Favorite D&D Gaming Experiences

Civil War Man · Post by **Civil War Man** » 2007-04-21 08:52am

SCRawl wrote:On a barely related note, what's up with all youse guys and your evil parties?

I'm almost never evil. Most of my characters are insane, but otherwise decent people. My sane characters consist of a human fighter who got possessed by a Succubus, my aforementioned Rogue/Spymaster/Assassin, a Jedi who had an affair with a Sith, and a bard who gave dramatic speeches instead of playing music (that party was as greedy as Hell, though. We'd go through a dungeon stealing everything that wasn't nailed down, then whip out the claw hammer. We once hauled a desk out of an ancient necromancer's lair, and my character sold it for a markup as an "antique"). I also had a Nuwisha pretending to be a werewolf (on a dare) at one point who was borderline sane. He was modeled after Indiana Jones, though, so probably not.

Post by **haas mark** » 2007-04-21 08:54am

Civil War Man wrote:We once hauled a desk out of an ancient necromancer's lair, and my character sold it for a markup as an "antique").

...I so should've done that with a coat rack I once ended up with... However, it got more use as a "quarterstaff"...

loomer · Post by **loomer** » 2007-04-21 12:30pm

This may not count, but I played some DnD recently, using dozens of official races and several new classes. We barely got anything done, since character creation took so long, and we kept stopping to watch Firefly and the X-Files. Simply seeing the faces of people during character creation was worth the hours we spent on it, though.

We had me, a Neutral Cleric. A Gnomish rogue. A Half-Orc Barbarian. A Raptoran (Bird people) Ninja, and a Centaur Scout.

Now, that it in itself wasn't too hard. But. we made them from scratch, at about... 6th level, except they were horrible mutants. We used the Chaositech supplement from White Wolf.

Our Barbarian ended up with blue skin, claws, a sixth sense of disease, enhanced constitution, cold resistant flesh, and the ability to cast Silence in a 20 foot radius once a day. Unfortunately he was quite clumsy afterwards.

Our rogue, he developed wing flaps that allowed him to glide, a serious overflow of stomach acid (Allowing him to vomit acid once a day), enhanced dexterity, slippery skin for a +5 on escape artist, and pointy ears. He was weak to electricity.

I, the Cleric, had enhanced vision (+4 to spot and search), enhanced constitution, long, gaunt, bony fingers, leaping legs granting +6 to jump, and claws. I was also able to use mage hand at will, and telekinesis once a day due to a mutation in my brain. And, amusingly, I was weak towards acid. Any fight with the rogue was suicide for me.

Unfortunately I don't remember the other mutations, but they were fairly mundane. Horrible mutants fighting together in the arctic. Fun premise.

Erik von Nein · Post by **Erik von Nein** » 2007-04-21 02:29pm

haas mark wrote:
Civil War Man wrote:We once hauled a desk out of an ancient necromancer's lair, and my character sold it for a markup as an "antique").
...I so should've done that with a coat rack I once ended up with... However, it got more use as a "quarterstaff"...

There was one game in which, after killing the dragon out in the middle of a random road (a game where I played Mike Tyson with meat hook boxing gloves, literally) we went searching in his cave. Found a whole bunch of phalluses and a giant apperatus. It took all four of us to carry it out, but we managed to do it. When we got back to town to sell it, it turned out to be a water-driven penny smusher. That was hilarious.

Fiji_Fury · Post by **Fiji_Fury** » 2007-04-21 05:57pm

The player character group was hired to scout out and secure a caravan route across a path of wilderness. In the wilderness were some giants, a goblin tribe and a variety of caves, woods and other places filled with random fun creatures. We labored for several sessions to clear the path by scaring away small tribes of goblins, making deals with the giants (I missed that week so I'm not entirely sure how the hell that actually happened), and in the process fended off repeated attacks against us by a group of Orcs.

It came to light in time that these Orcs weren't from around those parts and were intentionally trying to stop us. We began tracking them back to their lair and went in to bust some skulls when we had done so. Turns out the guy guiding all these Orcs was a Harper trying to prevent an EVIL wizard from establishing his EVIL trade route to ship all kinds of nasty things to the thieves guild in the city we were hired from.

I killed the Harper with a bow shot just as he cursed us as agents of evil (which while technically true given who our employer was, we weren't aware of or committed to at that point). The body revealed a lot of orders to stop the wizard's "minions" (us) from succeeding at all costs. The guy failed miserably, but our party now had a problem. We had good alignments and no desire to see poisons, mystical items and dragon eggs smuggled into town.

