Best 'dramatic' moments in role-playing?

Oni Koneko Damien · Post by **Oni Koneko Damien** » 2006-12-22 12:34am

I don't play role-playing games for the combat, which is probably why I don't enjoy DnD a whole lot. The way I've seen it, if I want fun combat, I can always play computer games.

To me, a good role-playing game is much more about a compelling storyline than just fighting something. I've always preferred 'What happens when my character does/says this?' over 'I wonder what we're going to fight next?'

So, for anyone else whose tastes run similar to my own, what have been your best 'dramatic' moments in RPGs? The best plot-twists? The most memorable 'Holy shit, the GM has just pulled a huge mindfuck over all of us!' moments? Basically, the moments that would make a fucking awesome short story.

My own happened rather recently. I'm in a Werewolf:The Apocalypse campaign run by a close friend. My own character, Ruth, is a cute, short, gothy, innocent-looking British girl who is, in fact, a rather manipulative, sadistic bitch with a few dangerous psychoses. One of her secrets/quirks is due to a nasty curse, her pleasure and pain receptors have been completely flip-flopped. So being shot with silver is pretty much orgasmic to her, while being tickled would be a rather unbearable torture.

In the course of the campaign, she got into a fight with a Black Spiral Dancer, who managed to shoot her in the shoulder with a bullet that contained pure Wyrm taint...which put her into an ungodly, semi-conscious agony for nearly a day. Since then, Ruth swore to hunt down the woman that did that to her, and put the Spiral Dancer through as much pain as she had put Ruth through.

A week later, Ruth got her chance to, and ended up going berserk, dragging the woman out of her truck in the middle of public, dragging her into the Umbra, all-but disembowelling her with a silver dagger, and then going crinos and slaughtering the small crowd of Bane spirits that had gathered around them.

After being talked out of frenzy by the rest of her pack, Ruth finally consented to leave the woman alive long enough to extract whatever information they could out of her.

After this was done, though, Ruth suddenly had a change of heart. She noticed that the Spiral Dancer was actually remorseful over some of the things she had done. The rest of the pack (read, the other players in the campaign) were more than ready to off her. The Spiral Dancer herself was quite ready to commit suicide, as her only other real choices were death by the hands of the local werewolves, or a quick, and probably painful assassination by the other Spiral Dancers who, by now, surely knew of her treachery.

Ruth decided that neither was going to happen. She declared that Jess (the Spiral Dancer) was going to be kept alive long enough to undergo a purification ritual in the sept, despite the fact that the sept elders would never agree to such a thing. The rest of the pack didn't share Ruth's sentiments, and tried to kill Jess. Ruth ended up stepping between a half dozen angry werewolves and their target, and actually daring one of them to put a bullet into her head. In the end, she ended up forcing herself to stay awake in a locked bathroom, with Jess tied up in the bathtub, for three days straight, to make sure 1) Jess didn't kill herself, and 2) Her pack didn't try to kill Jess if Ruth fell asleep.

Without any rest after the third day, Ruth then dragged Jess to the sept, challenged a sept elder to combat for the right to have a purification ritual done on Jess, and won (mostly because the GM was being insanely merciful on Ruth by this point, as were the other players).

Honestly, that was the best damn gaming session I had ever been in. The GM, when the session started, was more than ready, and in fact planning on killing off Jess. In the end, the entire change-of-heart Ruth had, the three day vigil, and the challenge at the sept, was completely ad-libbed. I was fully expecting, at at least half a dozen points, that my character and Jess were going to be killed off in a suitably amusing fashion.

So, what are your stories?

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-12-22 01:16am

"What can change the nature of a man?"

I've always ended up as one of the comic relief characters in games I play, so I can't really remember any overly dramatic moments that didn't feel contrived or ill-fitting. Plus, being a fan of vicious, violent combat, I usually end up playing computer games for the exact reasons you avoid them. I'd really like a game that did it well, but I suppose my idea of heroic drama differs a lot from relationship drama, which barely registers to me. Fights, however, I can recount some wonderfully dramatic fights!

