Your Proudest Moment

Lxcharon

What is your proudest, or favorite moment as a GM or Player? What event, adventure, character or twist made everyone gasp? Kept them talking for weeks to come? What gaming memories to you reminisce on, or try to replicate again in your games?

I once had my players launch into a long debate on whether or not to kill children when they were hired to exterminate a thieves guild which they only found out were all kids once finding their hideout. The argument ended when one of my more brash players jumped through the window and swung down on a chandelier, murdering children left and right. They still mention that event to this day. (some positively, some negatively) and I love how strongly they still feel about it.

Tau_Cetacean

I had a post-Thrawn Star Wars campaign where one character's Jedi Master had turned to the Dark Side... and they had to kill him... and then latter on, they started going down the path to the Dark Side themselves... but hadn't technically crossed over (according to WEG's Dark Side points mechanic) and decide they would hijack a New Republic Mon Calamari cruiser

they get as far as the landing bay and it turns out the Mon Calamari cruiser has a contingent of Noghri Death Commandos on board... would-be Dark Jedi PC dies because I decided to make it a little harder than just a bunch of Mon Calamari crewers he could probably have slaughtered...

in his dying moments, the force ghost of his former master appears to him and says something to the effect of "at least you didn't turn out like me"

other player was jealous of his death scene... that felt like an accomplishment

Tau_Cetacean

early on in a Shadowrun campaign, I had an NPC decker get killed (actually he had faked his death and joined this flying-below-the-radar corporation founded by elite ex-shadowrunners)

for most of the campaign, the NPC decker showed up in different guise, acting as a Johnson, giving them different missions that worked in subtle ways to do good

my decker PC was pretty sharp and really "got" how to be a decker in Shadowrun, gathering information, trading favors, whereas the rest of the party were pretty much idiotic street samuari

at the end of campaign, I decided to have the good guys recruit the decker as her end-of-campaign storyline... during the in-matrix recruitment spiel she makes an innocent off-hand remark about how she doesn't want to end up like {name of that decker she thinks died many moons ago}... and then the Johnson smiles and says, "oh, he did all right for himself", before his matrix persona changes back to his original "dead" form

player's jaw drops

Tau_Cetacean

same Shadowrun campaign, aforementioned idiotic street samuari...

the Johnson is a rogue AI who recruits them in meat-space, pretending to be a real flesh and blood person, but actually a hologram projected from a drone

he hires them to go raid a facility, a "code shop", e.g. like a sweatshop, but with kids chained to these computers, coding...

big dumb street sam (with a heart of gold), goes off mission, rescues the kids, adopts one of them in particular... setting up a bunch of stuff latter, because the kids were otaku, the AI was setting this all up... and the players fell for it, hook, line and sinker... I mean... I try to avoid "railroading" plots, but this was relatively subtle attempt to manipulate players to do x, and they did x, way more than I should have had any reasonable expectation for them to have done

NikMak

Survival horror game I ran, and several players complained it was giving them nightmares and had to drop out }:)

ketherian

We were playing a 2nd Edition AD&D Oriental Adventures game.
We would graduate soon, with most of us moving or going our separate ways.
So we scripted our own death scenes.

The party, having finally gotten the mcguffin (a relic that was must be in the possession of the emperor to rule) away from their evil emperor and fought a running battle up the world's equivalent of Mount Doom. The first player died blocking a choke point and taking a large part of the enemy forces with him. The second died in a one-on-one duel with a giant black dragon, driving the beast into the mountain side to kill it (and creating a lava flow that destroyed the evil forces below). The third died by his own hand when he was captured by evil witches; effectively nullifying the magics they intended to use his soul to power. And the fourth died when he realized that the mcguffin couldn't just be thrown into the lava. So he gathered it in his arms and carried it down into the depths of the lava, using his bones to keep the mcguffin under the lava long enough for it to melt.

Each fight was truly epic, and the party members wrote their own death poems - which became lore of the land. Years later, at a convention, when I ran another Oriental Adventure a passer-by heard the lore from this event (and how it changed the Empire from a force of evil to a force of good) and was amazed. Turns out he was the brother of player 2; who'd spoken of the campaign end ad-nausium for years.