Soo... we decide that we'll atone for our erros by making the trade route unstable. We approach the first caravan to come through (we know some of the people in it from our previous dealings) and pretend to have been sent by our original employer from town to "support" them and keep the merchandise safe. The plan is for some of us to lead the regular guards away and then damage or destroy the caravan. The decoy part works, and each of us prepares to do some damage except that... our party wizards think they're clever and try stealing the dragon eggs. They get caught by the caravan master (apparently a wizard because he punked them with an entangle spell and summoned some creatures) and killed. Meanwhile, I'm busy trying to light some of the wagons on fire by lofting flaming arrows into them, but the party's damned dwarf (who was posing as a guard) hurries out to put out the fires. Idiot.

We wound up very dead, very quickly. It was comedy of erros that would have been pretty funny excep that we'd spent six weeks building up to it and had every character killed because of stupidity or greed.

Erik von Nein · Post by **Erik von Nein** » 2007-04-21 07:43pm

So, for that evil campaign I was talking about earlier: We were playing a Stormwrack game, with a party consisting of an undead pirate captain warblade (the whole undead thing happening in the prologe) that was my character, a pain-in-the-ass, aquatic half-elf druid (he was land-less nobility so he was supposed to be), a raging slut spell-theif who was always attempting to use her feminine wills on me (while being undead ... didn't work out well for her), a ditzy aqautic elf wild mage (easily the worst player in the group), a human bard (second worst player), a human rouge channeling Indiana Jones (his name was Wisconson Smith) and a split-personality teifling (we found that out much later) barbarian/wizard (he was the navigator *snicker*). There was a human cleric, but he didn't play more than the first session.

So, the first thing that happens is our boat gets attacked by a bunch of goblins and hobgoblins in their own boat. They pwned us, sink our ship and kill my character (and we weren't first level characters O.O). Everyone else ends up washed up on this uncharted island while my character wakes up on the bottom of the ocean. Thinking "Well, this is strange" I start walking uphill, only to end up on the same island as everyone else hours later. While I was walking this ship ended up anchoring near where everyone was gathered and a rowboat packed to the gills with skeletons and a sorcerer or some kind starts heading to shore. Everyone else hides. I managed to come up just as the half-elf is swimming around taking a look at the ship. The funny thing was, no one freaked out about the fact that I walked to shore. Heh.

Anyway, My first reaction is to steal the ship while no one's on it. So, I climb up the anchor chain to take a look and see two large-sized skeletons. Not wanting to get my ass beat I drop back into the water, tell the rest of the people what's on there and then have everyone get into the rowboat and head toward the ship. When we get there the barbarian/wizard rages, jumps up on the ship and smacks one of the skeletons while I, again, climb the chain. We pwn the skeletons, take the ship and head toward the nearest safe city.

On the way to said port city we get stopped by the a couple paladin ships full of noble dignitaries. Me being undead tell the cleric to be the representitive for the ship and hide by tying a rope to the stern and jumping into the water. Turns out the paladins wanted to recruit us to help them find this object, not knowing we were evil. So, the cleric agrees, we head to the port city, gather supplies and head for the island where the object is supposed to be.

On the way there we pass a sargaso sea (seaweed so thick you can walk on it) and see a couple ships stuck there. Thinking we can loot them fairly well we decided to check it out. Mid-rowboat ride there we get attacked by a giant hermit crab (yes, it's an actual monster) that leaps out of the water and sonic attacks us. Twice. Good for me, since undead are apparently immune to sonic damage. Mwa, haha. So, we stop, kill the thing and another attacks. That's when the cleric left, so we just said the second one ripped the cleric in half. We kill it, bury the torn-in-half body in the sargaso and then head on over to the ships.

The first ship we come across has a bunch of bodies in the hold (that's half-flooded) and one in the captains quarters. While the spellthief slut and Indiana Rouge are raiding the captains quarter, me and the barb/wiz check out the hold. Suddenly, the bodies stand up and start coming for us, so me and the barb stand at the top of the stairs playing T-ball with the zombies heads, since they only come up one at a time and we end up doing enough damange to one-shot them. Meanwhile, the two rouge characters are getting their asses handed to them by ONE zombie (oh, damage reduction vs slashing/piercing, you amuse us so). They managed to kill it before it killed them, but they go lucky.

Next ship had a bunch of crabs in the hold that we easily killed, but the third had a giant eel attack in the middle of the not-flooded hold. We beat the hell out of it while the ship was sinking (it bust through the floor) but it ran away before we could finish it off. So, we loot and head for our actual destination.

