Memorable Encounters

libranchylde
libranchylde
edited December 2010 in General Discussion
So I was asking for some help recently on these boards about a one shot I am going to run. and it got me thinking about what type of encounters I want to run, and fun encounters I have played in the past. What are some of your more memorable encounters?

One of my favorites (and the favorite id my former group) was an encounter I ran in a homebrew world. it was loosely based off Terry Brooks' Shannara series. I had a skull bearer chasing down the pcs, and they thought to distract it by throwing out a hunk of troll ass (yes that's right, how they got it is another story). anyway I had the creature pick it up and throw it at the pcs horse for the hell of it. it criticaled. then backed it up with another 20. couldn't believe it. so I decided that it hit the horse in the head, knocking it out and sending the pc flying. the players loved it. troll ass has been a running joke since

Comments

  • Poutine_Paladin
    Poutine_Paladin
    Posts: 285
    I don't remember what level our party was at, but it was medium-ish, and we were tracking down an even higher level bad-guy. We'd tracked him into an old abandoned mine of some kind (semi-dungeony area, anyway) and when we finally got to his lair it was a huge square area, with notches in the walls for his pansy minions to shoot crossbows, spear us, etc while we engaged with him. The room had a large pit in the middle, probably about forty feet deep or so, and eventually, when we finally realized we were in tough against this guy and his lackeys that we couldn't even attack, our knight made a bullrush at the guy and they both went over the edge of the pit.

    So, it's pretty dark in here, right? I can't see down 40 feet to the bottom of this thing, but I can't imagine that the fall killed him (which it didn't) but I saw the shape our night was in when he made his bullrush, theorizing that it was his noble "last dying action" sort of thing, so I, a druid, filled the pit with thorns (wall of thorns) obviously not thinking about the consequences of said action, or discussing with the rest of the party.

    So now we've got a really pissed off baddy struggling to get back up at us through a pit of thorns, screaming for revenge, arrows still coming out of the walls, and I, once again without forethought or discussion...light the pit of thorns on fire.

    He sure did die.

    What I had forgotten, though, is that we were supposed to bring his body back to those who had charged us with this endeavor, and now we sure wouldn't have one. I was explained the problem as we were now running down (take note of down) further into the mine to escape from the rapidly expanding, suffocating smoke that a 50' deep burning pit of brambles produces in a confined area.

    I think that adventure pretty much petered out after that before we could get back with the bones (witch obviously would prove nothing) to those who sent us on this venture, but I think the plan was to resurrect him to prove that we'd killed him, and then kill him again. If I remember correctly, we had one resurrection available to us and the player who's knight had died was quite miffed that this was our plan...as he would certainly remain dead, while we resurrected an anemy to prove we'd killed him...only to kill him.

    "I FILL THE PIT WITH THORNS!" is still a great exclamation for lightening the mood around a table with anyone from that particular group around.

    If Optimus Mush comes around and reads this, he might have a different take on the whole thing...we'll see.
  • cithaeron99
    cithaeron99
    Posts: 2
    A long time ago, I was playing a sucessful rogue who happened to have come into possession of a Wand Of Wonder. He didnt know that is what it was, though... First time he used it, a gust of wind came out and ruffled the hair of the orc captain attacking the party. "Interesting," he thought as he tucked the wand away. We escaped from the orcs and returned to our ship. As we were rounding a cape, we saw a pirate ship bearing down upon us.

    "I will save us!" yelled my rogue. As the entire ship's crew watched, he calmly pulled out the Wand of Wonder and leveled it at the sail. He figured it was a Wand of Gusting Wind, you see.... Said the command word and let loose... a fireball. Right at the sail. Of the ship. Well, that didn't really earn many friends. Oh, and the pirates were still bearing down upon our now sail-less ship.

    "Ah hah!" I yelled, and pointed the Wand at the approaching ship. One command word later, and a stream of butterflies erupted from the wand. Dejected, I just dropped the thing in the ocean. "The hell with it," I said.
  • libranchylde
    libranchylde
    Posts: 113 edited December 2010
    oh and a few weeks later I had a pot luck dinner with that group. a friend who played the female rogue brought a cake. shaped like an ass. with green icing, and spots of red food coloring for pimples and pustules. and Troll Ass cake was born. haha great times
    Post edited by libranchylde on
  • FemmeLegion
    FemmeLegion
    Posts: 521
    Well, you asked for "memorable", not necessarily "awesome":

    Florimel had a tremendously silly idea for a campaign - effectively, a ragtag band of total losers left to do mining work on an asteroid because a live crew was cheaper than robots. Anyway, one of the characters was a purple monkey-looking creature named Yuo, who had a serious fondness for (bordering on addiction to) mayonnaise.

    (Letting that sink in a little...)