I have been in incredible campaigns since then (and run a few that are well-regarded by the players); GM's have made me laugh, cry and feel great anguish -- but I've never had the chance for something so epic and final since.

--
ketherian
"Signs & Portents":https://swtwc.obsidianportal.com War is coming

Tau_Cetacean

counter-example, a case of what the French call L'esprit de l'escalier...

different Shadowrun campaign, same good guy johnsons... in this case the party's decker is fucking psychotic... he's in the matrix system for the Renraku Arcology's public mall's security... doing what he's hired to do, which turns out to be enabling a sit-in protest organized by the goodie-tooshoes... the PA system is activated, the Renraku CEO tries to speak to the crowd from his office in Tokyo... psycho-decker hacks the PA system, and over-rides the CEO's voice with Terrance and Phillip's "Shut Your Fucking Face, Uncle Fucker"

I decide that massively embarrassing a top ten megacorp CEO like that would have effing repercussions.... so next session, I have his matrix connection back-tracked (he missed all the clues) and his pad raided by Red Samurari... but of course, he knew too much and the good guys had to get him out of harm's way before he got interrogated... so {insert ridiculous intervention to get him off a scramjet going from Renraku Arcology in Seattle to Renraku HQ in Tokyo}

although these good guys were supposed to be pretty bad-ass and powerful... they were also supposed to be pretty under-the-radar... and what I had to do to rescue the player from the mix of his own mad genius by playing that song, and then stupidly missing the clues his location had been compromised... pains me to this day

especially because shortly afterwards I thought of the perfect way I should have handled it:
- he gets all the same clues that his matrix connection has been back-tracked, presumably still misses all of them
- the Red Samuari are still sent to his pad
- "bring bring", "I pick up my phone", "it's not your phone... bring bring... it's coming from behind one of your bookshelves"
- option 1) he freaks the hell out about somebody having taped a cellphone to the back of his bookshelf, and bails, option 2) he picks up the phone and the good guys warn him to get the hell out... either way... he's out of the apartment when the Red Sams coming crashing down... the good guys have shown their bad-assness but still flown under the radar

Bortas

I often think back to one my earliest adventures, and one spot that I had shamelessly stolen from some resource or another.

Anyway, the party is heading down this winding corridor, passing sprung trap after sprung trap (open trap door showing the pit below, hanging pendulum scythes with dried blood, shattered glass, burned walls, etc etc). Finally, they arrive at a room with a body and a sizable treasure. The bard is unable to resist, and nabs the treasure. I describe the sound of working gears, whirring springs, shifting stone. They decide it's time to make a run for it before the room explodes. As they run back the way the came, problem after problem happens as traps are sprung, and the party is getting seriously injured.

I described the sight of the floor closing up over a pit trap, and the ranger's jaw dropped in dismay. "Guys, all the traps are _resetting_!" Chaos ensues. The wizard tells everyone to hold still, they will work their way out inch by inch, the barbarian panics and triggers a fear spell: most of them start running away at maximum speed, triggering more traps.

Finally after getting out, they had it out with each other (mostly in character, mostly). And while that was years ago, and the players at the table have changed, the ones that were there still talk about that, and how angry they were at the bard and the barbarian.

Its good to hear they remember. But I tell you what: I will treasure the look of dismay on that ranger's face for years to come.

-bort
"Morwindl":https://morwindl.obsidianportal.com

Bortas

Another one

They were in search of some missing children, and found a demon had been abducting and ... turning them (short version). Anyway, they are in this house, confronting the demon, with a dozen or so children in the room. A tough fight is underway, when one of the children stabs the fighter with a table knife. And the kids all over the house start attacking the party.

The part that was enjoyable to me was the moral dilemma they now were faced with. The orphaned rogue, "STOP we can save them!" The callous fighter, "but that one stabbed me". Ultimately, they followed their character's origin path. The fighter hacked his way through any kids in his way, the rogue subdued a couple of them. They had a hard time getting along afterwards (mostly in character. Mostly).

These two stories are similar to me, in that I treasure the moments when I feel like I have truly inspired passion in another. And once inspired, I can sit back, and they take care of all the interactions themselves.