But the top quote is from Planescape:Torment, a really brilliant game with a story deserving of novels and movie contracts. I won't explain it, since I don't want to spoil it, but it's one of the few games that really had a character--and a story--that made you examine yourself and really play a role. I got into it, and found it a rather engaging game. I'd love to play a real session that felt as vibrant as that.

Feil · Post by **Feil** » 2006-12-22 02:43am

The only role-playing I do is in video-games or play-by-post roleplay, so I've nothing that quite relates to your interests. However, some fun bits...

I once (in a play-by-post) had a pair of light space warships, each equipped with a stealth-system that hid electromagnetic radiation. T'was a fairly long story, but they came across another player's fleet, the actions of which caused them to decide that war was inevitable and they should take the opportunity to start thinning the odds from several light-seconds away.

They had launched all their torpedos at the unsuspecting enemy, destroying 4 and crippling 2 of the enemy's destroyers, when they picked up an transmission from the enemy flagship. It went to cryptography as the ships went back into silent running and drifted away.

The last torpedos away and homing in on their targets, the Valkyrie drifted through the dark depths of space, undetected and undetectable.

A few thousand kilometers ahead, the fifth volley of torpedos struck home. A wall of blast cannon fire sought to strike them out of space, and the target began to maneuver. There was some good done. A blast cannon impact burnt through the armored shell of one torpedo, destroying its guidance system. It sailed wide. The other three survived, burned, but still fully functional. A pair struck the shields, splintering the generator by the force of its impact, their explosive charges blowing through the failing deflector shields and into the hull. The third struck just behind the bridge, where the armor was already melted away by the explosion of the first two. It detonated deep within the frigate, blowing it in half, and making the kill tally for the Valkyrie and its sister-ship the Shanin 4 kills, 1 damaged beyond functionality. A few hundred kilometers behind, the final set of torpedos flared to life and began their final approach. In thirty seconds, the tally would read 4 and 2.

"Incoming message from the Shanin. Their crypto team has broken the text of the message--the language confirms that the fleet was Karttayan."

"Play it."

"Sir."

'This message contains all data on the council fleets, including all pass codes and activation codes. Today a terrible massacre occurred, and these council members are to blame. Along with this message is video footage of the destruction of this planet.'

"Mother of God..." Mikal breathed. Similar murmurings could be heard from the near-silent bridge crew.

A slight crackle of static sounded a few seconds later as Commander Makay made a tight-beam transmition.

"So. Looks like we just scored the biggest hit in military intelligence history."

The concentration of pwn in that bit of roleplay was so high you could float SD.Net's collective ego on it.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-12-22 12:42pm

I recently ran a Forgotten Realms campaign using my Tensided ruleset that turned out very well. It centered around two 'channelers' (mages using the Tensided magic system instead of a converted version of the D&D one) and their roles in the eternal fight between Selune and Shar. Selune, it turns out, had created the channelers to act as secret agents throughout history, and Shar had managed to corrupt the magic enough to spawn two channelers for this generation instead of the typical one and plant the seed of evil in one of them. At the start, I had been conspiring with one of the two players that he was going to turn on the party at the worst moment, and so I started doing some vague foreshadowing, but as we went along it became clear that the 'good' channeler would be just as good a candidate to turn evil, and so I left it up to them to decide at the last minute, I myself not knowing the outcome. In the end, the 'good' one turned and destroyed the source of channeler magic, gathering all of its power into him and becoming a virtual demigod but ensuring that there would never be another channeler again and the forces of good would be forever weakened. He managed to defeat his counterpart in battle for this to happen, but resurrected him afterward. However, with no channeler source, he was left without any magical ability after his revival, and swore revenge as he vowed to learn everything about conventional magic and regain all his lost power. We also had an epic fight between the avatars of Shar and Selune, the latter turned out to be hiding in the form of a seemingly normal halfling PC the whole time. That campaign really couldn't have turned out better.