Once we get to the island, weigh anchor and head ashore we find a inactive volcano full of tunnels and kobolds. The kobolds do their hit-and-fade tactics (do fairly well, at first) until we finally pin their locations down and start slaughtering them. The funny thing was the barbarian ended up getting grappled by four of them and one managed to succeed on control the grapple. For a round. Then the barb started smacking them into the walls and popping the poor creatures. Eventually one of them started pleading for mercy so I grappled and had Indiana Rouge translate. They wanted to surrender so I let them and then he lead us to the creature leading this merry little band; a bugbear. Mr. Bugbear explains that they need help getting into this one room up on the top of the mountain. We agree and check the room out.

We check out the place, eventually find the trigger and, just as the door was opening, I grappled the only kobold in the room and gag him. So, we go upstairs to see what's up there and the first thing we encounter is an illusionary floor. I drop the kolbold to test to theory of what was with the floor and we all hear a splat as the kolbold dies from falling damage. Laughing, we move on to the next room that has a mimic in there. It grabs spell-slut and Indiana Rouge, almost killing the both of them. After we killed it the DM said "Well, I was planning on having another one, but I don't want to kill you guys." Heh.

Meanwhile, the half-elf is sent back to the rowboat to hang out. Suddenly he sees some sharks with frigging wings leap out of the water toward him. The DM asks if he has knowlege: the planes but he doesn't, so the DM says "Make a knowledge: nature check." he does and rolls moderately okay and asks "So, what did I learn?" DM responds with "You don't know what they are, but you're not sure when sharks learned to fly." So, it's just him, his dire crocodile animal campanion and some kobolds (who just sat there and volley fired, managing to actually finish on of them off). Since the rest of the party can see what's going on from the top of the mountain I decide it'd be a great idea to leap from the top and dive into the water to help him. I make my insane jump check (at that point, with a certain stance due to the warblade stuff I had a +30 to jump and was always considered running), hit the water (it was a more than 100 foot fall, but the DM was kind by saying the water lessened the impact, heh) and kill one of the sharks.

The party back up at the top finds some platinum and directions on where the object really is. They tell me via the druid (with farspeech or whatever that spell is) and I devise a plan of telling them that, when we found a way to open the door, the kolbold went running in first and fell through the floor, getting himself killed and that all we found was this platinum and give them half. So, since I could only hear what the druid would tell me the Spell-slut (okay, I actually liked the person using this character, she was a great player) decided it'd be a better idea to hide 50% of the platinum for themselves (the four people still up there) and then give the bugbear the half of the 50% they gave to me. The DM laughed his ass off and awarded the both of us bonus exp. for coming up with those plans.

We then wait for nightfall, bid the kolbolds and bugbear goodbye (since they completely bought our lie) and then head underwater where the object really was. Turns out it was in a cave with an immature black dragon (though, the dragon talked a good game). So, me and the barb (who, at that point had been casting several spells and getting confused when we called him the name one of his personalities went by) ran up and started beating on the drargon, who ended up casting darkness on the both of us, screwing us up badly. Except, grabbed onto the dragon's leg just as it started flying away and managed to control the grapple for two rounds before it finally flung me off. We ended up beating it, getting the object and leaving.

The object turned out to be something that would direct whoever had it to various other objects that made up a super-powerful object. On the way back to our normal port we come across some paladins fighting some foreign ships we've never seen before. The paladins send a message requesting our help and, as it was just the big foreign ship and the big paladin ship, I manuevered our ship to always have the paladin ship between us and the foreign one, while still making it look like we were helping, until I saw which one beat which. When the paladin ship came out victorious but extremely battered I told our wildmage to fireballing their masts. After three of them their masts went down for good and we boarded the foreign ship.

Turns out there were some hard-asses on their ship, and my undead pirate went down and turned into dust. I wouldn't have, since the DM told the druid he could take cause critical wounds, which he promptly forgot about. But it turned out for the best, since the paladins came aboard anyway. Once the teifling split-personality person saw one of the female paladins he went nuckin' futz and raged (since he was currently the wizard personality that caused us much confusion) and kept trying to kill her. Indiana Rouge saved her bacon and then finally got Mr. Barb/Wizard to calm the fuck down and explain what hapened. By the point the druid and Indiana Rouge got a peak at the tail Mr. Barb Wizard had wrapped around his body, but didn't inform the rest of us until much later.

After searching their ship Indiana Rouge found one of the objects, sleight of handed it away and then hide it from everyone. Then he proceeded to get himself romantically involved with the female paladin. She also became our contact/watcher for the duration of the time we worked for the paladins from that point on, all the while Indiana Rouge (who, actually, was just neutral, not full-blown evil) worked his charm to make her see that the object was worth studying (his actual goal) and not for destroying (the paladin's goal). He eventually got her to see his side of things.

