Has a campaign story ever driven you to tears?

[Sindal]

Title says it all.

If yes, why?(Besides crying of frustration lol)

I cried like an absolute baby as we laid a now decreased companion pc to rest, after a fierce battle.

[Sigreid]

No. I don't get that emotionally involved in games, movies, books etc.

[Master O'Laughs]

Yes! One of the PCs had a family and through the course of the adventure had died in battle. Their body was taken by this crazy high level NPC and later on the PC had come back to fight us, now serving the bad guy.

We had promised the PCs widower husband we would lay his wife to rest so she could find peace.

A bunch of stuff later and the PC's characters soul now resided in a sword. We brought the sword back to the husband and his daughter. The family started to mourn their loss and I was fighting back tears in the moment.

[Jaryn]

Yes. There was a urchin rogue in a campaign with a lot of noble NPCs, who took great pleasure in using their higher social status to be unpleasant to him. The rest of the group, although they looked down on him a bit, stood by him and were good friends.

The end of campaign fight saw him as the only PC left standing and able to shut the portal of doom (TM), as everyone else was paralyzed on the floor. He arranged the various artefacts and said goodbye:

"I'm not doing this to save the world. From what I've seen, the world deserves to go to hell. But you don't. So I'm doing it for you. My friends. The only friends I've ever known."

At which point he takes the ritual dagger and stabs himself through the heart, closing the portal and condemning his own soul to be trapped inside the nine hells.

(This was a fairly dark campaign, in case you hadn't guessed. On a plus point, his soul escaped as an aside during another campaign, which we were all really pleased about!)

[BloodSnake'sCha]

No, I only cried in character, never a character made me cry.

I disconnect myself from my characters, I don't want to experience bleeding.

[MThurston]

Didn't cry but was one of the coolest things to happen to one of my characters.

I played a rogue in a Middle Earth game. We played for 3 years and the knight would keep calling my character a thief. I would simply say, "I am not a thief, I AM A ROGUE."

Well we were helping with the final battle and the Nasgals were flying over head to join the final battle.

I had a great weapon that had the soul of one of the human Kings daughters in it. The dagger called to her father and he turned to attack me.

As he flew down, my character climbed onto the saddle of his horse. As they got closer I jumped into the air. We both struck each other and my dagger exploided with energy to release her father's soul.

I was rushed to Revindale to see if I could be healed.

When I woke they were having a victory celebration. The nurses helped me to the front doors and I asked why we didn't use the side entrance for none nobles.

It was then that I knew what was going on.

The doors open and there is Aragorn and Elven King. Next to them are my noble friends.

I tell the Nurses to not help me and walk, shuffle and nearly fall over on the way to the front.

I get up my courage and I tell the crowd. "You can not Knight me, I am just a lowly thief."

My friend, the knight steps forward to help me up the stairs. "No sir, you are a Rogue."

It was one of the best endings to a champaign that I have every played. Still emotional typing this.

[HappyDaze]

If yes, why?(Besides crying of frustration lol).

Oh well, that parenthetical takes me out of the conversation.

[RedMage125]

I've tugged on my players' heartstrigs before, when I was a DM. Not quite tears, but close.

So, party was captured, thrown in a dungeon, they break out. So they start making their way through the other cells, intent on confronting their captors. They open a door to rveal a short hallway, with fairly large cells on either side. It is dark, but they recovered their gear, so they have an everburning torch. Something floats up to them on the right, scaring the crap out of them. It was a beholder. but it's central eye had been removed, and all of its eyestalks severed and cauterized.

Turns out, they had just stumbled upon the leaders of a cabal of diabolists that they had wiped out the lower-ranking cell members earlier in the campaign. These diabolists had also been capturing, torturing, and experimenting on monsters.

In cell#1: Said beholder.

Cell #2 accross from Beholder: A Mind Flayer with a scar on its head. It was still fairly intelligent, but did not possess the psionic power to command so much as a rat.

Cell#3, next to mind flayer: A Medusa, who had her eyes cut out and her head shaved.

Cell #4, accross from Medusa: A lich, named Bernard. A human historian and Diviner who felt he needed more time in life to watch and record history. He could break out, but the diabolists have his grimoires and phylactery, so there's no point.

Cell #5, next to lich: A Nymph who had been so badly scarred and tortured, that she refused to remove the filthy blanket that covered her body.