Another good one was the one before that, which is the longest running campaign I think I've done. The game was set in the cyberpunk / post-apocalyptic world of 2030, and the characters were rebels and corporate traitors seeking to gain control of an automated robotic fighting force designed in WW III but never deployed. The only copy of the passcode necessary to do this was stored clear across the country in an experimental AI computer in San Francisco. When they got there, they had already run into the AI's murderous prototype, and intended to shut the machine down for good. Instead of an equally murderous AI, they found it to be quite benevolent. Technology in San Francisco had advanced centuries in the decade of rule by Polaris, everyone was well fed and lived in good accomodations, those with criminal tendencies had been weeded out and sent to an equally nice, but walled-off and better policed city, and yet people were unhappy. With every need cared for, with the AI having discovered technology whose principles nobody could understand enough to improve upon, and with no possibility of the future being better, people were hopeless and forlorn. But this was an attitude totally alien to the players, who had grown up on war-torn streets ruled by vicious gangs, where just staying alive was a struggle. So they faced the choice, destroy the AI and free these people from their plight, even if the 'plight' seemed like paradise, or destroy the killswitch and let the computer realize its plans of controlling the entire world. In the end, they destroyed Polaris, not because they sympathized with the people, but because no one entity should have that much power. In doing so, thousands of automated cars crashed, the criminals that had been weeded out were free to plunder, and millions of pampered individuals with no survival skills would surely die, in addition to all the technology that would decay into nothing before human understanding had advanced enough to reverse engineer it.

Post by **Dalton** » 2006-12-22 03:56pm

I wish I had a good dramatic RPG story to tell, but the guys I RPG with tend to be violent psychopaths (otherwise known as SG-14)

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2006-12-22 04:07pm

Well there was the time the team went to Tijiuana, but I don't think you made it to that one.

PeZook · Post by **PeZook** » 2006-12-22 05:05pm

Well, there's one - but I was the one DMing it, long, long ago.

There were, I think, four players. It was a campaign about them setting up a criminal undergroundm from the bottom up. Played with Cyberpunk rules used in a slightly futuresque modern setting. Most of the campaign was improvised, because that's my style.

Anyways, they planned and executed a bank robbery. Being the sadistic bastard that I was, I had the police respond quickly. Instead of trying to make a run for it, my players decided to take hostages and make demands (Dumb? Yeah. Very.) A two-day standoff ensued.

What followed was a four-hour session during which only a few shots were fired. It was all about talking with a police negotiator, watching out for subterfuge, trying to spot lies and arguing with their mates about whether to release that hostage or not or to eat the food or not eat it or start killing hostages or not...

I am particularly proud of this game because it was completely improvised, and yet I've managed to fuck with their heads enough that after the third hour they were at each other's throats. It ended with them surrendering.

Post by **Dalton** » 2006-12-22 06:32pm

Hotfoot wrote:Well there was the time the team went to Tijiuana, but I don't think you made it to that one.

Was that the one where IB bought $500 of heroin?

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2006-12-23 08:54am

One of the best campaigns I participated in was GM-ed by PeZook. It was based on the Operation Flashpoint game scenario, only it was Europe and not some crap-ass islands in the middle of nowhere.

The premise being cliche as hell, with Soviet Union suddenly rolling their steel fist through Germany and coming to a halt in France.

I was playing a young Lt, commanding a platoon of 101st Airborne (don't ask, we were young). I had a great player as my XO sergeant and most of the players changed during that campaign, which gave a good feel of "come & die" atmosphere.

Our first missions took part in France in the region of Auvergne. Made a few patrols, assaulted a few minor towns et cetera.

But probably the best moment of the whole game was when our company was relieved and we enjoyed a week-long vacation behind the front lines.

There, my sergeant organised a game of football against a platoon from another division (dont remember who they were, 82nd or something like that). Our entire party did some research on rules of the game and we simply storytelled it through. It was awesome.

RPG does not need to be centered around combat to be a great experience.

Raw Shark · Post by **Raw Shark** » 2006-12-23 01:40pm

It's hard to really isolate the best drama out of all these years of drippy oWoD MUSH cheeze, but one of my all-time favorites will always be the time my BSD Philodox got to be the point man in the effort to torture, interrogate, and ultimately convert a Get of Fenris Philodox. After his IC capture the GoF player was OOC determined to put up a good showing, die bravely, and reapp another standard Garou, but after a marathon string of sessions over the course of a weekend I managed to IC and OOC bond with him and talk him over to The Dark Side. Ad-Libbing convincing arguments why turning to the Wyrm was the best way to serve his ultimate interests was a fantastic RP challenge, and the whole thing was fraught with Classic Big Angst rather than an instant IC flip after he was convinced OOC. Great time had by all.