They got me ressed, since I didn't want to roll up a new character. It all turned out for the good, since our plan of manipulation wouldn't have worked if I had still been undead. So, while at this port the paladins noticed our half-elf landless nobility and told him that his father (the elf) was willing to let him come back if he married someone ... someone like our elf wildmage who was a nobile runaway. So, while the players who ran those characters weren't there that session (and who, in game, hated each other) the rest of the party basically let them get forced into marriage, because it was funny as Hell. Also turned out for the best, since while they were in their relm they stole that relm's object, giving us three of the six pieces we needed.

Meanwhile everyone else finally found out about the split-personality, barb/wiz teifling and told him (well, the barb personality, since that personality was surprisingly nice) that it was okay if he was a teifling and that he had no reason to hide it from us. We'd understand, Hell my character was undead for a while! Can't get much worse than that. Also told him that he has two personalities, since up until that point the barb one was completely unaware of, calling us crazy when we'd call him the wrong name and such. So, we find out about his character's backround of being in a roving band of teiflings who got attacked and slaugtered (all except for the children) and that the female paladin Indiana Rouge was involved with was the main perpatrator. So, him and the paladin end up having a duel off in the middle of nowhere which one the druid (in cat form) witnesses. Split-personality boy kills her, druid boy casts ressurection on her and then the rest of the party has to put the clues together (since even the split-personality guy had no clue what happened and the other personality went away). So, we work it all out, get clues from her that we need to get to our next desitnation and we head off.

Along the way, in the middle of the ocean, we get flagged down by a group of hobgoblins on a ship. Intially freaking out we decided to hear them out. They ask if we're who we are, we say yes, they say that they're with the group of kolbolds and bugbear that we screwed over earlier and they want us to go to their city for all the help we gave them. They toss us a rubix cube (yes, that's what it was) which had a teleport spell big enough to teleport our entire ship. So, since that was our destination, anyway, we decide to just use it. And it teleports us to a lake in the middle of a desert with a big city near-by.

When we enter the city it's full of all sorts of evil and good creatures getting along in a bizzarely friendly manner. They all say the great elf leader has helped them get to that point and that they want the objects so they can wish this happiness on the whole world. The whole party thinks they're a bunch of cultists. But we decided to trust them enough to see where the rest of the objects are. Turns out their all in this vault. So, we give them one of our objects, since they found out that we had at least one and the druid (again in cat form) ends up following the hobgoblin who takes it from the official that me and Indiana Rouge and meeting with (while the rest of the party is scrying the object). Once inside said vault he shifts into a dire polar bear and rips the two hobgoblin guards to shreds (which was a hilarious image, watching this cat transform into a bear and eat the guards), steals the object and runs off in hobgoblin form (he'd taken levels in Master of Many Forms prestige class) and makes it back to the party.

Meanwhile the alarm is sounded while me and INdiana Rouge are still talking to the official. We claim honest ignorance (we had no idea, as players, that he was going to do that), promise to help them find all the objects, tell them we have to leave right away. When we get to our ship, activate the teleport, and arrive where we teleported from there's a big-ass battle between good and evil happening right where we ended up. Pieces of angels and devils, various chromatic dragons and other creatures are literally falling all around us. There are so many of them up there that it looks like cloud cover and there's a fleet of epic porportions converging on our location.. Then an big-ass storm comes up and we run the fuck away.

While running (well, sailing) this ship from the city we were just in pulls up right along side us. The captain (some bard) tell us to hand over the objects, to which I respond by jumping over to their ship (by then I had a +60 to jump) and more-than-half kill him in one hit. He laughs it off, casts dominate on me and tells me to hand over the object. Since I did have one on me I handed it over, then he dropped the spell. Then I dropped him. Most of the party then comes over to help kick butt on their boat, except for the Spell-Slut who goes down into the hold and finds where I hid all the objects and takes them for herself. Just as we had finished off everyone and looked to be fairly safe with another teleport object getting set off a dragon careens into our boat and the teleport activates.

This time, though, instead of sending us to someplace with water our boat lands in the middle of a forest and falls over, spilling us all onto the ground. The dragon then asks for the objects, to which I reluctantly go into the hold and look for them. When I come up empty handed I tell him "Uh ... we've got a bit of a problem." His answer? Locate object. Finds they are on the Spell-Slut, flies right up to her face and says "So, about those objects." She tries to bluff her way out of it and he tries to sleight of hand her backpack away. He succeeds in taking it, but is retardly obvious in doing so. He starts flying away with it when Indiana Rouge uses his whip to latch onto on of the masts and propel himself into the dragons fist, where he uses his sleight of hand to successfully put the objects under his hat and hide them. The dragon gets angry and we kill him.