-bort
"Morwindl":https://morwindl.obsidianportal.com

GamingMegaverse

This just happened last night.
A character trying to get back to a principled alignment (lawful good) came across a character he suspected was part of the enemy, but healed him anyway!

GrayGriffin

In a Pokemon game, when facing her counterpart on the opposing team, my character (Cori) managed to talk her down, while her own Pokemon took down the opposing Pokemon with several well-placed crits to prevent them from doing too much damage. (Including 1HKO'ing the 'mon my DM planned to use to wear me down with status effects, and not letting her even have a chance to send out her heavy hitter) Cori continued talking throughout the fight, and when she found Viktoria, her opponent, just gently took hold of her hand to stop her from running, and convinced her that she didn't need to fight. Cori managed to convince Viktoria that she was beautiful, and that she was loved. And also admitted to being attracted to her.

Well, when she emerged from the elevator at the top floor where everyone else gathered after clashing with their counterparts, she was straightening out some mussed-up clothes...

Also, there was an earlier session where she leapt a fence to place herself between an attack and her son (technically not her son, and also 2 years older than her, but he called her "Mom," so her maternal instincts towards him are pretty strong now)

And there was also the later session where she talked down her fatalistic shadow-self.

weasel0

So....D&D 3.5. DM is old school flavor guy in every imaginable way. Aside from not being a fat guy, he fit a great # of the old cliches. Big glasses, bearded, flop of hair, computer programmer/college teacher, 30+ at home(possibly nearly 50+ still at home), scores of reference books on mostly old school games and all the old PC RPG classics. Anywho, you can probably guess his GM style was old school too. "3.X is too powerful", always adjusting monsters higher and we constantly died for it. But this one time(and we did a lot of dumb things admittedly), we'd infiltrated an enemy base and got found out. While trying to take out an Imp while also fleeing I wound up the last one and it was just a matter of time. Found the Imp up a ladder and our last exchange knocked us both back down the ladder. I had a backpack full of potions and a few wands. A fun little rule is a player is allowed to choose to automatically fail any saving throw they want(technically what you do every time the friendly cleric/mage casts a spell on you-you trust them to be casting a beneficial spell and don't resist it). The amount of damage I rolled out for the Exploding Magical Backpack of Doom (TM) was the most we'd seen in any game he ran. Ever.

UselessTriviaMan

One of my all-time favorite gaming moments was about eight years ago, during a 3.5E game, homebrew setting. I had a crew of new players, and I was reusing the old Dragonlance Xak Tsaroth (sunken city ruins in a swamp) map for a goblin city. The PCs had been captured by these goblins and brought down to the bottom of their lair, but managed to get loose and were sneaking their way back to the surface. They got all the way back up to ground level before stumbling into a tough fight against a bunch of goblin guards at the top of the "elevator." (For those unfamiliar with Xak Tsaroth, the elevator was just a pair of huge cauldrons, a REALLY long chain, and a massive pulley. Goblin lackeys were the counterweights.)

The PCs found themselves in a tough fight, with the bonus tension of goblin reinforcements coming from below as goblin lackeys jumped into the cauldron to escape while the topside guards fought. The players were feeling the crunch, and it was shaping up to be a fun but tough battle...

When the ranger's player suddenly starts freaking out as he's looking at his character sheet. He frantically points to something and shows it to the guy next to him. His eyes widen. With a sidelong glance at me, he growls, "Wait until your turn, then DO IT."

I'm puzzled and curious, but patient. The fight continues, and the ranger is getting more and more excited. Finally, his turn rolls around and he gleefully announces he's running over to the elevator pulley. He asks about the chain, and I assure him that the links are far too thick to be broken by a sword swing. He smiles. I cock an eyebrow. He crows, "I pull out my rust monster tentacle and attack the chain with it!"

My jaw drops.

I'd forgotten completely about how, months earlier, as low-level noobs they'd faced off against a pair of rust monsters and afterward the ranger asked if he could keep a tentacle as a trophy. I'd allowed it, giving him a single-use rust attack with the tentacle. The ranger completely saved the day, breaking the chain and sending all of the goblin reinforcements plummeting to their death hundreds of feet below and allowing the party to mop up the few remaining guards to make their escape.

