What made your favorite game?

[Maglubiyet]

We've all probably had at least one fondly remembered game session. So what made it for you -- why was that one particular one better than most or all of the other games you've played in?

It was likely a combination of many of these things, but which stood out as being most important? Some possibilities:


RPG system (system with good mechanics or storytelling)
Gamemaster (fairness, good story teller, knowledgeable about game rules)
Players (good friends, fun group, zaniness, good teamwork)
Your Character (favorite concept, long-standing PC, achieved noteworthy level/skill)
The Campaign (culmination or introduction to an interesting, ongoing game)
The Adventure (excellent story, interesting setting, cool design)
Outcome (you won a spectacular victory, you lost spectacularly)
Time in Your Life (ah youth, last hurrah before going off to..., first time with new group, last time with old group)

[Luminestra]

My players were going through a campaign to collect some mcguffins. They learned that one of them was inside of a petrified dragon. They learned through their archmage friend that he was the one who petrified it, it was too powerful for him to defeat. He says that the dragon probably lost a lot of its power over the years but it would still be a threat. They also learned that they didnt need to fight it, they could just smash his petrified form and retrieve the mcguffin. This would also destroy the dragons treasure horde though. I informed my group that I would be treating this as a bonus boss. Something incredibly difficult but with massive rewards. Sorry for the length.

My players held a vote on what to do and eventually came to the conclusion that they wanted to fight it. Their reasoning basically came down to "We probably wont win, but imagine if we do. It will be awesome!" We ended the session for a week and resumed next week. They were pumped to fight this thing.

They unpetrify the dragon and I start playing giygas battle theme from Earthbound. One player tried to speak to it, They couldnt make out the reply. It quickly became clear that this was not an ordinary dragon. No matter where they stood, it always seemed to be facing them. They had to make either a fortitude save, a reflex save or a wisdom save each round because its mere presence altered reality. The effects were small, like starting to be sucked into the floor or being under an illusion for a turn or two. I was worried about putting these effects in the game, because I felt like the players would focus on them too much or they would feel unfair. But they worked beautifully. Adding to the atmosphere of the battle without detracting from it. The dragon could also drain magical items. Any weapon that hit it or was hit by it became drained for the fight. If hit again, it would break.

They finally manage to get it weakened, then it sheds its rock-like hide and appears to be a vaguely dragon-shaped mass of flesh and tentacles. It then starts to devour its own horde to recover its strength. The party panicked and tried to kill it even faster. It also gained the ability to shoot its tentacles into the party and drain there health.

They finally managed to kill it, around half of the party almost died. They were down several magic items. But they had won one of the most interesting treasure hordes ever. It was a multidimensional being so I figured it would have some odd things. Stuff that stood out in my memory where: A Klingon in a stasis field, a delorean car, some very rare historical artifacts from the campaign setting and the phylactery of a lich (they dont know thats what it is) and a bunch of art and gold.

TlDR: I designed a very strong bonus boss for the party to fight, it had some very interesting mechanics to it. The treasure horde was massive. They had the option of skipping the boss, but chose to fight it. They were very invested in the fight because they knew they could die.

The reason this is one of my favourite encounters was because of how invested the players were. For the first time in a long time they actually felt like they might die. I love the boss mechanics and just how weird it was. It was very out of place for the setting (this took place in a my little pony campaign btw) and I loved it because of the treasure horde I got to create. It is definitely my favourite boss battle.

[Poppyseed45]

Burning Empires campaign that I ran (Burning Wheel system set in Iron Empires comic world). Did the first two phases, Infiltration and Usurpation, and each one, heck, each session, was nail biting drama.

Probably the best scene was when the PC Lord Steward went toe to philosophical toe with his NPC ex-mistress (and mother of his bastard) now head of the planet's strongest cult (which was preferred over the Church Humanitas by the people - that was the group's suggestion, by the way, not mine as GM). They were arguing in the court whether the cult should be allowed to suborn the place of the Church Humanitas in official ceremonies and what not. Extremely tense! Some players weren't even sure what side to support with Helping dice. Very nice.

Another cool scene was when the PC Hammer Lord argued that he should be given command of a pirate hunting mission in the planetary system, against his direct enemy NPC Court Lord (who was of the Hammer as well). Quite interesting, since, naturally, the NPCs efforts would have helped the Worm, but if the PC did it, he'd "do it right" and suss the Worm out. Again, nails bitten in the extreme.

That game was a happy circumstance of the group being politically driven and being very proactive about what they wanted.

[Eisenheim]

The GM, the campaign, and one other player in particular made mine.

It was the end of a long-running Star Wars game, Saga edition, a very alternative history of the KOTOR period, but that doesn't really matter.

My friend had been playing a strongly lightside Jedi Councillor and had over time become the unquestioned leader and conscience of the group. In the last session, he challenged the (dark?) jedi leader of the totalitarian empire were trying to stop to single combat for basically the fate of the galaxy and was accepted. The opening round of the combat, with all of us queued up to watch, he rolls some dice, looks up to the GM and says

"I activate dark rage at maximum."

He and the GM had worked this out beforehand, without any of the rest of us finding out that he was willing to fall in order to defeat what he saw as the ultimate evil. We were all shocked, and the level of investment we had in our characters and the game at that point made it incredibly moving. Still my number one session as player or GM.

[Maglubiyet]

My players were going through a campaign to collect some mcguffins. They learned that one of them was inside of a petrified dragon...

What did they do with the Klingon!?

