar
2011-07-20, 07:28 PM
Mine is fairly long, and while I have lots of great RP memories, I think my very first tabletop session fits best here, since it's what got me hooked on RPG's.

My bookclub had a meetup over Easter and some of us wanted to try Roleplaying. So one guy who lived in the neighboring city (yes it was close by, some people had spent 30 hours on trains and buses to get there! :p) went home and fetched his dice and Drakar and Demoner books. (It's basically a Swedish version of dungeons and dragons... but more complicated with more micromanaging rules. There's a VERY good reason they made more versions of it pretty much.) The rest of us went and bought snacks, lots of them.

Well he helped us all to role up our characters and set about running a premade adventure for us and just to have some more fun we started at level 3 or 4 and the party ended up consisting of 1 duck fighter (yes an anthro duck, yes it's an actual race in that game.), a half-elf ranger (me), a halfling rogue and a human wizard.
He would handle all of the rolling really, letting us focus on the role playing, and pretty much didn't put any limits on us, if we could think of it and figure out a way to do it, we were allowed to do it.
The adventure he ran was pretty heavy on undead though, and undead in that game can really only be killed by being pulverized or beheaded, well me an the rogue (the rogue was using a crossbow, I was using a composite longbow.) realized that you can behead skeletons with arrows by aiming at the neck... We took out half a dozen skeletons like that before they broke into the tower we were camping in for the night. :D

But that was a 48 hour long session (what? we had loads of caffeine and sugar available!) and loads of more memories from that, mainly including us either being silly IC (rogue and ranger trying to figure out how to move a solid gold sphere twice the size of them..), epically bad skill checks. (duck rolled a nat 1 on his move silent, plus AC penalty... and yes that game allows critical failures on skills... knocked a box of scrap metal over that fell on a barrel with water that collapsed and drenched some ally cats that went of screeching and yowling... woke up half the town guard :p), or being even sillier OOC.

No wonder I got addicted to role playing after that.

Balain
2011-07-20, 07:42 PM
One of the best has to be the first time we played Rune Quest by Avalon Hill. I think it was 3rd edition.Our GM put a lot of work into the campaign. The system was new to us so everything was a surprise. We had some unique characters. We all grew up together as farm boys in a small town. My character ended up becoming a tribal shaman slowly turning into a lion, one became a wizard that didn't seem to know anything. There was Zeke that didn't become much more than a fighter, except he had this spirit possessed pet pig that no one but me could see the spirit and no one believed me.

Engine
2011-07-20, 08:03 PM
One of my character truly sacrificed himself, and his deed is remembered even now by his companions.

We're playing a campaign of Trail of Cthulhu during the '30s in Arkham. My character's a medic and a psychopath with a manipulative side and little concern for the well-being of most people outside his profession. Anyway, the group was investigating a suspicious robbery in Innsmouth, a town infestated with Deep Ones and our only vehicle was destroyed by the townspeople who didn't like our inquiries. So my character seduced a barmaid whose father was the courier driver so he could steal the courier's key, gave her Coke with a soporific drug but she fell asleep slowly, really slowly. Too slowly for everyone's taste. Why I'm saying this?
Because Deep Ones look like:

http://ih1.redbubble.net/work.4867709.1.flat,800x800,070,f.jpg

She was more human-like, but a lot of Innsmouth inhabitants had fish-like features. So, you know: Craft Disturbing Images at its best. Anyway the group now use the episode as a stress reliever: they all laugh when someone jokes about my character's penchant for fish...

El Jaspero, the Pirate King
2011-07-22, 07:34 PM
Easily my favorite memory is from our old 3.5 campaign:

Level was probably around 10-12. I was playing a halfling rogue, and my friend Angi was the elven ranger. We had to free this fortified city that had been overrun with ogres, orcs, and goblins; after a number of shenanigans, including casting shrink on a catapult, then levitating it over a bunch of ogres and dispelling both, I decided to sneak into town using my hat of disguise to wreak some havoc. Easily passing as Goblin Captain Blander, my rogue sneaked in and found a company of mooks. "A bunch of adventurers are attacking," I tell them, obviously leading them into an ambush set by the rest of the party. "Follow me to the counterattack!" Bluff check is no sweat, and they're with me all the way, to their certain doom.