I was extremely proud of that player, who'd never rolled a d20 until he came to my table, and I'm sure that his complete triumph that day would become a gaming story he'll still be telling 20 years from now. That's the kind of thing that gives me warmest of fuzzies - knowing that I created that unforgettable moment for him.

twiggyleaf

Great story, UselessTriviaMan

It is moments like that when you feel so proud of your players and something that can save the whole party from imminent destruction is always a WINNER!
I'm yet thinking of a "proudest moment" but yours certainly inspired me.

twigs

UselessTriviaMan

Thanks twigs!

Reading through everyone else's stories was enjoyable, but I gotta say I wish I could be a player at Bortas' table. Those stories are _awesome!_

Basileus

UTM, a great moment - I love stories like that!

Unfortunately, I have no proud moments... only deep, abiding shame...

twiggyleaf

UTM, I agree with you about the Bortas stories, especially the one with the demonic children. Good dilemma.
Repent Basileus, Repent!

twigs

Basileus

_- sobs uncontrollably -_

It's funny, I think of myself as a narrative-focused GM but the things I remember as standing out are often more combats that went smoothly or neat gimmicks.

Couple examples from a one-shot Middle-Earth adventure I ran (set post-Hobbit, pre-LotR):

1) Our heroes were traveling in the far east towards Rhun, and in a little town called Wayrest they came across the caravan of an Easterling merchant-prince and his retinue. Now this merchant was a old warrior himself and he was massive, heavily muscled, and scarred, plus he had armed guards, and one of his wives travelling with him was a skilled poisoner and knife-fighter (though they didn't know this until later, of course). There's also the hooded, tall guy behind him who wasn't eating, drinking, or saying anything (standard Mysterious Stranger), who the merchant-prince mentions only as "my priest".

Anyway, of course a fight broke out (forget exactly what happened, but it was probably the PCs' fault...). Now the PCs were somewhat trapped in the clearing around a tavern where this meeting had taken place, surrounded by the merchant and his retinue, but through creative use of the environment they managed to injure both named NPCs (the merchant-prince and assassin-wife) and take out several guards by setting things on fire and startling pack animals to trample goons. So the merchant called out for his priest...

So the tall man emerges from the shadowed doorway and throws off his cloak (queue dramatic music) and it turns out he has been blinded, and he's gaunt to the point of starvation, and his lips are sewn shut - not much of a threat physically, but he has tattoos of the Great Eye (remember the Easterlings at this point worship Sauron), and he starts pointing (even though he's blinded) directly at the PCs. Whoever fails to defend with Will gets frozen in place by nightmarish visions and starts taking mental stress (its a Fate game, so similar to hitpoints, but the possible consequences of taking too much damage are mental effects such as phobias, insanity, etc...). Things are turning against the PCs, one hero has taken a long-term mental consequence, somebody else got severely burned by the fires they themselves had set.. and in a hilariously movie-reminiscent sequence one of the heroes manages to shut down the priest of Sauron by cutting off his outstretched hands.

Doesn't sound particularly remarkable reading it back, but I remember it played out wonderfully at the time (maybe you had to be there). Very thematic.

2) Later in the same game, they were traveling through a remote, barren area as northern winds from the Withered Heath were blowing up a blizzard. Now one of the characters (a dwarf of the Firebeards) had a large, customized wagon and accompanying pony, which he had loaded up with tricks and traps and such. So they got stuck having to perform repairs on the cart while the blizzard descended and the howling of wolves was starting up in the distance. I had prepared an encounter where they had to defend their little resting area from a pack of hungry winter wolves, but the hero repairing the cart rolled incredibly well and I decided to let him have the repair, so instead we ended up playing through a fast paced chase scene where they were fending off a pack of wolves as they barreled down an icy road at full speed, snarling wolves jumping up on the cart after them and trying to drag them off the cart. They were fighting, shooting, making makeshift repairs, setting off traps on the wagon, getting almost thrown off and devoured - it was super fun, and fast-paced, and almost completely improvised by both me and the players.