    The band of losers found a spaceship that had been landed on the asteroid and abandoned. We decided to risk losing our dead-end jobs and explored it. It had something akin to a Star Trek replicator for producing foodstuffs. One of the humanoid characters requested chocolate bars, Yuo of course requested a bowl of mayonnaise, and then Yuo TOOK ONE OF THE CHOCOLATE BARS AND BEGAN DIPPING IT IN THE MAYONNAISE and eating it that way.

    I damn near passed out laughing when I visualized that, and to this day I cannot get said visual out of my head.

    So there...my most memorable encounter ever, even though I wasn't directly involved.
  • RaseCidraen
    RaseCidraen
    Posts: 890
    That's rather spectacular. It reminds me of the opening show of the latest incarnation of Doctor Who - fish sticks in custard? ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
  • optimus_mush
    optimus_mush
    Posts: 28
    Yes, I do remember the "Fill the pit with thorns" episode, Poutine, how could I forget.
    The best part was the laughter from our GM while the part discussed using a magic idol that could resurrect one time only on the baddy that we had just defeated rather than my fighter who had just given his life to defeat him. I just shook my head. It was all good, though. As I recall we continued on for a few more sessions before one of the most critical PCs to the adventure moved away.

    One of my most memorable adventures was during a small break from the main adventure that I was GMing. I resolved to add a series of background adventures, one for each character taking no more than one or two sessions. Each of the characters headed for their home and the rest of the party was given pre-generated characters linked to that PCs background. One of the characters, a gnomish druidess returned to her home in a wooded valley. The druid circle and the ranger brotherhood that protected them needed to recover water from a mystic well deep in the woods. They dispatched the druidess, a boy thief, a ranger guardian, a half-dryad and a fighter to make the perilous quest.
    After a few trials the PCs managed to find the cave that housed the well only to discover that it was now guarded by a night hag. The wrinkled old hag offered to trade some water from the well for the "two short ones" pointing at the boy and the gnome. I nearly fell out of my seat when the fighter agreed to the hag's proposal and immediately turned on the ranger, slaying him with a couple of blows. After cornering and then capturing the pair the fighter left them with the hag to who knows what horrors and headed home with the required water. The half-dryad survived by jumping in the well and waiting for the fighter to leave then escaped by making a separate deal with the hag.

    I had never been so surprised by a PCs answer before and was laughing when I told the PC that they would have to create a new character when we returned to the main adventure path.
  • gnunn
    gnunn
    Posts: 423
    Last night, as I was wrapping up my prep for tonight's game, I realized that a major key to memorable encounters is good NPC design and role-playing. Note that "good" does not necessarily equate to "detailed".

    The encounters my players talk the most about revolve around interesting NPCs.

    * The group's sorcerer blowing up an entire kobold mariachi band with 1 fireball
    * The jerk of a paladin who arrested the group after the rogue's spider-bot mistakenly tried to steal the shiny pin from a rich woman's hair.
    * The barkeep with the wooden leg who told them of his repeated battles with a giant crab to extract one of the beasts limbs in vengeance. -This guy was only in a brief part of one session
    * The awkward merchant they rescued from a pocket dimension while battling mimics in a library.

    Some of these characters don't even have stat blocks, but by giving them a distinct personality or defining trait & then playing that up in game, anchors the accompanying encounter in the players' minds.
  • Duskreign
    Duskreign
    Posts: 1,085
    Two words...

    *Kobold Mariachi*

    ...changed my life forever.
  • gnunn
    gnunn
    Posts: 423
    Dude. That fight was one of the shortest ever... Basically, the party is crawling through a kobold lair. They come on a large room with an unidentified piece of meat on a roasting spit and a kobold mariachi band intently watching the entrance to the tunnel where the players were hiding -basically, the kobolds were having a party, but heard the PCs coming.

    The sorcerer tries to sneak up to fireball the band, but they spot her. The band strikes a dramatic thrum as other hidden kobolds launch a volley of arrows. The sorcerer responds with a fireball... no more band. My plan to have a unique fight turned into a moment of comic genius.
  • Duskreign
    Duskreign
    Posts: 1,085
    That is terrific, gnunn! Hugely funny.
  • RaseCidraen
    RaseCidraen
    Posts: 890
    La Kobold-racha... La Kobold-racha... they-be-coming-for-a-me...

    Gnunn, truly inspiring!
  • twiggyleaf
    twiggyleaf
    Posts: 2,006 edited January 2011
    I used to play regularly with my old varsity mates. We all knew each other quite well and knew what buttons to press. One of the guys got really emotional about his character during play and would shout, scream, cry and generally get more "involved" than was entirely appropriate. During one encounter, after facing a Deadly Demon foe, the DM said to this player: "Can I just see your character sheet a minute?"