Well, the Spell-Slut is still determined to keep those objects and, since Indiana Rouge gets horribly maimed (but not killed) she comes up with a cure wounds wand and successfully makes it seem like she's helping him, when in fact she's just taking the objects back. So, the bard makes herself really useful by locating object and pointing out the Spell-Slut has them. I tackle the Spell-Slut and say "HAND THEM OVER!" She does, I dole them one to each party member (except her, despite her succeeding her bluff check to say she was just keeping them safe). We kind of mull about thinking of what to do with it when an angel of Hibatchi (the god of fire and partying, made up by the guy playing Indiana Rouge) and tells us that, if we destroy the object we can go to the elemental plane of partying and live there. Just before we said anything about it a devil shows up, pwns the angel before we pwn him.

So, we put the items together and it forms a slot machine (dead serious) with one of objects being a coin (with the soul of a dead, evil god in it, no less!) we put it in, hesitate for a bit before the true neutral "bring balance to the force) teifling (the barb personality) wishes for it to destroy itself. Which it does. So, then we ask the DM if we can go to the elemental plane of partying now, which he agrees to and then we all become disciples of Hibatchi and our aligments change to chaotic partying.

Best ending I've ever had.

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2007-04-21 10:20pm

Erik...was your DM smoking crack, perchance?
That sounds like one hell of a weird mind he's got. Awesome, but weird.

SCRawl · Post by **SCRawl** » 2007-04-21 10:36pm

You know, I just remembered a sequence from my "Silver Band" days. The party called itself the Silver Band because of these silver wrist things we all wore -- taken from skeletons in a haunted forest. Anyways...

So, the party is a thief (who had been assassinated a few years earlier, and later raised from the dead) a fighter (who favours the two-handed sword), a thief/M.U.-type (whom I despised), and me, the druid. First-edition AD&D, the one, true D&D system.

The thief had been captured by the chap who'd assassinated him, using a poison whose lethal effects could be staved off indefinitely by periodic ingestion of a "temporary" antidote. He was being taken down river, to the capital city, for the purpose of being shown off to the assassin's guild alive (before being re-killed). The remaining three had to schlep up to a neighbouring town, find the guy who made the poison, and convince him to give us the antidote. (We assumed that a neutralize poison wouldn't work, for a reason I don't recall.)

It lucked out that the party could travel with a convoy already headed in the right direction, because we were attacked during the night by a mixed group of goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, and ogres. Let me tell you, faerie fire and heat metal figured prominently in that exchange. All of the PCs survived, and went on to acquire the antidote and confront the assassin just as he was reaching the capital, forcing him to cut bait.

I actually wrote it up as a short story once upon a time, though it'd be a little lengthy to post here. The Silver Band is featured in a story here, though, if anyone cares to read it. This particular event never actually happened in gameplay, though; it's more of a "future history" of the group, once they'd reached a more respectable level.

The thing I like most about some of the best times I've had adventuring: they were all fairly low level stuff. The one I just described, for example, was at about fourth level. You don't need to go all 38th level necromancer to have a good adventure, if you have the right DM and a good group of players.

Erik von Nein · Post by **Erik von Nein** » 2007-04-22 01:47am

Molyneux wrote:Erik...was your DM smoking crack, perchance?

Hehehe. No, but it would almost seem like it. Half the ideas from that campaign came from everyone else. It's the same group I almost always end up playing with but we're very weird people. Serious D&D games just don't work for us, so we go for the fun and bizzare. There's a game tomorrow with a different DM (the guy who played Indiana Rouge) that's going to be even more weird and awesome.

Molyneux wrote:That sounds like one hell of a weird mind he's got. Awesome, but weird.

Oh, Hell yeah! Playing with that group is the biggest draw of D&D for me.

Post by **haas mark** » 2007-04-22 01:57am

Molyneux wrote:That sounds like one hell of a weird mind he's got. Awesome, but weird.

People like when I DM because I'm the most purist of our DMs (we've five, and I tend to stick most to medieval style, whereas everyone else likes varying degrees of technology). Okay, so it's not entirely AD&D2, but it's close enough, our variant. Plus, I can keep a storyline going.