Cell #6, accorss from nymph: An Ettin, which had one head removed and cauterized. You may remember that Ettins have a personality in each head, and often talk to themselves. When this one spoke it said, "Morg and Torg will......Morg will crush wizards who did this"

My players, at this point, were staring at me in absolute horror, mouths agape, eyes shining with emotion. One of them said, "Dude! I never thought I would feel sorry for monsters"

[MThurston]

I've tugged on my players' heartstrigs before, when I was a DM. Not quite tears, but close.

So, party was captured, thrown in a dungeon, they break out. So they start making their way through the other cells, intent on confronting their captors. They open a door to rveal a short hallway, with fairly large cells on either side. It is dark, but they recovered their gear, so they have an everburning torch. Something floats up to them on the right, scaring the crap out of them. It was a beholder. but it's central eye had been removed, and all of its eyestalks severed and cauterized.

Turns out, they had just stumbled upon the leaders of a cabal of diabolists that they had wiped out the lower-ranking cell members earlier in the campaign. These diabolists had also been capturing, torturing, and experimenting on monsters.

In cell#1: Said beholder.

Cell #2 accross from Beholder: A Mind Flayer with a scar on its head. It was still fairly intelligent, but did not possess the psionic power to command so much as a rat.

Cell#3, next to mind flayer: A Medusa, who had her eyes cut out and her head shaved.

Cell #4, accross from Medusa: A lich, named Bernard. A human historian and Diviner who felt he needed more time in life to watch and record history. He could break out, but the diabolists have his grimoires and phylactery, so there's no point.

Cell #5, next to lich: A Nymph who had been so badly scarred and tortured, that she refused to remove the filthy blanket that covered her body.

Cell #6, accorss from nymph: An Ettin, which had one head removed and cauterized. You may remember that Ettins have a personality in each head, and often talk to themselves. When this one spoke it said, "Morg and Torg will......Morg will crush wizards who did this"

My players, at this point, were staring at me in absolute horror, mouths agape, eyes shining with emotion. One of them said, "Dude! I never thought I would feel sorry for monsters"

I don't feel sorry for them. They would kill you if they had the chance.

On a side note. We need like buttons.

[RedMage125]

I don't feel sorry for them. They would kill you if they had the chance.

On a side note. We need like buttons.

The Nymph wouldn't. And honestly, neither would that particular lich (this was in a 3.5e game years ago, when liches didn't need to feed souls into their phylactery), Bernard only ever killed in self-defense, and was Neutral-aligned. He just scryed on the world, recorded histories, and used magic to make copies of the books and teleported them to various libraries around the continent.

The party sent those monsters with the other, elven prisoners, through the diabolists' variable-keyed portal, to Arvandor, so they could return to elven lands (except the lich, once he got his books and his phylactery back, he thanked them and teleported out). Out of pity, they had NPCs restore the monsters. The medusa, nymph, and ettin actually signed on with the Alliance war effort out of gratitude. The mind flayer and beholder returned to the Underdark. But much, much later in the campaign, (over a year in real-time), the party was travelling through the Underdark and got ambushed by mind flayers and through a run of phenomenal bad luck, they all got mind-blasted and captured (again!). Then one of the mind flayers released them when the others' were not looking, and told them, "You saved my life, food-things. I save yours. My debt is paid".

[Laserlight]

Does "laughing until tears" count? Because we've had that a couple of times.

[punctured spoon]

i shed quite a few tears after my first character died at level 14 after so many adventures, it was rough

[Kane0]

One of my tables has a notoriously teary player, almost every PC or animal companion death will do it.

[Maxiboy]

I've recently begun playing my first DnD game and character as a Cleric, even though we are not far into our campaign at all, I can definitely say that I'm completely hooked - when I used Inflict Wounds for the first time while encountering a dude bullying people in a town-square, I got a critical and knocked him down in one shot, with my party and the towns people cheering for me as I stood up for myself for the first time. I didn't exactly burst out crying but I did end up shedding a tear, it was one of the coolest things I think I've ever done really, I'm excited for other awesome encounters to come as both me and my character build up confidence.

[AH0098]

So this wasn't me, but I was DMing for my family. I introduced them to LMOP and made a few changes. My children are 16, 10 and 8 whom were playing with my wife. Since I was introducing them to D&D I created a loveable cleric of Chauntea named Garden Riuz, who was kind of like a lovable non alcoholic Friar Tuck. During chapter 1 when fighting the bugbear, Klarg. Klarg hit Garen, who ran out of spells and rushed ahead to hit Klarg after my 10yr old son received a crit and had to make a death save. The next round Klarg critted Garen and he received enough damage to cause him to suffer Instant death, but since it was my kids I hand waved that... But then I failed the first death save and then rolled a 1 for the next one. It was too thematically awesome to pass up and the cleric died.

