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Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-24, 09:26 PM
I told one of my players that I'd been talking about our M&M game on the board, and she requested (okay, begged) that I tell you guys about a side session we'd done mostly one-on-one, mostly because she considers it a really great and emotional story (and she's a butt and totally just wants to show off Shae to whatever audience will tolerate learning something about her). I figured I could make the post a bit less self-serving by opening it up to all of you to share your own most emotional experiences in tabletop games.

The only really essential context of the story is that the character, Shae, is one of the creators of the universe and governs, among other things, those laws of physics that allow things to have shapes and to be physically separate from everything else. Shapes, both the physical construct and the metaphorical shape of a person's heart, are something she focuses on very strongly, and that focus is a core part of her identity. She's pretty much the ultimate shapeshifter, but for convenience, she's usually in a humanlike form unless another form is specifically useful.

Shae paced in the hall of the team's crystalline tower, her brow furrowed and her eyes closed. Her silent, thoughtful strides through the shady, spacious corridor were only occasionally broken by her need to dodge around the scampering ball of fuzz and energy she'd taken to calling Lucy.

"Lucy," Shae spoke up right after the pet darted past her, squatting down and looking at the lean collie. Seemingly in an effort to say "look, I'm aerodynamic!" Lucy jumped and turned simultaneously, sailing a short distance through the air before making what she imagined as a lithe and graceful connection to the floor. Instead, her claws slid across the slick floor and squabbled desperately at the floor for a second in a vain effort to regain her footing before sprawling out.

Shae cocked a half-smile. "Poor girl. I, for one, am very impressed with your show," she offered with gentle sarcasm as the energetic dog took back to her feet and trotted over expectantly. Shae ruffled Lucy's ears playfully, earning that open-mouthed tongue-lolling grin only a dog can pull off.

"Can you tell that I'm upset?" Shae asked somberly. "The longer I stay here, the more I wonder why I'm protecting this planet. All the people here are so fake. None I've met really appreciates their inner shapes." Lucy tilted her head at this, her tail thumping on the floor a couple of times as Shae continued. "I feel like nobody's genuine enough for me to really connect with. Humans and Angels alike, everyone is so..." She tilted her head to match the dog's. "Well, not everyone. I never feel like you're hiding anything. If there's one thing a dog is, it's sincere..."

Shae's brows began to lift as she spoke more slowly. "Say... If my issue is that nobody at my intellect level is genuine, then why don't I just boost up somebody who's already genuine? I've already got a perfect candidate."

Some experimentation with the cosmic essence of the universe later, Lucy's intellect and will were boosted immensely. Thanks to *mumble mumble* metaphysics stuff *mumble mumble* this also means Lucy got herself some nifty psychic powers.

The newly-awakened collie found herself unable to control her energy. Lucy bounded through the halls yet again, this time with her fur fully frayed out from the static shooting around her legs and sending her literally bouncing off the walls. "Whee! This is so much more - oof! - fun than running!"

Shae grinned widely at her success. "Yay! It worked! At last, my friend, we can communicate normally!"

Lucy wobbled in midair and went rolling onto the floor again until she eventually slowed to a stop. "Yes yes yes! I mean, I always knew how you were feeling, but all those weird sounds were nonsense. Except play and dinner, I like those sounds! Speaking of, talking is hard. Food please?"

Shae put up her hands. "Woah, there, Lucy, slow down. You're talking at a mile a minute. Now that you're able to request stuff, is there any human food you especially want?"

"Yes!" Lucy exclaimed, then sat in silence for a few seconds. "Wait, you expect me to pick just one?"

Some zany food adventures later...

Shae and Lucy sat on the roof of the crystal tower, feeling the cool breeze wash over them and the faint morning sun brighten their faces. Shae turned to Lucy and started with playful sarcasm. "Well now, Princess, is there anything else you want before we converse?"

Lucy tilted her head. "Well, the weather is nice, you're beaming with happiness, and I've got food in my- ooh! Rub my belly!" She rolled over onto her back, kicking her feet up into the sky. "Then I'll have everything I could ever want."

"That's it?" Shae asked, servicing the upturned tummy in its quest for rubs. "No bigger goals?"

"What can I say? I have what I need to be happy. Why? Do you think I should seek more?"