"Hey," says Angi. "I'm gonna shoot an arrow at him, but miss. For effect."

"Sure," says the DM. "I'll give a bonus to his Bluff check. Just don't roll a 1."

Yeah, you can guess how that went. Getting shot by a +3 flaming greatbow from a tweaked-out ranger took off like a quarter of my HP. On the plus side, the DM doubled the bonus to my Bluff check.

Otacon17
2011-07-22, 08:14 PM
One of my favorite memories is my first sessions of Star Wars d20. I was still very new to tabletops (my only prior experience was a single session of 4e), and I didn't know most of the guys there, which kind of freaked me out (I'm a fairly shy person). The GM started the game, turned to me, and said something to the effect of, "You're hanging out in a cantina when a bunch of thugs come up to you and try to start some trouble. What do you do?" Being very nervous and inexperienced, I had no idea what to say, and just mumbled, "Uh... Oh, crap..." At which point the GM nodded solemnly and replied, "Okay, roll for crap."

I got a natural 20. He ruled that the thugs were repelled by the awful stench.

We all had a good laugh, and I really loosened up after that. I made quite a few good friends that night.

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-22, 08:45 PM
It was in a vampire game, actually, set in the Victorian era. Two of the ladies present decided to roll up gals who had just graduated finishing school. Given that not all present were combat builds, (my character was a widow and heir of a banking fortune, so not a lot of combat there) we had to bluff, seduce and con not just our meals, but also into a few cozy hang outs for the night.

It worked really well as the DM was good at making social situations that were scary, but not frustrating. Everyone's abilities complimented each other, even as few people trusted each other. My PC mainly just threw around money for favors and it oddly worked.

It was one of the first tabletop games I ever played, actually.

Blazen
2011-07-23, 12:40 AM
Now you reminded me of the campaign that saved Vampire for me.

I had played in 2 previous Vampire games.

In the first, I was the only player who showed up, and the session just wasn't that fun.
The second had a guy ST who's wife was the only player at that point. It seems they usually played games together, and the scenes just ended up being boring long points of them talking with my character being absolutely useless.

Then I was invited to a Vampire game on my college campus. It was more story reliant, and the ST helped me make my character. there were 4 other players, and when we split up to do our own thing he would divide the time pretty well. My character was an information gatherer, the setting was set a couple of years before the Great Depression. I can't remember all the details, but it redeemed Vampire for me.

Totally Guy
2011-07-23, 04:34 AM
I remember a Vampire session a backstory I wrote became quite relevant. It wasn't the backstory of my character but of my haven.

The haven was previously occupied by a big bad vampire who'd housed his poweful vampiric sister in a gas chamber behind the wall. To keep her docile you needed to monitor a 1980s style computer and refill her deadly gas every other day.

So my character had given himself a noble purpose to his existence when he was told that if he didn't wind the dynamo every other day something really bad would happen.

Yeah, it's a pretty similar concept to that one from Lost.

One session another member of the party was hiding in the ventilation to spy on an intruder and he discovered a secret way into the gas chamber. There was a coffin in there hooked up to al these pipes and dials.

One player suggested that we free whoever was inside and point her at our enemies.
Another suggested diablerising her (eating her soul) to gain her powers and then fight our enemies.
I suggested we put her back and I could continue to justify my wretched existence by keeping her in the box.

It didn't take long for the party to all join the same side of freeing her and using her as a powerful ally. Except for my guy who wanted inaction.

So one of the social vampires mind controlled me into helping break the gas chamber coffin.

The seal broke and the smell of old powerful blood spilled into the room. One of the party went into frenzy and attacked the guy who had mind controlled me so I snapped out of it.

Seeing my machine broken and being unable to repair it I decided that it would be me who diablerised this mysterious lady. So whilst they fought I gorged. And I cackled maniacally as the lights flickered and the gasses parted as my party watched onward unable to break free of their own infighting to stop me.