    As the DM took the sheet, he informed this player of the gruesome method in which his character had died and ripped up the character sheet into tiny bits with more than necessary dramatic effect and not a small amount of evil-DM relish. (I must point out that this was at a time before computers and easy copies).

    From across the table came the most spine-tingling wail from the player-owner of the dead character: "Amulet of life protection!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

    DM: "Uh, sorry. Has anyone got any selotape?"
    Post edited by twiggyleaf on

    "I met a traveller from an antique land....."

    CotM May 2016: Mysteria: set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.

    Previous CotM Aug 2012: Shimring: High Level Multiplanar Campaign

    Inner Council Member

  • DarkMagus
    DarkMagus
    Posts: 425
    @ twiggy Woooooooooooooowwww. That's hilarious and horrifying at the same time.
  • gnunn
    gnunn
    Posts: 423 edited January 2011
    Oh man, Twiggy that's awesome! The overly emotional guy sounds like a character a friend of mine played in a mockumentary about gaming.

    The movie, "Gamers":http://www.montereymedia.com/independent/gamers_trailer.html is pretty funny, though it does reinforce a lot of the negative stereotypes about the kind of people who play tabletop rpgs. Still, even the menu screen for the dvd had me laughing so hard I cried. It consists of repeated death threats left on the DM's answering machine by one of the other characters because the DM horribly killed his favorite character, Farrah.
    Post edited by gnunn on
  • twiggyleaf
    twiggyleaf
    Posts: 2,006 edited January 2011
    It sure was an unforgettable day. Gnunn, that film clip looked a scream. At first I thought it was going to be a cult scottish film that I saw two years ago called "Gamerz":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_vwdDckF0s and it was also pretty good, but less of a direct docudrama parody than yours seems to be. However, it was quite a charming wee film.
    Post edited by twiggyleaf on

    "I met a traveller from an antique land....."

    CotM May 2016: Mysteria: set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.

    Previous CotM Aug 2012: Shimring: High Level Multiplanar Campaign

    Inner Council Member

  • twiggyleaf
    twiggyleaf
    Posts: 2,006
    Sorry, I'm not sure how to create a link in these forums - if anyone can tell me how, I will insert link into last paragraph.

    "I met a traveller from an antique land....."

    CotM May 2016: Mysteria: set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.

    Previous CotM Aug 2012: Shimring: High Level Multiplanar Campaign

    Inner Council Member

  • Duskreign
    Duskreign
    Posts: 1,085
    " Text " : url

    Surround the text for the link in quotes, then put a colon, then the url you are linking to. No spaces.

    :)
  • twiggyleaf
    twiggyleaf
    Posts: 2,006
    Thanks, Duskreign!

    "I met a traveller from an antique land....."

    CotM May 2016: Mysteria: set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.

    Previous CotM Aug 2012: Shimring: High Level Multiplanar Campaign

    Inner Council Member

  • Duskreign
    Duskreign
    Posts: 1,085
    No problemo, Twig!
  • Alchemyst
    Alchemyst
    Posts: 9
    A very long time ago I was DMing a campaign in which the players were faced with a vampire lair...3 vampires to be exact. One of the players (always showing off) yelled : "I'm casting "Transmute Rock to Mud everywhere in this cavern" just when the discussion was turning to "we will suck your life and then ask you to mop our floors when you wake-up...". When we calculated the whole thing, even the players were knee deep in mud. So our vampire friends just transformed into gas, got a little higher on the still solid stair and one of them casted "Dispel Magic" (which, in those 2nd Edition days, reversed that spell) and re-transformed the mud into solid rock.

    Let just say that those vampires had "a standing snack"...

    The other players called during the following days (without having talked to each other first) to ask that I do something about this guy as they would no play again with him. We never heard of him since...who knew.
  • libranchylde
    libranchylde
    Posts: 113
    Alchemyst: ROFLMFAO haha. Nice.


    I have another one. My friend GMed this one. There were i think 7 of us playing this game. I was playing a ranger and another friend was playing a bard playing a harp styled instrument. House Rule of the game: Nat 1: critical fail of epic proportions. Nat 20: Critical hit of epic proportions. My ranger was firing an arrow at the BBEG. Nat 1. the GM randomly decided i accidentally fired at the bard. His dex and reflex were through the roof, rolled evasion. Nat 20. Immediately the GM says "Okay, the ranger misfires hitting the bard, but he deflects it into the bad guy."

    Best part. it took him down. He only had 1HP left. We all nearly died of laughter.
  • Duskreign
    Duskreign
    Posts: 1,085
    Alchemyst, I love it.

    Libranchylde, your GM is excellent at Rube Goldberging his way into awesome solutions.
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