This isnt D&D but its a pretty epic fail in an mmorpg.

Ok, to start off id like to state that I was still new playing computer games when this happened. I had started up everquest and run through a few characters trying them all out. The reason I tried so many was because night time STUNK! I mean, I couldnt see more than a few feet away from me even with a light source, and, being a newbie, had never even heard of gamma control. I just thought that was how the game worked! Night time is bad for wandering, hang out and wait for dawn. Ok, so I got my halfling druid up to something like level 14, and had a high level player kindly teleport me to a zone called north karana. This place is pretty much a featureless plain and is freaking huge. Bad news is, I got the teleport at night. No big deal, ill hang out here at the landing point till daylight! Not too fast skippy.

A gryphon, that was about 10 levels above me, apparently didnt like the look on my face, so he decided to remove it with his claws. Now, as a druid I get a buff that lets me run really fast, and I was thanking whatever god I worshipped that I had that spell, as I ran off in a random direction, and kept running. Unfortunately, I heard a splashing sound. Apparently I ran into some water. And also apparently, I swim slower than I run, so the gryphon caught up and killed me dead. No big deal right? Ill wait till morning then go find whatever lake I ran into and get my body back. Not so fast skippy.

Apparently there is only one real source of water of any size, thats this MASSIVE river, that crosses the entire length of the zone, which, as ive said, is a really REALLY big zone. Not knowing what angle I ran at to hit the river, I started going up and down the bank looking for a sign of my body. I got nothing. I started swimming in the water going up and down the river. Still nothing. At this point about 2 hours of corpse recovery time has gone by for me irl, and im getting very upset. That little druid was my best equipped character! (He had an AWESOME set of very expensive vendor trash gear ) Finally, after another hour of frantic searching, and calling out to the zone for help, a friendly bard or something shows up. Apparently he had a wand, or a skill or something that would actually point him in the direction of a targetted players corpse. We ran, and ran, and ran, and it turned out that I had managed to die, in the middle of the river, not 5 feet from the zone line, which made getting to my body hard as it was so close id keep zoning and missing my body and having to zone back.

Incidentally, that was also the person who asked me a question that changed my gaming life. When I told him thanks, because it was getting dark again and I was afraid id have to wait till morning to keep looking for my corpse, he replied, "Well why dont you just turn up your gamma setting so you can see better?" WOOT! I was able to try out all the cool races and classes I couldnt play before because they either lacked any form of night vision, or started off underground where I couldnt see anything at all even WITH night vision!