My two younger children didn't talk to me for two days and still blame me for the character's death. And told me to bring him back, my youngest (my daughter) even hit me because she thought I did it on purpose and called me a bad person. Granted I created a new loveable NPC for them and all is well, but they still bring it up 4 months later...

But since I am an evil DM, all it does is make me smile on the inside because I made it real for them.

[Tanarii]

If yes, why?(Besides crying of frustration lol)There go all my tales of DMs doing stories.

[IsaacsAlterEgo]

No, but I made a player cry once. I introduced an NPC to the party to help them out with this dungeon they were going to have trouble with, if they only had four people. He was a racist, snobby ******* that looked down on the party for being mostly non-human, but was helping them because his fate was tied to theirs.

For some reason, despite having every reason in the world to hate this guy (I pretty much designed him to BE hated and the butt of jokes) the group instantly fell in love with the guy, which made me rethink the character, so throughout the dungeon and being saved/helped by the party I decided he would rethink his ways. In the final room of the dungeon, when the group was on their last ropes, he gave a short improvised speech about how he realized he was so wrong his whole life and sacrificed himself to take out a particularly tough monster to save the groups lives.

It doesn't sound like much but they were all really bummed he went out like that, and one player messaged me after to tell me they were tearing up from it. I ended up making his past and stuff a bigger part of the campaign since they attached to him so strongly in such a short amount of time.

[FrancisBean]

Not me, but my wife, as a player in a game I ran. My wife, among other occupations, is a horse trainer and avid equestrian. Like a number of other men, I'm what we call a "horse widower." I exploited that knowledge shamelessly.

This was all the way back to 1st ed., and she was playing an epic Paladin. Despite that party's best efforts, Demogorgon had overrun their Kingdom in a cross-planar invasion. At wits end, they finally followed up on the last known prophecy of the end of days, given to them by the last true priest of the God of Martyrs before he died. They set forth following a trail of breadcrumbs which eventually led them to Dumathoin -- the only time he was known to speak over the course of all of time -- and thence with specific instructions to Shargaas, to retrieve the Hammer of the Gods, a pulsating gem which would bring down the utmost wrath of the Gods wherever it might be. (Basically a divine transponder which summoned a comet directly to it.)

While the similarly epic Wizard and Monk got everybody moving in a mass exodus, she set off to face Demogorgon alone, knowing she wouldn't make it back. Her Paladin mount wasn't going to be fast enough to get her there in time, so she mounted up on a volunteer gold dragon. She freed her loyal steed to flee and save himself, and ordered him to run for it. And then, as the dragon's wings flapped and they thrust into the sky, she could see below, her stallion frantically galloping along behind them fit to burst a heart, whinnying and calling after them until they finally passed beyond view.

She had to survive 4 rounds, solo, against Demogorgon on the Prime Plane. She barely made it. The campaign ended with the line, "...the last thing you see is the silver light bursting through the clouds.... and the first thing you hear is the whicker of a horse."

[Mr. Crowbar]

It's just become a thing at my table that if anyone cries, it'll be me...

most recent -- Bard was going through a rough time and had a series of flings with this cartel lieutenant, Ezekiel, who was like, smoking hot and very sweep-you-off-you-feet romantic, buuuuut also possessive, violent, and kind of an *******. Abusive relationship material who consistently had no redeeming personality traits. Bard was smitten, the rest of the party HATED the guy.

Lots of story stuff happen, the party falls off the grid for a year. Out of the blue, Ezekiel shows up transformed into this huge mindless mutant monstrosity and we fight and mercy kill him. My Bard has a special ability to revive characters they love (revival spells are otherwise banned), so they revived Ezekiel with the expectation that he might hate them (bard indirectly had a part in Ezekiel getting monsterfied), but they couldn't bear to leave him with his last moments in so much pain. The magic was enough to turn him into a less huge less mutant mostly not-monster. Ezekiel's got his head back, he barely remembers being the monster, but he has LEGIT GUILT over the half-memory of killing another NPC that was his mentor. When we found the mentor alive, Ezekiel BAWLED. Like these two things were just so antithetical to how we knew Ezekiel.

Anywho, so after the session I talked to the DM, I told him, "Reviving Ezekiel went as I expected, but I NEVER thought he would show any redeeming traits."

the DM's response was, "I didn't redeem him, you did."

I teared up, like, instantly. This damn NPC was meant to be a one-off to make us all uncomfortable but because I was like, "oh no, he's hot" he became a recurring NPC and now he's a temp member of the party and actually has a itty bitty bit of 'good' under all the layers of douchebag.