Shae gazed off into the distance for a moment. "No, I guess that sounds reasonable. I just wish I could find that couple of wants to fulfill that would make me so satisfied."

"Well, guess I'd better lead by example then!" Lucy piped up excitedly. "Oh, it's so wonderful being able to teach master tricks instead of just learning them! I feel like a genius! Okay, so the first thing, when it comes to life, treats equals winning..."

Lucy managed to ramble for several solid minutes about every first thought that passed into her head before Shae suddenly snapped to attention, her eyes focusing in on some indescernible point on the horizon. Shae started to stand, but Lucy forced her weight onto Shae's leg, leaning in on her protectively.

"Please, master, don't go! Now that I can sense it... It's so scary! I don't want you to get hurt!" Lucy begged and whined.

"It's okay, Lucy. I'll be fine. But with the others gone, I'm the only one close enough to protect this planet from that void being." She stood up the rest of the way, patting Lucy's head. "I'll be home in time for dinner, okay?"

Lucy shook her head. "No way are you going alone! If you have to go at all, I have to protect you, master!"

"Why? What obligation are you under?"

"No less than yours to this planet you can't seem to admit to loving."

Shae pouted. "You're wrong and I hate it here," she said indignantly. However, her pout cracked into a smile. "Though I sure love you. C'mon then, but leave the hard stuff to me."

Shae sprouted wings of darkness and Lucy's legs started crackling with electrical power, and the two flew off to face the being outside city limits.

Shae was surprised to find a void being for whom English words were in many ways adequate to describe it. It was red, splotchy, shaped sort of like a chunky hair ball, and surrounded by quickly revolving teeth-like spikes. She frowned a little bit at how boring a story it would make compared to the team's usual enemies. (Meta-humor!)

The duo faced off with the void being above a forested mountain range.

Shae led off the attack, transforming her arm into a massive, slick, black, serpentine dragon, which charged the void being. The dragon used its armored nose to bat the void being straight up, then looked up, it's mouth gaping open. A rancid gout of obsidian fire erupted from its throat, engulfing the void being and leading off into a column of destruction all the way up through the atmosphere, igniting the air and causing a local firestorm in the process.

(Editor's note: "Rancid" was not random adjective choice; dragon breath has the stank.)

The void being emerged mostly unscathed, and it lashed out with its teeth-spikes like a whip, carving the dragon into bits and slicing apart the mountains below with each strike. Its attacks reached Shae, slicing the dragon-arm off of her at the shoulder and delivering a grievous slash wound to her torso.

Shae grimaced as thick, oil-like blood seeped out from her shoulder. She concentrated on it, and it began to whirl around her like a black dust devil. She charged in, using the shield to block the teeth until she could close and deliver a punch to the void being's body. This stunned the being into stopping its teeth for a moment, allowing Shae to grab them. They promptly transformed into a dusty, metallic substance.

Shae smiled, telepathically transmitting to the void being. "Plutonium. Way past critical mass. Bye-bye~"

She projected a massive silverish bubble, containing the energy of the explosion within a sphere a few hundred meters across, which glowed with an extreme and lasting brightness.

"Gambi hasn't taught me how to dissipate these things yet, so I'll probably have to take this off the planet before I put the field down." She turned to face Lucy. "That should take care of that, though-"

Two slice marks appeared on the field from within, and the energy and pressure of the contained nuclear explosion jetted out in a mostly straight line, blasting two of the mountains down to bubbling craters and leaving a long swath of destruction leading out from the entry points. The field then collapsed completely, and Shae found herself with a row of spikes in her back before she could even turn back around. The whips tore out of her messily, then poised to strike again.

As they flashed out again, however, Lucy bolted in the way, receiving terrible wounds from the spikes. Shae looked horrified for a moment, but quickly noticed Lucy letting out a strong psychic signal.

Waves began emanating off of Lucy towards the heavily damaged void being emerging from the debris, and the dog's wounds seemed to melt off, more sliding back into the "restored" position than really healing. As this happened, the void being's wounds grew, and became so severe that it began to shake violently before shattering into dust-sized pieces.

Shae grinned triumphantly, moving forward to celebrate with Lucy, but at that moment, the airborne collie's electrical power winked out of existence and she fell down towards the forest below. Shae leapt to the rescue, catching her and gently lowering her whimpering companion.