Epilogue: After the GoF danced the spiral he OOC confided in the group that the deciding factor was the superior RP available at the Hive compared to what he had been getting. Evil For The Win!

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2006-12-23 05:10pm

Tolya wrote: There, my sergeant organised a game of football against a platoon from another division (dont remember who they were, 82nd or something like that). Our entire party did some research on rules of the game and we simply storytelled it through. It was awesome.

RPG does not need to be centered around combat to be a great experience.

I can just picture a football RPG

My opponents lvl 33 Winger uses his Dive ability.
The GM/Referee fails a vision test to spot it and gives them a freekick.
My level 34 manager uses the talent 'Get crowd chanting'.
"The Referees a wanker! The Referees a Wanker!"

PeZook · Post by **PeZook** » 2006-12-23 05:52pm

Tolya wrote: (dont remember who they were, 82nd or something like that)

C platoon, from your own company

Tolya wrote:RPG does not need to be centered around combat to be a great experience.

Damn straight. Another most memorable session was a welcome dinner for officers hosted by a captain who just took command of his starship.

Hot damn, an entire game centered around trying to win the trust and respect of officers with wildly differing personalities by using table talk and manners. No skill checks, just hard work on part of the players.

Damn, did they ruin their opinion amongst some of their subordinates

2000AD wrote:I can just picture a football RPG

My opponents lvl 33 Winger uses his Dive ability.
The GM/Referee fails a vision test to spot it and gives them a freekick.
My level 34 manager uses the talent 'Get crowd chanting'.
"The Referees a wanker! The Referees a Wanker!"

...and later that day, the opposing team gets shot down and dies in flames only hours after the game is over.

Well, ok, maybe not in Football RPG

Ford Prefect · Post by **Ford Prefect** » 2006-12-23 10:28pm

I think the best, and really only example I have is when I pulled a 'Darth Vader' on one of my friends. There was a discussion about this guy's father, who had died, and because of discussion from well before then, I actually knew a lot about this dead dad. As discussion went on, people were curious as to how come I knew so much.

Right out of the blue says I: "That's because I'm his godfather."

Aw geez I'm brilliant sometimes.

Oni Koneko Damien · Post by **Oni Koneko Damien** » 2007-01-06 04:28pm

Bit of a bump, hopefully not necromancy...

But holy shit, I just managed to top myself. Most recent session, several of our pack, namely my character, Ruth, and a Bastet named Hikaru, decided to take a trip inside the mind of a former Black Spiral Dancer by the name of Jess. Digging through her most disturbing memories in search of a portion of her mind that had been blocked off, and possibly containing secrets on how to combat a Pentex threat in town. We ended up having to take part in re-living her most disturbing memories, namely, her initiation into the Black Spiral Dancers.

Good god, most definately not work-safe. Grammar and spelling will be cleaned up when I'm feeling more awake. And finally, *not* for the squeemish, you've been warned.

Redleader34 · Post by **Redleader34** » 2007-01-06 04:55pm

I also RP via text on a messageboard, and I feel the most dramatic moment was when I was simply playing in a city, that was under attack, by forces that would make the Marines cry. I was in charge of a medium starship, similar to the one that I drew in the AMP thread, when The army landeed...
I had tried to blast at their dropships, but their sheilds were so powerful, that the cannon blasts had no effect. Our most powerfll wariors were all out fighiting in the city proper, while I was in charge of the evauction of about 20 icharacters.. while the city was being hit with low kiloton level weaposn.. I made it out, but we lost our main city base...