That was a great moment.

My character tried to replace his noble purpose, his being alive to prevent havoc schtick. He rigged up bombs with timers that'd count down to zero. You had to phone up an attached cell phone to reset the timer. So if he ever died there'd be explosions in weird places across the city for about a week as he'd fail to reset them. The fact was he now considered that setting up this system and acting on it made him a good person who should continue to be.

leonarch
2011-07-23, 08:02 PM
In a campaign filled with optimized multi-classing characters a buddy of mine decided he would simply play crusader 20. His character would be an or named Botley Von Crunk the first Sr. He was "the first Sr." because he had a son whom was also called Botley Von Crunk, but had changed it from "the second" to "the first" when he disowned his father. See, Botley's goal in life was to become the cleanest, fanciest orc to ever live. Also, because his son changed his name, he had the goal of gathering as many titles as possible to differentiate himself from his son's name. The BBEG for this campaign was Tharzdun(spelling?), and by the time we fought him Botley had amassed quite a few titles, though I won't try to remember all of them. The party failed at trying to nova kill Tharzdun, he killed everyone but Botley. Instead of ending the campaign with the party wiping and Tharzdun destroying the material plane, it was decided that Botley gained divinity and would battle Tharzdun for eternity in his demiplane, ever keeping him at bay. To this day we treat Botley, patron saint of cleanliness and eloquence, as a worship-able deity in every setting.

Analytica
2011-07-25, 09:53 AM
Mine is fairly long, and while I have lots of great RP memories, I think my very first tabletop session fits best here, since it's what got me hooked on RPG's.

My bookclub had a meetup over Easter and some of us wanted to try Roleplaying. So one guy who lived in the neighboring city (yes it was close by, some people had spent 30 hours on trains and buses to get there! :p) went home and fetched his dice and Drakar and Demoner books. (It's basically a Swedish version of dungeons and dragons... but more complicated with more micromanaging rules. There's a VERY good reason they made more versions of it pretty much.) The rest of us went and bought snacks, lots of them.

Well he helped us all to role up our characters and set about running a premade adventure for us and just to have some more fun we started at level 3 or 4 and the party ended up consisting of 1 duck fighter (yes an anthro duck, yes it's an actual race in that game.), a half-elf ranger (me), a halfling rogue and a human wizard.
He would handle all of the rolling really, letting us focus on the role playing, and pretty much didn't put any limits on us, if we could think of it and figure out a way to do it, we were allowed to do it.
The adventure he ran was pretty heavy on undead though, and undead in that game can really only be killed by being pulverized or beheaded, well me an the rogue (the rogue was using a crossbow, I was using a composite longbow.) realized that you can behead skeletons with arrows by aiming at the neck... We took out half a dozen skeletons like that before they broke into the tower we were camping in for the night. :D

But that was a 48 hour long session (what? we had loads of caffeine and sugar available!) and loads of more memories from that, mainly including us either being silly IC (rogue and ranger trying to figure out how to move a solid gold sphere twice the size of them..), epically bad skill checks. (duck rolled a nat 1 on his move silent, plus AC penalty... and yes that game allows critical failures on skills... knocked a box of scrap metal over that fell on a barrel with water that collapsed and drenched some ally cats that went of screeching and yowling... woke up half the town guard :p), or being even sillier OOC.

No wonder I got addicted to role playing after that.

Speaking as someone who began with that game, hearing about it from an external viewpoint is awesome. :smallsmile:

Do note, though, that the system, in most incarnations, has its flaws, mostly with balance and survivability. It is actually a Basic Roleplaying clone, with most things done by point-buying skills. Most versions has every single spell as a separate skill, so default character creation makes for very weak spellcasters. Second, hit points basically do not scale at all, so it's either damage-reducing armor or parrying or you're dead after a few hits. Add to that slowly bleeding to death once you're wounded, body part specific hit points, wound penalties, and the fact that there is no real equivalent to clerics; the only healers are the druid-expy animists. Also, no raising dead whatsoever except as undead. Still, marvellous flavour and some really good campaign settings, due to a small number of really good writers.