They do not, however, like me too much, because I'm a little stricter on some things, and because I'm pure fucking evil when it comes to me DMing. I pick up things from movies, video games, books, other people's various gameplay... Like, I'm using something a friend did on Avalon, and then using Robert Jordan's Myrddraal, and then twisting them beyond belief.

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2007-04-22 10:04am

haas mark wrote:
Molyneux wrote:That sounds like one hell of a weird mind he's got. Awesome, but weird.
People like when I DM because I'm the most purist of our DMs (we've five, and I tend to stick most to medieval style, whereas everyone else likes varying degrees of technology). Okay, so it's not entirely AD&D2, but it's close enough, our variant. Plus, I can keep a storyline going.

They do not, however, like me too much, because I'm a little stricter on some things, and because I'm pure fucking evil when it comes to me DMing. I pick up things from movies, video games, books, other people's various gameplay... Like, I'm using something a friend did on Avalon, and then using Robert Jordan's Myrddraal, and then twisting them beyond belief.

Hm...when I DM, I tend to go off-the-top-of-my-head (which makes for some interesting encounters, but not so much in the way of puzzles or mazes). Right now I'm DMing a 'starter' campaign, level 3, where they're all just fighting various wasp-related monsters in the forest...I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen next, but I know where they'll eventually end up.

SilverWingedSeraph · Post by **SilverWingedSeraph** » 2007-04-22 11:12am

Molyneux wrote: Hm...when I DM, I tend to go off-the-top-of-my-head (which makes for some interesting encounters, but not so much in the way of puzzles or mazes). Right now I'm DMing a 'starter' campaign, level 3, where they're all just fighting various wasp-related monsters in the forest...I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen next, but I know where they'll eventually end up.

I absolutely love just winging it when I'm GMing any sort of roleplay. Sure, the plot isn't always super-cohesive, but I usually find a way to tie it together. I utterly love fucking with my players heads, too. One thing I've learnt, though, is that you can't give your players too much freedom. I had a party once, they knew exactly where they had to go next, they knew how to get there, and they knew that's what I was steering them towards. However, in the course of getting this information, they also heard some fluff about the nearby mountains apparently having once been home to master craftsmen of weapons. When they latched onto this instead of the main plot, all the NPC's insisted that all these people had left the mountain and there was nothing left, but that didn't stop the entire fucking party from decidin "hey, let's go check out that motherfucking mountain!"

... I hated them so damn much at that very moment, so I though to myself, what would be the best way to twist this around on them and fuck them over for screwing up the entire campaign? Why, it's obvious. Hordes of motherfucking demons are living within the mountain, which is in actuallity a dormant volcano they are attempting to reawaken. It explained why these mastercraftsmen suddenly disappeared a few years ago, and it gave the party a nice surprise.

They learned very quickly after that, that when every NPC tells them "Hey, there's nothing there, don't waste your motherfucking time", that they should GOD DAMN LISTEN! I let them escape that little situation alive, of course, with the exception of the party Paladin who decided that valianty facing off against horde of unstoppable demons was wiser than fleeing for his life. Every single PC lost something, though, to teach them a lesson. Also, through their actions the demon horde then fell upon the nearby town, killing everyone and everything.

Post by **haas mark** » 2007-04-22 06:41pm

Molyneux wrote:Hm...when I DM, I tend to go off-the-top-of-my-head (which makes for some interesting encounters, but not so much in the way of puzzles or mazes). Right now I'm DMing a 'starter' campaign, level 3, where they're all just fighting various wasp-related monsters in the forest...I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen next, but I know where they'll eventually end up.

I do the same thing. Week by week, I just go with the flow, and pull pretty much everything out of my ass. Granted, I set them along certain missions to accomplish a particular goal at the end of the campaign, but I never make plans for any given day, except what I'm doing at wherever it is I left them off. This campaign has been ... interesting, to say the least. Of course, my NPC is the only normal race out of everyone (I've pulled most of them out of the monster manual, but there are a couple of Final Fantasy races, as well).

dworkin · Post by **dworkin** » 2007-04-22 09:27pm

About 10 years ago me and some mates decided to redo ye olde dragonlance adventures only with unique PCs rather than Tanis, Sturm and all the other standbys.

Highlights

My character facing down Paladine out to charge us to fight the great evil since in typical annoying god fashion he wouldn't announce himself and I was on watch.

Things didn't improve when he admitted that the odds sucked and the pay was worse.

Another character getting us sworn in to the dragonarmy to infiltrate the Verminard's stronghold.

The Tomb of Humour. How many gully dwarves does it take to change a lamp wick?

101 uses for a captive draconian. Especially the ones which go boom or turn into acid.