Post by **weemadando** » 2007-01-06 06:44pm

The most notable "dramatic" moment for me:

Vampire game in London.
Selling out the leaders of the Camarilla in the city to the Garou. I'd initiated dealings with the Garou early on when I managed to talk them out of killing us, and we'd made great inroads into a "treaty" of sorts on how we'd work things in the city. Any vampires gave them trouble and we had them killed or covered up for the Garou killing them. Any Werewolves gave us trouble and they quickly disappeared. And we also gave the Garou a lot of intel on where to find Sabbat and Anarch vamps and a free hand in dealing with them. But anyhow - my character ran a bar and under the bar I had several large vaults and rooms. These had often been used for meetings and dealings (one notable one was when trying to negotiate with the anarchs and leaving half of the previous baron staked to the wall throughout the meeting and getting the new "baron" aka puppet to dust him when it was over). So, I've invited the leaders of the Cam to a meeting, and these guys are more than willing to come along because I've done a lot of dirty work for them (or so they think) and want to show me some respect. The Garou were really pissed with the Cam because they'd just lost a bunch of young pups to an overzealous sheriff. The meeting in held in a VERY solid concrete room with a door that even a Garou couldn't rip off or through. The Cam leaders arrive and walk in to the room to find six men sitting on the other side of the large wooden table. I stand in the door after the last one goes in, say: "Knock when you're done." And close the door. I didn't want to be the Prince so I found some snotty nosed Toff Toreador to do it. I installed one of the PCs as Sheriff (he'd been a great help with getting the Garou onside initially) and then the GM stopped running the game because we'd completely broken him.
As a side note - the bar had a bottle on the top shelf labelled: "Amaranth - the taste of the last generation."

I have a shitload of others but most of them are mexican standoff or "money or the gun" scenarios that end with the PCs shooting the other side and taking the money and the guns.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2007-01-07 01:06am

Champions, playing our first villian campaign. (yes, were playing supervillians) I got voted the best roleplayer by the group over the following incident:

My character, a mercinary former terrorist with pyrokinetic, and telepathic powers (Imagine Sean Dillon with Charlie McGee's powers), wakes up getting ready for his interview with the villian group's leader, when I get to the door, whose there, fuckin Jahova's Witnesses. My character hates religious fanatics (he used to be a fanatic, it's just the memories of those he's killed has somewhat reformed him.) So My character misses his "Job interview" trying to force some sense into several psycho religious fundamentalists. (It started with JWs, then it was mormon missionaries, then, walking down the street I ran into anti-abortion terrorists, followed by running into a pack of skinheads. By the time the session was done, my character was now considered the campaign city's newest HERO???

RazorOutlaw · Post by **RazorOutlaw** » 2007-01-07 01:56am

Unfortunately most of my "best experiences" in role-playing center around combat because the people I role play with are neither creative or imaginative enough to create characters and situations outside fighting some stereotypical evil force that wants to conquer the world/galaxy. That and well, damn, it sure is fun for them to draw from all of the anime they watch. Y'know, the badass katana wielding samurai shlock. Or the badass magic wielding wizard shlock.

Although I'm just as bad, in terms of creativity, except I don't draw from anime. My only saving grace from being unbelievably lame while I roleplay is that I usually play a regular character most of the time (usually human without any special abilities beyond good luck and stupid enemies). In fact, by comparison I'm rather dull but that's something I've been trying to work on by making my characters seem alive. A hard thing to do given that I write flimsy characters in the first place.

Anyway, the only really cool instance that ever stood out in any RPGing I've done in any format was playing DnD in, well, my friend's basement (haha) We had role played several times before, and had been on many adventures together. We had killed town guards, magical jesters, and been locked in a room in another dimension. One day our session had us go to some kind of mystical cave with some awesome beast which we had to kill. After a drawn out battle we found out that my best friend had been using us to help him find his father. Apparently he was actually the son of some kind of demon, and said demon was being held by the magic beast. After that point his character left us. What a jerk.

The only reason this stands out is being cool is that my RPG experiences are quite minimal. I guess you could say "Wow, what a twist!" with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2007-01-07 02:37am

Another scary bit, was my Female Melnibon'ian magic weilder/warrior (pirate queen), I was playing in an unlimited AD&D and ALL varients Spelljammer game at a con.

getting into a oneupsmanship contest with a Scro and a Gorian on Terms of who was more evil. This contest I won. As I proved between summoning various nasty things, and having a whole army of cats and undead. (Note we were in a Tavern, and yes the Gorian hated my character for being a woman, and the Scro hated my character for being an "Elf")<note Melnibon'e are actually dragonkin not true elves> note my winning point was describing in detail how I summoned my first guardian daemon in order to protect myself from an incestious intentions of my older brother...