Both were situations where I really loved the Fate system. The Sauron priest had been intended mostly as a set piece with a few social/mental abilities, and the whole wolf chase scene was almost completely improv, but both turned out really... just, super fun. Nothing hugely dramatic (or even particularly interesting enemies - heck, just basic, hungry wolves), just perfect little moments in gaming that I remember fondly.

twiggyleaf

Great stories Basileus.

So I will relate what I have once related before but it was a long time ago so hopefully the story is new to most that read here.
It was our group playing D&D Second Edition (many years ago) and I was just a player - not GM.
Something drastic happened (I can't remember what, but we all knew it was deadly)

GM: "David, could you pass me your character sheet please." [Sheet passed over nervously]
GM: [Looks quickly at the sheet and then brutallly tears it into shreds.]
David: [Eyes popping out of his head]. "Hey, _Amulet of Life Protection_!!!!!"
GM: "Ooops, sorry!"

(Maybe not a "proudest moment" but sure was one of the funniest.)

twigs

Keryth987

Well, I have a few actually.

The oldest one was in my first campaign with my current group. We ran this game for three years, second ed D&D. A mostly Forgotten Realms setting. Anyhow, the group is attempting to sneak into this Castle of the bad guy (I forget which one). They missed an alarm spell, and as they are climbing up this ladder in a secret passage, the trap door at the top opens and the guardian medusa looks down. The Bard leading the way fails his save as he throws his hands over his eyes, releasing the ladder. Suddenly, there's a stone statue plummeting down along the ladder and no where for the group to go. So, it takes em all down to the bottom, shattering into pieces from the 30' fall. The mage goes unconscious. The Cleric dies. And the Fighter, Ranger, and Thief barely live.

Then there's the Convention campaign I ran where I had one of my friends as a plant in the game. Standard sneak into a Dragon's lair in a volcano and kill the dragon. No one told them the warrior with them was the dragon. And whats better, they give him most of the best stuff they find along the way. They attack the illusionary dragon, and a fight ensues in which 4 seperate magics are used which reset the fight to the beginning 4 times. The gnome thief is scrambling around the Dragon's treasure horde, desperately loading his crossbow with whatever quarrels he finds. It go so rambunctious, that the other games in the RPG room (it was a midnight slot so not a whole lot of games) stopped as people came over to watch and listen.

My final one for today also is a convention game story. Me and a friend had co-gm'd an ongoing storyline game over the course of 5 conventions. Using the newly released D20 rules, we ran "Champions of Light". Basically, Cyric of the Forgotten realms had gained the power to merge dimensions and destroy them (similar to the Secret Wars storyline Marvel just did, but this was long before then) Anyhow, the heroes were all from TV and Movies. We had Luke Skywalker, T'ealc, Jack Bauer, Buffy Summers, James Bond, Worf, John Crichton, Sturm Brightblade, and Willow Rosenberg. Anyhow, the group gets to Cyric's latest gizmo for destroying the reality they are in, A Stargate lying on its side, ready to open into The Hellmouth, with The One Ring floating in the middle of the Gate. While the majority of the group fights the guardians of the setup, John Chrichton slips over to the gate and retrieves the Ring. Looking at Willow, he goes "You know this weird magic stuff. What do you make of this?" and hands the ring to Willow. Willow looks at it, her hair suddenly goes black, and she slips it on, vanishing. Gave us a whole new game for the next convention.

Keelah Se'lai,
Keryth
"Shadows Over New York":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shadows-over-new-york
"2013 Campaign of The Year":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/2013-coty-shadows-over-new-york/
"Campaign of the Month July 2013":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/shadows-over-new-york-julys-campaign-of-the-month/

Tau_Cetacean

mentioning of convention reminded me of this story, not sure it was a proud moment, but definitely memorable:

RPG nerds at my college organize a convention after I'd graduated, I come back to a) run a reunion game with my old Shadowrun group, b) run an open enrollment Shadowrun game as official part of the convention

one of the enrolled players in my convention game is a 12-year old kid (what exact relation he had to anybody present, I dunno)

I give them all pre-generated characters and try to quickly go through the equipment buying phase and onto the adventure

12-year old kid... with complete sincerity and innocence: "Can I buy a tactical nuclear weapon?"