The regretable but very satisfying incident which resulted in the genocide of the Kender. Oddly enough, not an evil act as the gods judge things.

Lusankya · Post by **Lusankya** » 2007-04-23 09:41am

This is from Nobilis, so not D&D, but I don't care, because it was funny.

*I let other player look at my character sheet*
Other Player: "What? You love Sony? Man, you really are evil!"

... apparently casual torture and impartial callousness doesn't make you evil enough to actually be called evil.

As for D&D, my favourite character ever was Haezeus.

He was a half-celestial who'd been raised by an evil cult, and had the god of said cult constantly butting into his head. The poor guy had a deep-seated desire to do what was "right", however unfortunately, he'd been taught that extorting, manipulating and abusing people was right, and was constantly disgusted by his "impure" desires to rescue puppies and heal sick people. His hatred of himself for his "impure" desires led him to be extra-zealous when doing what he'd been taught to be "right".

He was also quite attached to his girlfriend, and bought her a ring with almost every protective magic available for her to wear, because some kind of goat-demon had mentioned to him that she might be killed. It also occurred to him after a while that she was a human, and as such was mortal, so he had some vague plans to at some stage kidnap his Paladin sister and put his girlfriend's soul in her body.

It was an "evil" game, so everyone was told to be actually evil, and not stealth evil. Haezeus ended up being somewhat "stealth good". At the end, I could have gone, "Ah ha! I was good the entire time, and none of you noticed!"

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2007-04-25 08:01pm

My poor memory has floated this to the surface. It requires some backstory.

This campaign was one run in 2nd Ed, when being a Paladin was a serious PITA. It was also run by a DM who liked to play with the concepts behind alignments; heros who were Evil and villains who were Good.

In this, I of course, played a paladin. Well, for a while. Even got the coveted apex of Paladinhood then, the Intelligent Holy Avenger(It was called Smiter, and was insane when found. It's from a published adventure, so someone might even recignize it). But in the course of the campaign, he had fallen from grace by telling his superiors where to shove it when their orders, while righteous, were the wrong move, morally. He lost his powers and became a fighter with a +2 sword who talked.

I forget the exact circumstances, but we had run into a situation where a Paladin Of Tyr, same level as me, had passed judgement on a village and was going to basically destroy it. The guy was LG, it was just the 'More Lawful than Good' happening. There was a brief exchange verbally; excellent RP. The best part:

'You were a paladin once. You knew what had to be done.'
'Once. Once I was. Does your shiny armour comfort you? Your holy sword drive away the darkness? Mine does not.'
'Then you've cast aside everything that was good in your soul.'
'It's not about me. Hell, it's not even about the gods. Right now.. It's about someone standing between you and the people behind me.'

Smiter regained his full +5 Holy Avenger Status, by DM Fiat, for three rounds. By the end of those three, the guy was bisected.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2007-04-25 08:51pm

But in the course of the campaign, he had fallen from grace by telling his superiors where to shove it when their orders, while righteous, were the wrong move, morally. He lost his powers and became a fighter with a +2 sword who talked.

But if he followed those orders, wouldn't he also fall from grace for committing an immoral act...?

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2007-04-25 09:02pm

Uraniun235 wrote:
But in the course of the campaign, he had fallen from grace by telling his superiors where to shove it when their orders, while righteous, were the wrong move, morally. He lost his powers and became a fighter with a +2 sword who talked.
But if he followed those orders, wouldn't he also fall from grace for committing an immoral act...?

Welcome to the place between the Rock and the Hard Place.

Really, every RP-heavy campaign with a paladin needs a moment like that. Otherwise, it's not much of a thing to be unable to commit certain acts.

Akhlut · Post by **Akhlut** » 2007-04-27 12:34am

I'm DMing my first campaign and have been having fun with that. Much like haas and Molyneux, I've been winging it a lot.

Anyway, I found a way to introduce Gunther into the campaign.

Some background: I'm running a 3.5ed campaign based in Scandinavia (the Svea Rike, to be precise) in the 820s, just with magic and monsters and such. Because it's in Sweden, and Gunther happens to be Swedish, I introduced him with the guy's real name (Mats Sunderland) as the chancellor of my players' lord. Motherfucker has a charisma score of 20, and I'm thinking of increasing it as I'm going to add some bard levels to what he has already, just for shits and giggles.

Also, as far as winging it goes, I've found that dire animals are some of the best things ever, as anything the party does, as long as they are near nature, I can launch dire animals at them, as it ties in with the plot I have anyway.