"What's wrong?" Shae asked with alarm. "Are you still injured?"

Lucy yelped loudly over and over, sending out garbled telepathic signals repeatedly. Shae concentrated on the signals, eventually making out "please change me back."

"... Change you back?" Shae repeated, sounding like she'd just been punched.

"I don't want this!" Lucy blubbered. "Seeing you getting hurt and killing something and knowing what it all means so intimately and the fear and..." Lucy trailed off, convulsing.

"But... But weren't you happy that we could talk and make each other happy? We don't have to be alone in our mindsets and-"

"I don't care! Please let me go back! Please! Please!"

"Lucy, I don't want-"

"Please! Please! Please!"

Shae put her hand to Lucy's head. It shimmered with a silver hue for a moment, and Lucy stopped projecting anything telepathically. She laid on her side for a moment, but her breathing quickly began to calm and she stopped convulsing.

Shae walked away from the relaxing collie, and sat next up against a tree. She put her face in her remaining hand, frowning and going totally rigid.

Lucy stood up several minutes later, tilting her head at Shae's silent and still figure. She trotted over, sniffing Shae's face. Shae's rigidity was broken as she began to tremble, tears streaming down her face from behind her hand. Lucy licked Shae once, then curled up to lay against her with a grunt.

Shae awakened intelligence and powers in the team's more mundane pet, wishing for a companion without what she sees as socially-constructed facades inherent to human company, but her new doggie friend is made so miserable by the horrors of a world she couldn't formerly understand that she begs to have her intelligence taken away again, leaving Shae back where she started but with the feeling of losing a friend.

I'm sure at least a couple of you can beat this one (but don't tell Shae's player I said that). I'm interested in seeing what you guys have to offer on this topic.

Dr paradox
2016-08-24, 10:06 PM
I made my brother cry when I DM'd the final session of our last campaign.

Another player was a Great Old One pact warlock - a halfling who was living on borrowed time after an Aboleth snatched him from death's foyer. My brother's character had been a shipmate with the Warlock, so they'd been pretty close buddies.

They wound up killing the Aboleth, which in turn caused the Warlock to start dying. The Warlock's player uses his last breath to murmur a halfling sea shanty that he actually wrote. It's at this point that my brother breaks down and starts actually crying.

Like, actually. He had to go into another room to compose himself.

He then drew this at the table
https://s16.postimg.org/wc2w8nn85/IMG_20160824_200457300.jpg
That's his character in the center, cradling the body, and around him the dwarf cleric, the human sorcerer, the one=handed rogue, and their NPC tagalong.

BWR
2016-08-25, 02:25 AM
Perhaps my favorite PC in an alt.u L5R/OA game had to kill his daughter. These were people we had played for years, roleplaying through the pregnancy, the birth and the raising of his children, including all the weird and silly stuff kids do. Then tragedy struck: her nephew contracted the Taint and there is no good way to get rid of it. So she went to the source, the BBEGod of the setting and asked him to remove his touch and she would do anything for him. He did so, at absolutely no cost. He did exactly what she asked with no hidden agenda, no strings attached, no lies or prevarications or misdirections, no claim your soul later, no curse someone else instead; the spirit in which her offer was given was enough.

The tragedy was that she had committed the ultimate of blasphemies and that law, both in spirit and in letter, was clear on the punishment and as a highly respected warrior and her father, my PC took it on himself to lead the prosecution in her trial. Despite some arguments for a certain leniency coming directly (if unbeknownst to anyone but my PC) from the other gods, he argued that the law was not only the law but a good an necessary one, regardless of the circumstances. A full conviction was the conclusion, and his wife and other daughter (both of whom he loved dearly) blamed him for killing their daughter/sister and cut off all ties, leaving him a broken old man.

I was in tears at the end of that session.

Malacronious
2016-08-25, 11:45 AM
I made my brother cry when I DM'd the final session of our last campaign.

Another player was a Great Old One pact warlock - a halfling who was living on borrowed time after an Aboleth snatched him from death's foyer. My brother's character had been a shipmate with the Warlock, so they'd been pretty close buddies.