Tau_Cetacean

tried to run a GURPS Espionage campaign in college... idea was to have a "current events" driven campaign... e.g. I'd take real headlines and write stories from there... e.g. from the Kosovo War: when the Serbs shot down a stealth bomber and bragged they were sending the debris to Moscow, your mission in the RPG that same week: parachute into Siberia, infiltrate Russian lab, recover or destroy stealth bomber material

there was a semi-current (within few years) but not-that-very-week story of the FBI raiding a strip club called Porky's near the Miami airport... in the backroom was a meeting of Colombian drug lords and Russia mobsters... negotiating a deal whereby the cartel got a Russian submarine *with crew* to smuggle drugs in the Caribbean (since then, home-built drug-submarines have made the news now and then), and another story I'd had read about Soviet submarines lost at the bottom of the sea during the Cold War

so anyways I had some plot where they caught on to a black market salvage operation, and the way the player said the following words to a captured NPC as they started to piece things together was just priceless: "you... sold... NUCLEAR... WEAPONS... to... COLOMBIAN DRUG LORDS???!!!!???"

the campaign fell apart after that because one of some unfortunate social dynamics between certain players, but to this day I regret not leading the campaign with the original "in real time" geopolitical angle

Tau_Cetacean

sitting in on friend's long-running Shadowrun game as an audience member... the team has an assassination job, they infiltrate the building, go to the top floor, ski masks on, break into executive suite, see the target meeting with somebody... and also this {guy} they knew from previous games, big mover and shaker

shoot the target, wave to the {guy}, break the windows, base jump out of there, get to escape car, drive away

get phone call:
"oh hi, {guy}"
{some banter dancing around the facts of what they just did}
"are you familiar with the term: air strike?"
"oh shit, he can do that, can't he?"

the GM's delivery of the "air strike" line was just amazing

they go to meet with {guy} and are basically told they have just done the equivalent in the modern megacorp balance of power of assassinating Archduke Ferdinand and need to fix it... quite by accident I had come in and sat in on a huge turning point for this entire multi-year epic campaign

long story short, one of the players in that campaign ran a sequel campaign, and I joined that a player... and then ran a sequel campaign to that, and a coquel campaign to that one, and some other shorter campaigns, and some of my players have run sequel campaigns to my campaign... and the reason I even joined the first sequel campaign was just that one scene and the way the original GM delivered that line:

"are you familiar with the term: air strike?"

(sorry, so many of these stories I'm telling now are about how the words sounded when they were delivered, and typing it out doesn't really do it justice)

UselessTriviaMan

Many years ago, one of my fellow players loved playing halfling thieves (2E D&D days), and was fortunate enough to get his grubby lil' hands on a _ring of wishes_ (one wish remaining). He used that wish to gain invulnerability to nonmagical weapons. (The GM was more than willing to roll with just about any crazy crap we came up with.)

Fast-forward to a later game session, where we'd been chasing after bad guys who kidnapped someone important to us. We were trailing them through the mountains, and found ourselves atop a cliff. At the bottom of that cliff, we could see the bad guys loading their captive onto a waiting airship. There was no possible way we could climb down there before they took off...

Halfling: "I swan dive off the cliff."

DM and the rest of us: "WHAA??"

Halfling: "I won't get hurt. Immune, remember?"

DM: "You take 68 points of falling damage."

Halfling: O_o

DM: "The ground is a +5 weapon."

It's still remembered fondly by all of us. Man, I miss that DM.

Tau_Cetacean

ahh... ring of wishes... not really a 'proudest moment', but just a little detail I enjoyed too much - had a village with local folklore about a wishing well... anybody who was uncouth enough to loot it would have gotten a few copper pieces (only local peasants are using this well, let alone making wishes) and a ring of wishes... with no charges left

Keryth987

OK. Ring of wishes brings back memories.

In my LONG D&D Game, the dwarven fighter, who's name was Arnak, but because of a fight with an avatar of a god he always introduced himself as Arnak the Godslayer. Well, anyhow, Arnak got ring of wishes. And then used 2 of them and the player forgot about it as the game went along. Later in the campaign, the group received a fly spell on them all, and Arnak is flying around going "Wheee!". Next thing he says "I wish I could do this whenever". And boom. From then on, Arnak could ALWAYS go "Wheee!" and it had a 75% chance of making him fly. From then on he was Arnak the Godslayer of the Fling Dwarves who go Wheee. And it worked out funny some times too. Arnak gets turned to stone and starts going whee! Arnak gets paralyzed and starts to go Wheee! etc.