Civil War Man · Post by **Civil War Man** » 2007-01-07 03:16am

A game of Mage: The Ascension. My character was the hopeless gamer nerd mage that I've mentioned in previous threads. He has become a legend among the gamers that I associate with. Partly because he was the bane of countless people's existences, and partly because he was without a doubt one of the best liars ever. I had much fun making up a story on the spot and getting 6+ successes on my Manipulation (Specialty: Bullshit) + Subterfuge roll. And it just happened so often...

Anyway, some crowning moments of his achievements. The game took place somewhere north of Assfuck, Vermont. My character was a Bio major at some college up there (he would have gone to a better school, but Arcane is a double-edged sword, particularly at his levels). Anyway, he was short a car, so he was having to hoof it to the Chantry of the Akashic Child with Destiny 5 character.
Some hours earlier, our party Euthanatos (who was about about as gothy as a Hollow One) had twisted her ankle after botching the stamina roll required to make the walk my character was currently making. So, here's a Euthanatos with a twisted ankle, when up walks my weird pseudo-Son of Etherite. The two begin walking together, after the Euthanatos was able to get off a Life effect to fix her ankle. Now, up until that point, the Euthanatos had been intentionally avoiding my character because quite frankly he frightened her, so she didn't really know too much about him. However, she had heard him reference something called "Black Dog games". So she asked him to explain it to her.
I think I should make a note here that my character had the flaw "Obsession: Gaming".
So several stamina rolls later, the rest of the party was waiting outside the Chantry, when they saw the Euthanatos round the corner at a dead sprint. Moments later, they see my character round the corner, also at a dead sprint. Even though my character was one of the least athletic characters in the party, he was on the heels of the Euthanatos, all the while yelling stuff about lycanthropes and warlocks, and was not the least bit winded in spite of him yelling and sprinting simultaneously. Using fantasies of my character's gruesome death as a focus, the Euthanatos lept through the gauntlet and escaped into the Chantry, leaving the Spirit-less gamer standing outside yelling damage tables at her. At that point the party pseudo-Dreamspeaker dumped a bucket of water over my characters head, which enabled him to snap out of it.

For another moment, it should be noted that this character's awakening involved showing a couple abusive frat boys the business end of a Forces/Entropy effect (their house apparently had faulty wiring). So after my character earned the eternal hatred of a Euthanatos, he was under a rather unfortunate Forces backlash (just a note to future Forces mages: it's going to hurt if you suffer a backlash while manipulating gravity) that, among other things, broke several of his ribs and punctured one of his lungs. The Euthanatos chose that moment to check my characters karma, to see how badly I was dying, whether she should care, and how much enjoyment she should derive from my character's suffering. She finishes the scan, at which point the storyteller looks at her and says, "There are two souls on his conscience, though you get the impression that they weren't very worthwhile souls. You probably would have sent them back through the cycle yourself if he hadn't gotten to them first." This really pissed her off, because this new information made my character just useful enough that she wanted him alive, no matter how much she wanted him dead.

My character survived his backlash, thanks in large part to the timely arrival of Akashic Child with Destiny 5's 5-point Mentor. Some hilarious misadventures followed, though my character's unbelievable luck eventually ran out while trying to bust out a pack of werewolves who were being held in captivity by Technocratic scientists. During the rescue attempt, he took 3 M-16 rounds to the head, which understandably put him down for good. The mission ended successfully when the Akashic Child cashed in on his Destiny 5 by teleporting the captive werewolves out of the compound while simultaneously exploding violently from the massive amounts of paradox this act gave him.
You may wonder what the great dramatic moment of this scene is. Well, the werewolves were understandably grateful to our party for saving them from the Technocracy. They recovered my character's body and brought it back to their caern, where the body was buried while the Galliard performed the Rite of the Departed.
Yes. My insufferable mage character's sacrifice earned the eternal gratitude of a pack of Garou, so they effectively posthumously made him an honorary werewolf. And that was my mage character's final "Fuck you" to the universe.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2007-01-07 03:34am