They wound up killing the Aboleth, which in turn caused the Warlock to start dying. The Warlock's player uses his last breath to murmur a halfling sea shanty that he actually wrote. It's at this point that my brother breaks down and starts actually crying.

Like, actually. He had to go into another room to compose himself.


This is epic. I would love to learn how to bring out such great emotion in my games, even to get that into my own characters. Out of curiosity, how long did your campaign run for?

Quertus
2016-08-25, 12:40 PM
One of my all-time favorite characters, Armus, was, like, totes emo.

Physically, Armus is an elf, with mottled grey skin, long white hair, and a piercing gaze. He dresses in fairly standard tunic & vest, breeches, cloak & boots, usually in shades of brown and green.

Conceptually, Armus is weak but a brilliant tactician; a charismatic yet tactless face; and a deeply religious and almost pathologically paranoid scout.

Psychologically, Armus is outwardly cold but inwardly caring & nurturing. He believes in doing whatever is necessary. He is a scout to "protect the party from the truths that would destroy them". And his mood swings like, well, an emo teenager.

One of Armus' quests involved a group of refugees, massed outside their "recently" occupied town. The mission was to recover a town's missing children, taken during the occupation.

I put "recently" in quotes, because, as Armus uncovered, the party was the 6th or 7th group recruited to recover the children.

The party fought their way through the "dungeons" (sewers?) of the occupied city, fighting strange creatures they'd never heard of. Eventually, the party found children in holding cells, freed them, and returned them to their parents.

When they were reunited, many of the parents were overjoyed to be reuinted with their lost children. However, some of the parents were confused & saddened that their children were still missing.

Armus directly confronted the leader of the occupation, and, speaking tongue-in-cheek, discovered that the mutated creatures the party had been fighting were, in fact, the missing children.

Armus chose to keep this secret from the party (who murdered the "holy man" anyway, for abducting the children in the first place).

As an abandoned child raised by the state, Armus wondered whether there was anyone out there who would be so overjoyed to be reunited with him as the lucky parents whom he had helped that day.

To set the stage... the party has been conscripted into Armus' religion by the high priest resulting in Armus being appointed party leader (kinda), party was sent to bring the word of their religion to a foreign land, some alliances are formed, new magic was discovered, the world blew up, life exists probably exclusively on what was once a "small" island (at least dozens of city-states remain intact), Armus is definitively appointed high priest and party diplomat.

The party continues interacting with the rich cast of NPCs, forging alliances... and making enemies. Eventually, the various city-states polarize into "traditionalists" and those who are swayed by the new religion. Hostilities brew, and, despite the party's best efforts, it turns ugly.

As events escalate towards war, Armus is forced to make a number of hard choices, deciding who will live and who will die. Armus has to send beloved NPCs to their death... including things like asking them to perform a task, knowing that doing so is a death sentence.

In one incident, Armus discovers that one of the PCs is a traitor. Although Armus usually handles things himself, to protect the party (physically and emotionally), he feels constrained by his role as High Priest. So he informs the rest of the party of the traitor's actions, and explains that, whatever their decision, the church cannot be involved. To Armus' surprise, the party immediately begins planning to murderhobo their former ally. Aghast at their lack of compassion for their long-time friend, but realizing that their planned methods would likely bring death to countless innocent civilians, Armus set himself to do what was necessary. Confirming that they are set on this path, Armus volunteers a more... subtle... method, to eliminate the traitorous PC with greater finesse.

I was glad for the experience - and equally glad that I am not required to make such decisions IRL.

Dr paradox
2016-08-25, 04:47 PM
This is epic. I would love to learn how to bring out such great emotion in my games, even to get that into my own characters. Out of curiosity, how long did your campaign run for?

About ten months total? Well, six months. There was a break of about four months in the middle of it. It was a relatively limited, focused game where the players were on an Indiana Jones globetrotting treasure hunt with a couple of cool tie-ins to their backgrounds. It helped that we've been gaming together for seven years or so, and a couple of us have theater backgrounds.

We've started a new campaign in the same setting since that one wrapped up in June, I'm writing up a log. Link to that in my sig.

Sajiri
2016-08-26, 04:04 AM
I've had a few emotional experiences, although I feel they dont ultimately top others in this thread so far.