Arnak could ALWAYS go wheee!

Keelah Se'lai,
Keryth
"Shadows Over New York":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shadows-over-new-york
"2013 Campaign of The Year":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/2013-coty-shadows-over-new-york/
"Campaign of the Month July 2013":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/shadows-over-new-york-julys-campaign-of-the-month/

SkidAce

After making the trek through the "antarctic" wilderness, exploring the city in ice, the final villain levitated up from the center of a 50' wide pit. A mind flayer of great age and cunning.

How to attack it without falling into the pit? Plans were made, weapons and scrolls held back were used freely as the party full nova'd on the hapless mind flayer. Who made sure to have his illusionary double react appropriately, and then levitated his real form up out of the pit after the party had expended their resources in the full assault.

Lo, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth...

GrayGriffin

Not quite a ring of wishes, but in another one of my Pokemon campaigns, which was PBP, one of the players decided to challenge a gym, and us other two players didn't really have anything to do in that town. So our GM gave us non-challengers each a GM Point which could be redeemed for an extra bonus later on. I pretty much forgot about it as the game went on, due to a bunch of other stuff happening, until we were nearing the end. I had recently finished reading The Shepherd's Crown, aka the last book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and since my character in that game came from a shepherding family, decided to make a reference to said book by giving him a King's Rock, aka a shepherd's crown of his own. It was then that I remembered the GM Point, and so asked the GM if I could use it to give it extra power.

It ended up giving its increased flinch chance to both him and all his Pokemon, as well as allowing him to use Detect twice per Scene. He could use it in response of any of his allies being attacked as well, and if used in response to an AOE attack would make said AOE miss everyone. In the very next battle, I was able to put it to good use, allowing our party to avoid a Lava Plume attack twice, and flinching our opponent and making him vulnerable to one of my character's Features that gave him and his Pokemon extra damage against Flinched foes. Yeah, that character is pretty much a master of combo attacks, to our poor GM's consternation.

Tau_Cetacean

also not quite a ring of wishes, but once I did something a little grandiose and set-piece in Shadowrun, and my players did something really clever that I had to allow... and they got themselves a metric shit-ton of Orichalcum... like, game-destabilizing, players cannot ever cash in on that much unobtainium that they just obtained

so this immortal elf NPC who's been kicking around since Roman times, something inherited from a previous GM in this meta-campaign, comes to them, and is like, "very clever, but that Orichalcum you just hovered up with your wind spirit from the Aztechnology astral gate I just blew up... key word... Aztechnology... it is tainted with blood magic... you can't have it, I will take care of it... I'm the only one who can"

they barter, they each end up being owed "one big favor" and "one small favor" from this immortal elf NPC in exchange for doing "the right thing"

what was interesting to me was watching the mage and the street sam immediately cash in / squander their wishes (although in one case it was a pretty logical wish to make, the player just didn't know I already planned a run that would have gotten him out of that particular predicament that he wishes his way out of), and the decker just held on to them all the way through the rest of the campaign

so now I have a former PC / now NPC decker that might show up in future shadowrun campaigns who I plan to play as intelligently and methodically as the player did... because... damn... having this particular elf owe you a "big favor", let alone a "big favor" and a "small favor", is one hell of thing to have kept in your back pocket

Maesenko

We ran a rotating GM D&D 3.5 campaign, mid-high levels, no Good Alignments. It was a mostly-Evil Pirate Adventure Campaign where the PCs are all the important jobs except captain (immortal plot NPC).

My turn comes up and it's one of my first times as a GM. Ship is in port, everyone's finishing up shopping. My opening is to have the ship attacked by a Kraken. It nearly destroys the main mast, causes a few holes, and kills a chunk of mooks/crew before the party manages to kill two or three tentacles and drive it off.