I'm very proud of some improv I've done, too. I introduced one of the leaders advisors (a spellcaster), and one of the PCs wanted potions, but they aren't available in the local shops, so, he asked the advisor for some. This allowed me to introduce some of the more supernatural stuff and send them on a quest since they're too broke to afford potions of cure *blank* wounds (they are 50 gold apiece for the cheapest and the party's only level 3). Now, I'm having them slaughter hags and ogres for spell components for the advisor.

Now I don't have to plan out the plot quite as much, as long as they still want potions!

Post by **haas mark** » 2007-04-27 07:23am

You know, I think one of the most fun things about winging a campaign when you're DMing is when you create these off-the-wall monsters or such. I don't know if I mentioned it already, but playing out the large-scale battle was such awesomeness. Of course, I had a little godly intervention on my part - "Everyone died, now back to the actual characters." I wasn't using the actual characters in the battle because it was already confusing enough with just the way that everything was set up.

About 300,000 troops on either side, their side divided into 7 sections of varying sizes. Needless to say, the city more or less got leveled.

consequences · Post by **consequences** » 2007-04-28 04:55pm

Mine was a 2ed campaign, that would have been considered as run by a Killer GM if it weren't for the fact that we had extremely liberal ressurection support. Let's see if I can remember the marketing blurb I came up with for the non-existent box:

A great evil stalks the land. By twisting the threads of fate, he has rendered the gods themselves powerless to stand against him. With every evil creature added to his hordes, his power grows. With every creature killed by his evil hordes, his power grows. With every member of his hordes that gets killed, his power grows. And somehow he's tweaked the system so that every undead he raises increases his power too.

A sole, slim thread of hope exists. Only his bloodkin can work his downfall and due to his twisting of fate, he can not actively seek to destroy them. Armed with this knowledge, all of the pantheons of light pooled their resources, and sought out the greatest heroes related to him. Arming them with artifacts and relics of untold power, they sent them forth to save the universe.

They all died.

From their demise, the gods learned much, and sought out the greatest remaining heroes amongst his kin. Sacrificing much, they crafted new instruments of power, and trained their chosen champions in all aspects of war, especially those that had killed their last agents. Confident that all that could be done, had, they went forth to save the universe.

They all died.

Years, and 786 heroic and oh so pointless deaths later, now it is your turn.

There are no instruments of power left, all lie within the catacombs of the coming destroyer, clutched in the undead hands of former champions. There are no divine boons to stiffen your sinews and spirits, all have been exhausted, broken, or twisted to stand against you. There is no time for training you, as the final step of empowerment is close at hand. There are also no great heros, as you are the last, sad specimens of the abomination's line, barely of age, half-trained, and with no concept of the impossibiility of the task that lies before you.

Fail here, and the universe is the pawn of a mad creature until the end of time. Fall, and no one shall ever remember. Die, and the victory of the darkness will truly be complete.

We started as first level characters, trying to clear an unholy temple on the outskirts of the evil bastard's power web. The traps were nightmarish, universally fatal, and often impossible to disarm without risking getting torn to giblets(the frictionless floor into the pop-out blender was probably my personal favorite). When we got too greedy, we'd find such marvelous toys as a banshee scream in a bottle, or a bag that went 'clink' and shot out a death beam if opened with no other contents. On at least one occasion, the last surviving party member ended up running for the exit, carrying the severed heads of the rest of the party as the minimum needed for bringing them back.

Perversely, our bane was usually zombies. Not monster zombies, or enhanced zombies, or any kind of special zombies, but bog standard, normal zombies. With predictable reglarity a round of combat would go, 'miss, miss, miss, critical hit for sixteen damage'. They never hit us normally, and they never rolled less than a seven on an eight-sided die. The Gm, throwing us a bone, gave one of the party a sword that automatically stabbed everything male in front of it that fumbled, and ruled all of the zombies male. Then he ruled that zombies fumbled on a one or a two, and they still dropped more of us than anything else.

By the time the campaign died a natural death I think we'd made it to all of seventh or eighth level on average. The exceptions were the party thief, that had managed to be made the group accountant and was robbing us blind, and my fighter/mage/cleric, who was spamming healing spells so much that he ended up at something ridiculous like level 11 as cleric, while stuck at level five for the others.

Regardless, that campaign was awesome. For some reason(probably because he thought it was hilarious) the GM allowed my multiclass to be a wild mage, who generally opened up a Gate to an Outer Plane one wild surge in four. Our thief ended up with a phobia of levers because of all the traps. My character was put on trial for the murder and mutilation of Gophers, and called his God as his witness. Good times.