I guess the one that made me was the most emotional, my character was Ana, who prior to the start of the campaign had had her husband killed defending their home, and then was forced to watch her two 10-year old sons executed in front of her before her younger daughter was taken away. Much the 'early' parts of the campaign were all spent trying to track her missing daughter down and rescue her, and on the 50th session she had the chance to. And failed. During those 50 sessions she'd adopted another boy, a kitsune the same age as her sons had been, but he had murder powers, and he was often seen as someone incredibly dangerous.

There were three ships in a fleet, the middle was being evacuated, and Ana had to choose which to move to to try to find her daughter. Unfortunately the one I chose was the wrong one, her daughter was spotted on the other ship but she couldnt make it to her. Her son changed to fox form while he was much closer, he leapt alone onto the ship with his sister (whom he had never met), ripping through soldiers to reach her, getting cut up as he did but he would do anything for his mother. The daughter did not know who he was, she saw some white fox covered in blood tearing people apart and running for her, so when he reached her she screamed 'MONSTER' at him, and kicked him off the edge of the ship into the sea. At this point, Ana only had one chance left to reach her daughter, but her son was drowning in the water and too weak to keep himself up. She had to choose between two children, and chose to dive into the sea to rescue the son (ultimately because he was in the most danger at the time), holding him afloat until her own ship reached them and her crew pulled them up on deck just in time for the sharks to show up from all the blood in the water.

The DM admitted to me the son definitely would have died had I not chosen to save him, and I did manage to rescue the daughter...another 30 sessions later, eventually things were patched up between the two children and they became friends.

....Until the timeskip, which was a whole different emotional experience.

There came a time when her island was attacked, around two years after the start of the campaign. To cut a long story short at this point, the attackers were seemingly (although I suspect the DM was misleading me) after her 3 month old other daughter, who's father was a prince of another nation, so Ana had the civilians loaded onto her fleet to flee the island that had already been taken over and used the ship she was on as bait to lead the enemy away. There was an explosion, she was seperated from the others on her ship in another world, dragged off to a prison island and lived the next decade as a blind cripple in a prison that limited her from using any of her magic or special abilities. The adopted son ended up rescuing her, now a grown man, and she soon discovered that he and his sister had fought and tried to kill each other, as her daughter did not want him to go in search of their mother (she said it was too dangerous for too many people and everyone else thought Ana was dead). So that was rather emotional and heartbreaking. Several old npc friends had died or changed and that was heartbreaking. Her infant daughter was now a 10 year old princess who did not remember her mother, so that was also a very emotional meeting, even more emotional when she had to leave again.

Basically, Ana doesnt have the best track record with her children, and it leads to a lot of emotional experiences

Cluedrew
2016-08-26, 07:30 AM
Well I got my sob-story.

A funny thing though, is it did not happen in character. Nor was it technically a tabletop experience, it was my first forum role-play/play-by-post, the first RPG I had ever run and the first one I had participated in over the last 3-5 years. And after a year it had really fallen apart. Some important players had lost interest and the other posts were coming slowly. As in a month had passed since a post had been made in the cannon thread.

So I wrote up a post saying good-bye to the game, posted it and closed it officially. I almost cried writing that post (burry vision almost cried) and I later learned that at least one other player actually did cry when they read the post. It sort of felt like we were euthanizing something alive. Sure it had been sick before, but now it was actually dead.



Do we got other emotional moments besides sadness? I another one that pops into my mind has the emotion is relief. Most of the party was dead (although some of the deaths felt so appropriate it wasn't really sad) and the remaining characters were my character (who was desperately trying to escape) and the insane soldier character (who was desperately trying to set off a nuke). Now both of them had stories leading up to this moment, so I wasn't going to ask the other player to not try to hot-wire the nukes and kill everyone. But man did I untense when he failed the check and the nuke did not go off.

The Fury
2016-08-26, 08:45 PM
I'm actually a little jealous of you guys. I've played in games that were "emotional" in a way, but the ones that weren't funny were more scary. (Hey, happiness and fear are emotions!) Though I've never played in a game that punched me in my heart-guts the way the rest of you are describing.

Freelance GM
2016-08-26, 10:49 PM
Two of the players in my last campaign didn't read the background lore on Dwarves.