In terms of whitewolf....

mortal hunter (serial killers not vamps), with auspex, creaed using the first edition rules. Said character was the only non leach in the party, was fully aware of undead society, and despite being a human, was actually considered somewhat creepy (fact he talked to ghosts, and knew people's secrets). The time I basically broke a sabbat, by bringing up all of those "lost souls" he was responsible for, started a fight between the Tremre and the Malkavian over whom I should belong too.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2007-01-08 07:04am

My most dramatic moment was in a NWN persistent world. I recycled a Pen and Paper character when his campaign didn't get off the ground.

His name was Fontana, and he was a paladin. He was not the most levelled on the server. He did not have the most impressive character sheet on the server. He did not even PvP.

But he truly lived the code of the paladin in word and deed, and this came to the attention of the movers and shakers of the game world.

He was named Commander of the city of Helios and its protectors, and there was none more fitting.

I was astounded. It is rare to find a real sense of achievement in an online RPG, but there it was. I had actually won the admiration of the right people and been rewarded for my efforts with a title, corresponding powers (I could punt people to jail) and responsibilities.

Solauren · Post by **Solauren** » 2007-01-08 07:32am

This past weekend, when my Elven Thief/Wizard PC spent several rounds being tossed between a group of Griffons, starting at 300 feet in the air, in an abandoned elven tree city.

Round 1 - Bullrushed of walkway, caught by dwarf
Round 2 - Pulled up on Walkway
Round 3 - Tanglefoot bag enemy griffon
Round 4 - Tossed off by another Griffon
Round 5 - another mage casts Fly on me
Round 6 - Catch the Dwarf (the griffons tossed him off)
Round 7 - Tanglefooted Griffon crashed down on top of myself and the dwarf
Round 8 - Dwarf Airwalks away, without me cause I'm stuck to the Griffon
Round 9 - Tanglefoot proceeds to maul me in midair.
Round 10 - He decides to fly off with me to feed his offspring (what am I, a horse?)
Round 11 - The 'less then genius' Paladin attempts to save me riding the Griffon he just smacked into listening to him
Round 12 - The Paladin nearly gets knocked off his Griffon
Round 13 - Tanglefooted Griffon starts falling due to being knocked out
Round 14 - Paladin manages to catch me before the tanglefooted Griffon crashed.

Erik von Nein · Post by **Erik von Nein** » 2007-01-08 07:56pm

Most of my really dramatic moments involve combat, usually, since the people who DM rarely set up really good dramatic situations. Like one game I was playing as a character set up to trip opponents (my friend made it for me), so I had a two handed chain as a weapon. Problem was we ended up fighting a lot of four-legged, large creatures. Anyway, we were on these magical boats given to us by these elves and we get attacked by these lizard men. Suddenly, after having a few javalins hurled at us this dragon pops out of the water and starts beating on us. All fine and dandy, right? Ah, hah, no.

Thing of it was it was attacking from just outside the range of all but me, two archers and a mage (there were two other melee fighters) who weren't about to take too much damage (especially seeing as how two of them were small creatures). Apparently this dragon had a rider (another lizardman) who, during the first round, was still underwater. So, I hold my action until he's visible. The second that happens I leap out of the boat at the dragon, barely suceed on a melee hit with my chain to wrap it around the rider and then climb up the dragons back and grapple the guy and then put him into a choke hold.

So, picture this guy suddenly jumping off some speeding boats, flying too far to the right of this dragon and his rider and flinging his chain out at said rider, wrapping it around the guy, climbing up the back of the dragon and knocking the guy out. TUrned out it was a good thing that I did, since the lizardman was a mage about to fireball the party. Everyone else was either cowering in fear (stupid draconic fear auras) or doing the usual "I attack it/eldrich blast it" (no imagination! Hehe). It was sweet. Got extra experience for it, too.

