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View Full Version : Your Memorable RPG Moments



Firewind
2012-08-07, 09:11 AM
I had this discussion last night with a friend and was wondering if anyone else would like to share any memorable moments while playing Tabletop RPGs.

I will start with one:

I'm in a Pathfinder campaign where the DM gave us an Immovable Rod at 3rd Level. The party has two Rogues (Regular and one gunning for Arcane Trickster played by myself).

Yes the DM gave two Rogues an Immovable Rod at 3rd level.

Want to know the better thing? In the exact same dungeon:

My Chaotic Good(ish) Elf Rogue attempted to channel Haley and rolled a natural 20 on a Bluff check to convince the party that she found nothing in the room ahead while her sack was mysteriously full of treasure. She only shares when the Lawful Good Dwarf Cleric convinces her it's the right thing or just plain guilt trips her into doing it.

The other Rogue is True Neutral, Human and an utterly paranoid mercenary (He rolls Sense Motive on EVERYONE, even some party members like my Rogue and the Wizard), and only helps out in battles when he himself is threatened, or when there is a chance he might not be paid. He also hogs everything that he picks up and doesn't share.

The DM gave two above Rogues an Immovable Rod at 3rd level AND IT GOT THE TWO ROGUES TO SHARE AND PASS ON THE REST OF THE ITEMS WE FOUND. The DM couldn't believe it either.

cardboardbox!
2012-08-07, 03:11 PM
The best moments I had in gaming was a Serenity campaign, I rolled up a Chinese Engineer/Gung-Fu expert. After a decent first session about a heist on a luxury ship, our crew of scallywags get hailed by the Alliance and boarded due to the death of a prominent passenger. Queue the arrest and subsequent beating of our Captain (he actually deserved it; we all had a good laugh). So a few hours later in a holding cell, reaver ships come out and board the ship were in; now just to clarify a bit the system has character drawbacks you can take to gain more feats/power/perks. So everybody except the medic and I are incapacitated due to the fact that the entire party but these two have seen reavers before and are deathly afraid (one has PTSD, one has his mind broken, and the last one can’t stand the sign of blood for more than 0 rounds before he starts to vomit himself). So the medic leads the ones who can at least walk, while I get to carry the mind-broken one THE ENTIRE SESSION which was a long series of skill challenges, I somehow survived it even though I huge penalty carrying an extra body around.
Now this gets really awesome when combat starts. BAM 3/5 party member are rendered useless due to us fighting reavers, And the medic has mediocre pistol skills. So the round starts and 5 reavers are down the hall charging with melee weapons, the hallways kind of small so not a lot of room to move around, the only person who will survive melee range is me. So I charge in to meet them, the entire combat is my character parrying/evading/martial arting the reavers (all 5 of them) into a stalemate until my medic buddy can pick them off with a pistol, luckily she rolled well enough not to hit me and we end the encounter with the entire party intact and on our merry way to a crash landing.
After that the campaign went downhill and it was ending shortly after that.

TheEmerged
2012-08-07, 06:26 PM
System: HERO.
Genre: Superheroic

Backstory
Campaign A is winding down, we already have plans for Campaign B but they're a few sessions from being playable. The suggestion is made for a challenge scenario - for the GM to build a single character with rather weak attacks, only moderate defenses -- but no cap on total character points or active points in individual powers (both of which are normally tightly controlled) -- and see how long the fight can last against the PC's. Since I know HERO players are a minority on this board, you need to know it's unusual for a Superheroic-level HERO fight to last more than a Turn (12 segments, or 6 of the "turns" a D&D player would be used to).

So I, as GM, built off the concept of misdirection -- tricking the players into wasting actions. The result was... Annoying Man!

"He disappeared -- he can become invisible!"

"Wait, he just reappeared over there! He must be able to teleport!"

"No problem, I'll punch him... Wait, my punch went right through him! It must be an illusion!"

"Ouch, he just punched me! See, I told you he was invi... Wait, my counteract failed, and I'm sure that roll should have hit."

"Wait a moment, he disappeared again -- and now there are two of him! How'd he act out of turn like that?"

"Nevermind that... the one on the left isn't visible to my radar sense, but the one on the right is! Somebody blast that one!"

"My attack went right through -- and the 'fake' one just punched someone else?"

.....

The fight ended up lasting for well over 8 turns, and was going nowhere fast when the players got too frustrated to continue. I have been threatened that this character is never allowed to return...