My setting's Dwarves are the extremely xenophobic variety, but they decided to play Half-Orc twins raised by the Dwarf King. I ran with it, but the whole campaign, they were talking about how they were so respected and got to do whatever they wanted when they were living among the Dwarves.

So, I silently ruled it as rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. When they returned to the Dwarven city, expecting to be treated like royalty, they're greeted by their purebred Dwarven half-sister, and heir-to-the-throne Rin Stoneshield, and her armed guards.

After making them wait for 8 hours outside the city gates, she finally allowed them in, but because of the Rogue's diplomatic mission, not because of the two Half-Orcs. The Dwarves gave the pair of them cold, resentful looks.

When the Half-Orcs asked why they were being treated so poorly, Rin, a cold, stoic character, revealed the truth in an uncharacteristically loud and furious rant:
Their rose-tinted childhood was just a game. After the war, when the Dwarf King let the two Half-Orc infants live, it was a cruel joke. When his wife died giving birth to them, he wanted to raise them like Dwarves, as an insult to the Orc warlord who conceived them. So, he ordered his guards and his servants to go along with the whole thing. In truth, Rin resented them for absorbing so much of her father's attention, when they weren't even his biological children. The guards hated them, because they were a reminder of everything they lost in the war. The servants were afraid of them, because they were Half-Orcs. When the twins finally left the Dwarf city to become adventurers, all of their childhood possessions were destroyed or recycled.

Finally, Rin hit it home with one brutal truth at the end of the rant: "You think you're my equals? My brother and sister? Bah. You dare call my father yours? You weren't his children. You were his pets."

Both players were on the verge of tears. It was amazing. Especially because Rin had been so stoic and composed until that point, seeing her go ballistic on their characters was a very hard-hitting moment for the two of them. In one fell swoop, it reconciled their rose-tinted backstories with the grittier lore of my setting, established the character of a major NPC, and set the grim, forlorn tone for that whole arc of the adventure.

Ninja_Grand
2016-08-29, 04:01 AM
Two of the players in my last campaign didn't read the background lore on Dwarves.

My setting's Dwarves are the extremely xenophobic variety, but they decided to play Half-Orc twins raised by the Dwarf King. I ran with it, but the whole campaign, they were talking about how they were so respected and got to do whatever they wanted when they were living among the Dwarves.

So, I silently ruled it as rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. When they returned to the Dwarven city, expecting to be treated like royalty, they're greeted by their purebred Dwarven half-sister, and heir-to-the-throne Rin Stoneshield, and her armed guards.

After making them wait for 8 hours outside the city gates, she finally allowed them in, but because of the Rogue's diplomatic mission, not because of the two Half-Orcs. The Dwarves gave the pair of them cold, resentful looks.

When the Half-Orcs asked why they were being treated so poorly, Rin, a cold, stoic character, revealed the truth in an uncharacteristically loud and furious rant:
Their rose-tinted childhood was just a game. After the war, when the Dwarf King let the two Half-Orc infants live, it was a cruel joke. When his wife died giving birth to them, he wanted to raise them like Dwarves, as an insult to the Orc warlord who conceived them. So, he ordered his guards and his servants to go along with the whole thing. In truth, Rin resented them for absorbing so much of her father's attention, when they weren't even his biological children. The guards hated them, because they were a reminder of everything they lost in the war. The servants were afraid of them, because they were Half-Orcs. When the twins finally left the Dwarf city to become adventurers, all of their childhood possessions were destroyed or recycled.

Finally, Rin hit it home with one brutal truth at the end of the rant: "You think you're my equals? My brother and sister? Bah. You dare call my father yours? You weren't his children. You were his pets."

Both players were on the verge of tears. It was amazing. Especially because Rin had been so stoic and composed until that point, seeing her go ballistic on their characters was a very hard-hitting moment for the two of them. In one fell swoop, it reconciled their rose-tinted backstories with the grittier lore of my setting, established the character of a major NPC, and set the grim, forlorn tone for that whole arc of the adventure.

Damn.......That made me tear up, and thats not even my PC.

CarpeGuitarrem
2016-08-29, 04:36 PM
I'll never forget the Golden Sky Stories game I ran at a convention for two people I knew and two total strangers.