Seeking their revenge, the party gives chase, following ink and blood to a nearby island. Half of the party checks out the underwater and finds an entrance too deep and long for them to follow, but are sure it leads to the Kraken's lair. The island itself is a sheer cliff all around and a good 100+ ft. up, but one PC eventually spots a dock stretching out off the edge. We all have flight or can carry party, so we go up. The dock leads to a dirt road, which leads to a hill. They find a dog (a chocolate lab with big, cute, green eyes) lying near the base of the hill. One PC is a druid, so he Wild Shapes and starts talking to the dog in Canine and relaying info to the party. The island belongs to an eccentric Gnomish Inventor (Epic level Wizard/Maester) and Tobias/Toby (the dog) is waiting for his master to return from his delivery/trip. They leave the dog to his post, and carry on.

The party "invite" themselves into the wizard's house under-hill, which doubles as his laboratory.
* Ground level is the house,
* B1 is the typical sprawl of basement/dungeon, with a few warmup monsters and amusing hidden rooms.
* B2 is actually the forest surrounding the hill that encompasses the surface of the island (because I had to think with Portals! to get two PC's who were absent the previous session to meetup with the party) and it doubled as a riddle room and a menagerie of peaceful monsters/animals.
* B3 is the proper laboratory/workshop, which is powered by multiple ELDER ELEMENTALS (all 4 elements) and had some nice resources, upgrades, and money-makers.
* B4 is the kicker. At the bottom of the steps is a nested ADAMANTINE double door, with doors ranging in sizes from Small to Gargantuan.

Maesenko

Aaaand here's where the party gets appropriately and amusingly paranoid. See, along the way I have thrown in some amusing other traps, inconveniences, and notes on this Inventor's eccentricity. Illusionary endless stairways, a freaking WONKA-VATOR complete with occasional dimensional travel (though it was mostly nonfunctioning), and even an ultimate porn-palace-style bedroom for this weirdo gnome with giant plush rotating bed, all gold fixtures, and glass ceiling (the players insisted on checking EVERY room in the guy's house, so I made it a little awkward for them). I tried to play up this being a weird place. But when they saw the doors, they truly started freaking, and I still remember the smug, Cheshire Cat grin I felt with that. And then it got better.

They finally opened the medium door and walked in to what turns out to be a huge chasm, dimly lit by phosphorescent stone embedded in most of the wall. To their right, they see a large pool of water...with a dead, half-eaten Kraken lying along the edge. The PCs figure out it's the one that attacked them at the beginning of this whole story, and upon remembering how hard it was to hurt, freak at the sight of it dead and having _giant chunks_ bitten out of it. They explore the cavern and find three rooms beyond. A safety-deposit-box-style vault room, a room full of nothing but _bones_ (a la Scrooge McDuck's money bin)... and a small, cozy sitting/reading room with a big comfy chair facing a fireplace and lined with books. And Toby is there, lying on the carpet. Cue confused party. The druid casts Speak with Animals this time and starts talking to the dog, asking him a couple of yes/no questions and tells Toby to respond by barking one or two times so the rest of the party can follow along.

Druid: "Are you the same dog from the top of the island?"
I tell them Toby barks once.
Druid: "Do you know what happened to that Kraken?"
I tell them Toby barks once.
Druid: "Did..._you_...do...that?"
Toby: "One."

The party all goes wide-eyed, except for the guy playing the druid, who has to ask me as the GM if I said "one", or if the dog said "one". I tell him it was the dog. He freaks, too.

At that moment the dog blinks and his big, cute, green eyes have turned into big, cute, green orbs. The group abruptly runs out of the room and into the cavern where the dog, Tobias, turns into a Huge-sized Bronze Dragon named Tobiasynth. And amazingly, the party DIDN'T FIGHT HIM! Instead, they ended up not only befriending him by virtue of their actions throughout the story arc, but the Gnomish caster had returned right after that and proceeded to fix up their ship and give nice little bonuses to the party because they were Tobiasynth's friends (rather than food).

I was amazed by the reactions I got from everyone throughout that whole ordeal, and I had absolutely no idea how that finale was going to go. I had two potentially major bosses lined up, and even though I never got to use them, I was so beyond pleased with it all. It was probably one of the best times I had gaming with my original gaming group back in college.

As Always,
_~Mae_