He can in fact turn invisible... and teleport... and the Images power with the Indirect advantage (so he can do it in places he normally wouldn't be able to do to line of sight, and can do it without giving away his location)... and has duplication... and Invisible to All Sense Desolidification which allows him to "go ghost" without following the Three Sense rule... and Invisible To All Sense Tunnelling & Shrinking with X-Ray Vision. The "real" Annoying Man went invisible, created duplicates, then tunneled down on his first action. Some of his duplicates are invisible to 'unusual' senses but visible to normal ones, allowing them to appear to be images.

And this was over a decade before anyone in our gaming group had heard the name Itachi Uchiha, before you say it :D

================================================== =

System: Alternity
Genre: Space Opera

The players had finally realized the "Forbidden Sector" was populated with races from the stereotypical Fantasy world... so you had the Orc Planet, the Gnome Planet, and so forth. The finally found the Elf Planet... and were struck by the garish colors of the trees and ground color. And then were struck by the strange behavior of the similarly garishly-dressed elves - the rather warlike behavior of the laser-gun wielding elves, I might add, who worshipped Friend Nature, suspected everyone of being a secret traitor, and constantly talked about how happy they were.

I was surprised it took the players almost an hour of game time to recognize what was going on.

That's right, the elves were essentially in the "Alpha Complex" of Paranoia(tm).

Firewind
2012-08-07, 07:20 PM
Same Pathfinder campaign. My Rogue and the other Rogue sneak into a room with a Gnome Sorceress and two wererats. We managed to organise a great ambush where we were both literally able to sneak up and line up a pair of perfect sneak attack bow shots while the rest of the party burst in to clean up. We then had this one great line.

Dwarf Cleric: Hey [DM] you said that the wererats were tiny right?
DM: That is correct
Cleric: I grapple one <roll>
DM: Okay...you are now holding an angry wererat
Cleric: I throw it at the Gnome!

Malak'ai
2012-08-07, 07:57 PM
Years back when I was playing MERP I had an Noldor Elf Fighter.
The party had just finished off a fight with an Orc patrol, but unfortunately the Dunedain Ranger was paralyzed from the neck down.
Having to make a quick getaway my character picks the Ranger up and fireman carries him. This was going great until the Scout who was about 100 yards ahead came back and told us that there was a larger group of Orc's and Urak Hai on their way up the road.
We decided that the only place we could hide would be up some trees by the side of the road as there was not enough underbrush to give us enough cover.
So after a few rounds of trying to get everyone up the trees we're finally sitting about 8-9 feet up, hiding as best we can, I still had the Ranger with me, this time basically sitting in my lap and trying to hold onto him and branch at the same time.
To our annoyance, the Orc's started a fight with the Urak Hai over whether or not they had heard something, one got slammed against the tree I was in forcing me to make an Agility and Strength check to see if I "roll with the shaking". I failed and ended up falling.
The GM had me roll Movement Maneuver to see if I could land without hurting myself (or the Ranger I was STILL clinging to). I rolled a natural 100, meaning I got to roll again, then a 98 (another reroll). In the end, I ended up with a score of just over 400.
The GM then made a few rolls of his own. Turns out I landed on the Orc that had been thrown against the tree, snapping it's spine and crushing it's skull, all the other Orc's and Urak Hai watched on in surprise then ran off screaming about armoured Elves and Dunedain spawning from the trees.

Rallicus
2012-08-08, 11:45 AM
Pretty sure I've mentioned this story on many occasions, but not in the detail it deserves. So I'll do it here.

The moment was memorable for all the wrong reasons. Days earlier we decided to have a big Dungeons and Dragons campaign, with my friend DMing for the 7 of us. Big mistake.

He told me he downloaded a module that he wanted to try out. We all agreed and used his 3rd edition books to create our characters. Took a while, but we were ready to go.

On our way to our destination, we were waylaid by kobolds. No problem, I thought, being the most knowledgable when it came to D&D. I hadn't played in nearly a decade but I knew kobolds were always weak, and I remembered that I had managed to cut down three of them by myself in a 2e module when I was a kid.

Initiative. When it was the kobolds' turn, three of our party members dropped instantly, and the wizard died.

What a lucky round for them, I thought as we continued on. A few of the weaker ones dropped, but two of the kobolds had huge shields. I'd never heard of that before, but I figured they were the strong ones, so we all turned our attention on them.

... And then proceeded to get mauled to death by the little guys.

5 party members were down before the DM had the kobolds retreat. We gave up at that point and played beer pong instead. It was an awful experience, and I wondered how the kobolds had become so strong. Did the DM do it intentionally to create an impossible obstacle? Was he reading the module wrong?

The next time I was there, I went on his laptop and looked at the module.

Keep on the Shadowfell. 4th edition. I didn't know much about editions at the time, nor the differences, so I browsed through the pdf. Then I saw the encounter...

Page 6 and 7. (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/h1.pdf)

We had no chance.