The only background you need is that in GSS, the players play as henge, magical animal spirits who shift between animal and child forms. The game itself was set in Japan.
The characters
First was Nya, the cat henge
Yes, it was deliberate. Yes, it was funny. Yes, "nya" was most of his vocabulary

The Kitsune Osamu. Who was very aloof, so much so that he floated above the ground in human form (but wore long robes)

Kuro the Tanuki
Who liked to eat but also had a rivalry with Nya
She was the one who ran off in the middle of the explanation of their mission

Then there was Cinnamon the rabbit henge
Small and sweet and affectionate

And rounding things out was Hoshi the owl
(Who stayed mostly in bird form and whose dialogue consisted mostly of "who?")

The Story
So it kicked off with Shikana the Elder Turtle henge giving them their task
She'd gathered them up for their first mission
Because Hitotsuna Town (where I set it) exists in the land of the living and in the land beyond
Henge can travel between them

So Shikana set them up with their first mission, because the henge around Hitotsuna help the departed to leave it
The mission was to help Gen, an old man, move on in peace
They found him at the old school, one of the newer buildings in Old Hitotsuna (which was a mishmash of buildings from different eras of the town)
They hopped on over; first, Kuro the tanuki and Nya the cat got lifted up to the top of the school wall, where Gen was sitting
So, Kuro and Nya went for the petting treatment (Feelings expenditure!)
And they got Gen to open up a bit
Then Hoshi fluttered over, forgot what he was doing, and ran into the wall in front of Gen
Gen jumped down to help him, and Hoshi also made a strong impression on him
Oh my goodness Hoshi
Cinnamon and Osamu showed up after, in human form, although Cinnamon popped into ears-and-tail form (otherwise looking like a 14 year-old)
Cinnamon gave Gen a ball of mochi (CUTE!)

They found out, talking with Gen, that he hadn't been around Hitotsuna for five years
He left Hitotsuna 30 years ago to be in the big city, and because he'd gotten in fights with some of the townsfolk, he left quietly, overnight, without telling his best friend Ataru
When he came back to visit Hitotsuna, Ataru was still angry because he'd cut off ties with the town
So Gen left Hitotsuna, and never came back, because he was afraid of Ataru holding a grudge

They asked Gen if there was anything they could bring up that Ataru would remember, and Gen mentioned that they had found a robin's egg by the window at the back of the school
The Tanuki ran off midway through their plan, where they found out where they might find Ataru
Nya went into the school and came out with a paper and pencil, so that Gen could write a letter to Ataru
Gen told the rest of them them that Ataru lived near a bakery

Hoshi flew off after Kuro the Tanuki; unfortunately, he was forgetful
Hoshi forgot what sort of shop Ataru lived near (important later)

So, the other three of them headed for Hitotsuna, and Cinnamon took possession of the letter
So, the way they get to New Hitotsuna is through an old house on the edge of town
Everyone in New Hitotsuna thinks of it as this creepy old place (for those reading along: this is the "haunted house" on the map)
So Kuro and Hoshi went through first, then the others came through
Kuro and Hoshi went for the bookshop, because that's what Hoshi thought he remembered

Nya, Cinnamon, and Osamu encountered an old woman named Ito Kana (Cinnamon was in full rabbit form now), and she led them to Ataru's house
Meanwhile, Hoshi and Kuro contemplated how to get into the bookshop
Hoshi very stealthily flew in and perched on a bookshelf
Kuro snuck around and slipped in a back window, walking across the tops of the shelves
They quickly figured out that something wasn't quite right
So they booked it on out

There was a young girl sweeping the place, and her grandfather, who was reshelving books (and very absorbed in his task)
The girl started sweeping Kuro out of the shop, and Kuro treated it like a game and grabbed onto the broom
Then the girl started trying to shake Kuro off of the broom, and she held on for dear life
And then, it was probably the funniest moment of the game
Picture, like, a Miyazaki teenage girl
Who lifts the broom up and glowers at the Tanuki at eye level
(Like, not the Miyazaki protagonist girl, but her older sibling)
(You know the type)

So she glowers at the tanuki
And the tanuki licks her face
She yells "GRANDPA!!!!!!" and throws the broom out in the street
Gramps is too absorbed in shelving books to hear
The Tanuki grabs the broom in her mouth and runs off
And that's how Hoshi and the Tanuki meet back up with the rest of the group
They wait around until day to let Cinnamon and Kuro change into human form easier