[Jay R]

The GM understood both the game system and the underlying historical background (17th century France), and was loose enough to allow unusual ideas. The players were all clever, and worked well together. We had a couple of weeks to plan, and we actually used it. And so six PCs defeated an army of 2000+, in a game with no magic.

The game was Flashing Blades, role-playing in the era of the musketeers, so there was no magic.

In a previous adventure, we had uncovered bills of lading for an army coming through Lorraine towards France. Our task was to stop or disrupt them before they reached France. The only tool we had other than being six French adventurers was the bills of lading. We were supplying their food. But they were going through towns. If we simply withheld the food, they’d buy locally.

The bills of lading implied an army of roughly 2,000 soldiers and camp followers and 500 horses, led by the General Don Miguel ----, whose last name is a moot point, as shown below. All winter, we had horses staked out to attract two wolf packs to the forest between Luneville and Drouville. We wanted numerous wolves used to feeding on horseflesh to greet the Spanish army.

The first delivery was at St. Die. We arranged that the food would arrive two days early, to allow spoilage. Then there was a heavy rain that delayed the troops. The wine was (very mildly) spiked with bad water. There were 20 pistoles baked into the bread. We spread a rumor that the rich soldiers have been throwing coins to the peasants. Vivienne and Jean-Louis began to join the army as camp followers, Vivienne concentrating her attentions on the officers. Jean-Louis started to become a common face, performing, spreading rumors, asking questions. "What's this I hear about a missing pay wagon?"

The next day was Baccarat. 20 more pistoles and 2 Louis d'Or were baked in the bread. The wine was slightly more spiked. Deliveries of the food arrived mid-morning the next day, further delaying the troops. Vivienne had two officers fighting a duel over her. We spread rumors about the pay wagon, and bad blood between officers. (Jean-Louis gathered a crowd of soldiers at the dueling field.) We started a fire in town after the troops left. Some cavalry units left early, and so were not fed.

Near the town of Luneville, we burned a bridge and planted stakes. The cavalry units tried to cross first, and one horse was lamed. So they waited for the rest of the army to arrive to build the bridge. More unrest, more rumors, more bad food. We incited some guttersnipes to throw rocks across the river at them. The bridge was finished mid-morning the next day, so late the next night, a bedraggled, tired, dispirited army arrived at Drouville. The army was forced to detour through the wolf forest by a road block. We spread rumors in town that the army had been torching villages behind them. The food was strongly poisoned, and the rye bread was tainted with ergot. The army was not going to be in shape to deal with the situation.

Vivienne lured Don Miguel to her room at an inn, and murdered him in his sleep. We spread poisoned oats out in the woods. Then we torched the town, stampeding the horses. We started several fires on the upwind side of town. While cutting horses loose, Jean-Louis was spotted. He yelled, "Release the horses – don’t let them burn!" So he successfully talked the guards into helping him release all their hjorses into a forest with wolves that had been feeding on horseflesh all winter.

The Spanish lost supplies, horses, and lots of time trying to round up the horses that survived the night. Note that spooked horses aren't too bright, and that they were downwind of the flames. Many horses were lost (or eaten). Jean-Louis slipped into the General's headquarters. He fought and killed two sentries, leaving them in a pose indicating that they had slain each other. He then made off with the general's orders, dispatches, and 70 escudo (4200 L.!). In nearby towns the next day we spread rumors that the army was berserk, looting and burning. We spread rumors in the army that the general was seen running off with a courtesan. Henri went north and bought their next shipment of food (with their money), which we dumped in the river. After spreading a few more rumors in Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, we returned to Paris, where we delivered the orders and dispatches to Richelieu.

The army split up, some becoming bandits until captured by the Duke of Lorraine; some continuing on, ravaging the countryside as they went.

And that's how six PCs stopped an invading army of 2,000.

[johnnnrussel]

I dont know what really to say

[Pex]

Playing 3E with the same people for 12 years, by far the longest lasting of all my gaming groups. I call it my Golden Age of playing. It fell apart due to DM burnout as the root cause in my opinion at the time, hindsight validating evidence being he doesn't play the game at all today. On the bright side I reunited with two of those players in a new Pathfinder campaign with others that's been going on for about a year now.

[Delta]

My favorite session of all time was the final session of a multi-year fantasy campaign, culminating in a huge battle with the PCs finally confronting the antagonist one final time after 7 years (out- and in-game time matched up quite nicely on that) of watching him rise and tear the world apart with them growing into their roles of being the greatest heroes of all time and the only one able to take him down.

I know a lot of it was cheap drama, but when the players get into it and characters with decades of combined history between them go into battle knowing full well it may well be their last one, hard to top that one for me.

One player actually screaming in anger "I may well go down tonight, but by the Gods I'm going to take you with me!" can be incredibly cheesy and stupid, but if the stakes are high enough, everyone is suspending their disbelief to the max and said player is actually throwing all her characters remaining hit points into her final magical attack, it just works.

Best of all was that the player of the one surviving character actually took a few minutes afterwards to describe how he afterwards travels to each of his companions homes, makes sure their last wishes were being carried out, actually had a statue built for them and named his firstborn child after one of them, best tearjerker moment I've ever witnessed.

I've had games that were more exciting in a traditional sense (since it was an official campaign for the game we were running, everyone kind of knew how things would turn out in the end), but none came close to being as much of a "moment" as this one.

So I guess going back to the OP it's a mix of Players, Characters and Campaign, mostly.

[Poiuytrewq]

Many factions and political intrigue.