Another game I just got done with was pretty cool. It was a stormwrack game and the entire party was evil/neutral and we were a group of pirates. I played a warblade captain. Anyway, the game started with our ship being attacked and overrun by goblins/hobgoblins (WTF?) and everyone aboning ship except for me, who they ended up killing (with my own weapons, no less) and dumping into the ocean. Everyone started play on this deserted island on various parts, except for me who started at the bottom of the ocean (I was human). While everyone's trying to find each other on this island I just start walking.

Anyway, we all meet up finally right about when this other (except me, I'm still walking and everyone assumes I'm dead, which isn't exactly wrong), random ship parks it a little ways out from said island. Then a bunch of skeletons and a human pile into rowboat and come ashore while everyone else is hiding. So, they kind of sit around talking while this one half-sea elf is kicking it in the water when I come walking up underneath the ship. He kind of freaks out seeing me walking on the bottom but then informs me of what's going on. I tell him to tell everyone else to take the rowboat and board the ship, since I assumed it was empty. So, I start climbing up the ship's anchor to see what's up.

Once I got to the top of the ship I saw that, no, it wasn't abondoned. There were two orge skeletons up top watching over the ship. Now, they hadn't seen me so I just dropped off the side, which drew their attention away from everyone else. They all hopped up and started beating/commanding them (there was a cleric in the part) and we finally took control of the ship and left the island. And leaving the guy there to rot. Mwa, haha.

On our way back to a friendly port we end up getting stopped by the local paladin group on their vastly superior ship. They said they just wanted to talk, so I hid by grabing a rope and diving into the water and the cleric pretended to be the captain. They talked for a bit and then asked if we would work for them to find some object. He agreed and, after stopping off at a port to resupply and attempt to find out about that goblins/hobgoblins ship we headed off to the coordinants they gave us.

When we got there there was an island with a lagoon and a cave. Once we entered the cave we were attacked by a bunch of kobolds who we proceed to slaughter, except for when a bunch of them tackled our barbarian and 4 of them succeed in grappling him. Of course, he started to just pound them into the walls on his turn, so eh. Then the kobolds told us to stop killing them. I grappled the one who said that, then held him hostage the entire time. After some negotiations they finally told us why they were there and that they needed our help finding this object that the paladins were also looking for.

So, we search around, find the some misc. treasury, fight some flying sharks with me leaping from the top of this mountain all the way do to the lagoon to bail out our half-sea elf druid and his croc. Since I wasn't there to check on what kind of treasury we got, the female spell-theif decided to skim about 10 platinum off the top and divide amoung the people there. My plan was to give them some of the treasury, tell them that's all we found and then head to the underwater cave where the real treasure was. Anyway, we ended up giving them enough of a plausable excuse so they didn't suspect us at all and we were off.

Anyway, we ended up playing both factions and keep them assuming we were on their side, until we ended up in the goblin/hobgoblin/kobold/orc city of happy freedom (which ended up looking more like a cult, but there were a ton of good/neutral normally evil creatures running around getting along with dwarves) where we stole the rest of the artifacts we were looking for and then calmly left the city, since our druid went to the master of many forms prestige class and snuck into their vault, murdered their gaurds and stole the items and then left without anyone knowing better, all the while the rest of the party (aside from my then normal human captain and my de facto first mate). Then, the second we teleported out of the city and back to where we were (including our ship) we were surrounded by a gigantic battle between good and evil forces. And we ran like Hell, with bits of dragons, devils, angels and various other flying critters falling all around us.

Eventually we ended up isolated from everyone else where we killed a good dragon, a devil (who killed an angel who had come for us) and then, finally put all the artifacts together (it was a slot machine, no joke), put in this coin and was given to choice of what wish to make (you could make any wish). Eventually, the barbarian/wizard, mutliple personality tiefling made the wish to destroy it, since he worshiped the god of balance and it was his quest to destroy it. Since the angel that came before was from the god of Hibachi (the god of partying) we eventually all got to live in the dimension of party and all our alignments because chaotic party and were given the choice to then spread the good word of partying.

But, yeah, that campaign was great.

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

Dalton wrote:
Hotfoot wrote:Well there was the time the team went to Tijiuana, but I don't think you made it to that one.
Was that the one where IB bought $500 of heroin?

It was critical to the success of our mission!

It did involve a crazy chase between our Jeep and a tel'tak in the middle of the night.