They all showed up at Ataru's house, and he was a bit surprised and wondered what they were doing
Cinnamon beamed and handed him the letter
Meanwhile, Kuro ran around to his bedroom and transformed into a robin's egg (tanuki have the ability to transform into anything), and Osamu made a mochi ball look like a robin's egg (with Fake)
So there were two robin's eggs on the windowsill when Ataru went to look
So he read the letter, and cried a bit. Then Cinnamon suggested <hint hint ^_^ > that if he wrote a prayer for his friend, Gen would be sure to know about it

He wrote the prayer and gave it to them
Also, he teared up a bit when he saw the robin's eggs
As he turned away to go get paper and ink to write the paper, Kuro the tanuki-egg rocked herself off the night stand and transformed back into a human with a thump on the floor, then scurried into the closet

The fox, meanwhile, swiped back his egg (before it could turn back into mochi), and Ataru wrote the prayer
Nya, meanwhile, had been being catlike and doing the legs thing
Which helped Ataru to be really pliable xD
Everyone followed Ataru to the shrine as he left the prayer there
Hoshi created a gust that made leaves and such spell out "thank you", and Kuro briefly took on the form of Gen, to briefly console Ataru before running off to change back into a normal form
Then Nya snagged the prayer as it was blown free

Finally, Osamu used the Present power, and it wound up being one of the most touching things I've seen in gaming. Everyone started discussing what power to imbue into the gift, and they finally settled on the Cat's Sleeping Soundly power. They imbued it into the form of a blue robin's egg, and the Fox ran off to slip it onto Ataru's nightstand

I'm tellin' ya, I get a bit misty-eyed thinking about that.

All the henge headed back to Old Hitotsuna
They met back up with Gen, and gave him the prayer slip
He didn't even look at it, just held it to his chest and started walking out of the town, vanishing over the crest of a hill
We all clapped and concluded the session; everyone really liked it

~~~

I was really happy with how it turned out. Very honobono, and I think the situation with Gen and Ataru had just enough gravitas but was light enough to stay heartwarming.

Freelance GM
2016-08-30, 12:35 AM
Damn.......That made me tear up, and thats not even my PC.

I'm glad you enjoyed the story! It's a bit of a cautionary tale, though...

I felt terrible roleplaying that whole rant, especially that last line. I remember I couldn't look my players in the eyes when I said that one. As a DM I regularly play depraved villains, but that's nothing compared to having to roleplay the older half-sister of a PC, with deep-rooted prejudices and unresolved feelings of jealousy, neglect and inferiority.

Saying things as hateful as what she said feels really disgusting, even if you're just acting, and you're yelling at someone else's imaginary character.

This post almost turned into a 12-page essay on how to responsibly toy with your player's emotions. I'll throw what I already wrote in Spoiler tags for anyone who's curious on how to make NPCs deliver emotional gut-punches like Rin Stoneshield did, but it's not really that relevant to the thread.


I'd argue that if you're a DM and you want to create an emotional tabletop experience, you've got to find out what lines your players are comfortable with your NPC's crossing. Then, you have to go all out with a few key NPCs.

You've got to go uncomfortably deep in their heads, because if you can't understand why those NPCs act and feel the way they do, it won't be credible to the players, and you won't get the emotional effect you're going for. Rin worked because she channeled such an understandable, real-world anxiety, jealousy of a sibling, multiplied by her fantastic circumstances. RPGs are kind of a tool for escapism, so throwing in such relatable issues can really hit home if it's done right. Again, know your players and their boundaries, because it's a double-edged sword. It could lead to some of the best roleplaying ever, like it fortunately did for my group, or it could get a little too real and make a player uncomfortable. Heres' a couple of relatively safe ideas, though:

What happens when the party gets arrested, and the Captain of the Guard is the Fighter's ex, who's still kind of interested, but convinced it wouldn't work out again?

What happens when the quest-giving Mage is the party Wizard's overbearing teacher, who second-guesses and critiques every little thing the party Wizard does, down to their choice of Familiar?

An NPC betraying the party is a pretty common thing, but how differently would that scene unfold if the NPC was the party rogue's childhood friend, and refused to harm that character out of an ironic sense of loyalty?