Favorite or Craziest Roleplaying Moments

[Polekatt]

In this topic, I would love to hear what some of your favorite moments are, from roleplaying with your friends, and some of the craziest things that have happened in your roleplaying games.

I will start, with what is undoubtedly the craziest thing I have EVER seen happen, in my roleplaying gaming career.

I was DMing this game. I had about 8-10 players I think, it was really too many in my opinion, but they all wanted to play, and we never turned any friend down, that wanted to join us and play. The setting was AD&D, and it was a typical fantasy adventure.

Back in those days, we did a lot of communicating by notepad. Every one of us had a notepad assigned to our character, and we could write stuff on it, and give it to someone else, or the DM, if we wanted to have a private conversation, or let someone else know something that you didn’t want the entire group to know. It was way more fun if you didn’t know everything, even in real life. Like if the group was in a room, and only one character noticed something from the die checks, I would write it on their notepad, and it was up to them if they wanted to tell the rest of the group what they noticed.

So we had been playing this campaign. One character, we will call him M, had been secretly trying to join the local thieves guild. I don’t remember the story, and I don’t remember why, I just remember he was trying to get in, and impress them for some reason. But he had done the whole thing via notepad. Nobody in the rest of the group knew anything about this. Things came to a head one day, when the group decided to break into a warehouse and steal from this thieves guild. So this put M in a very precarious position. He was trying to join this guild, but his party wanted to break in and steal from the guild. Of course, they were caught, when they broke in, a confrontation was about to happen.

Now, a side note - When I DM’d, my first and foremost role was, to continue the story, and make it fun for all my players, to stay in control of everything, but make them believe they had total freedom and control. I did all my rolls behind a screen. I was honest 98% of the time, but I will not lie, (to you, hahah), I had been known to fudge on a roll here or there, but ONLY IF I thought the outcome would break the storyline, or cause some game breaking problem. Sometimes I would already have made my decision, but I would roll a die behind the screen, just so they would hear a die being rolled. Those die rolls were secret. The players all did their own die rolls in the open. My rule was, if you roll a die on the open table, then that die roll counts. You don’t get to re roll. As such, if they announced that they wanted to do something, and I thought it was a bad idea, I could ask them before they roll, are you sure you want to do that? Or if they did roll, and it was something that would have went horribly wrong and game breaking, I always figured I could just fudge the stat they were rolling against. Until this-

Back to our story. M was wanting badly to impress the thieves guild. The rest of the group had broke in, and was caught. A fight was getting ready to happen. Later on, after this, he told me that he had to do something that would impress the guild, and make them think he was on their side, so he decided to do the most flamboyant outrageous thing he could think of, knowing that I could apply enough modifiers that even a high die roll could be made into a miss. The big mistake was, he didn’t give me any warning, or any time to think about it, or control it.

All of the sudden, before the fight starts, M, draws his sword, and other do the same. M says he wants to do another action. Everyone is tensed up, so I nod and let him. M shouts, I turn to P, the player IN HIS GROUP, beside him, and with my long sword, I want to do, (and he roars this out in real life), CALLED SHOT! DECAPITATION!!!

And before I could say a word, he throws the 20 side out across the table, and it lands on a natural 20.

You could have heard a pin drop in the room.

I could not think of any way to change that. That one moment splintered that particular D&D group, and all but 5 players ended up leaving. They were so mad at M, they turned on him, killed his character, and had it drawn and quartered, and then hid the pieces secretly in different parts of the kingdom. They raised enough money to have P resurrected, but it was chance, and he came back as an elven girl, and he lost interest and stopped playing the character with a few weeks.

Like I said, craziest thing I’ve every personally had happen. What about you guys?

[Sgt_T8ie]

Polekatt Hahaha! Awesome story. I can understand how that could fracture a group instantly and be frustrating for you too.

I’d like to share one of my DM moments too - it happened during a game of the Wheel of Time version of the D&D rules - the game does a lot of things well, but in consult with friends we ended up putting in house rules to better reflect our interpretation of the Jordan’s world.

As a DM I like to run it fairly loose & try to keep the players on their feet - I’ve played with guys who go & grab the expansion & try to get inside knowledge, so I make sure to change things up a notch. I like to get players to perform skill checks for investigating or knowledge interpretation etc. in secret so I can give them false information. I also make sure they all know that I give rewards for roleplaying well not just for smacking things & being lucky with the dice

The scenario started out with the players actually playing avatars of themselves - using the racial traits etc. to work out what country they were from & enhancing each player’s 2 most dominant real life stats & then allowing them to boost 2 points in exchange for reducing 3 stat points. It sort of allowed them to caricature themselves in a way and then choose which class they wanted.

The game had played out to get the characters to come to a small town called Sweetwater. The primary purpose of the scenario was for the characters to workout that an ancient artifact that continuously cleaned the town’s water supply (hence the town’s name) had been stolen and cast down a local farmer’s well leaving the area’s water supply contaminated apart from that one well.

It being a low level quest I’d made everything quite obvious, with clues for every class in the group to find, this was all to help introduce higher NPCs that would provide the continuation of the story.

One of the trackers bungled a tracking roll so critically that I told him to make up a reason for the tracks to go into a local warehouse. It was this player’s first real experience at roleplaying & he pulled out all the stops, completely blew me away. He “showed” how the puddles were deformed at this edge meaning it was a group of heavily armed men surrounding a single individual. From the scrap of fabric he’d found caught on this barrel, it appeared to be that a noble woman had been captured. And that she’d been dragged against her will into that building over there. The rest of the party took it all hook line & sinker.

They formulated a plan to scope out the building; finding it unoccupied they broke in & investigated the “Sweetwater Tonic Water” bottling facility. Finally finding no further evidence of the supposed kidnapping, but uncovering the owners personal savings - which they of course stole. But before the left, one of the other characters asked to a check for hidden compartments in the filing cabinet & rolled a perfect 20. By now I was having too much fun with this completely improvised part of my story, so I allowed him to uncover a compartment that showed that manager of the bottling plant was in fact working with a group of bandits working in the area. They were preying on visiting nobles on the road robbing & killing them & paying off the manager for information on new victims.

I wrote out a note & passed it to the character who’d uncovered it. It was a message indicating that the meeting place had changed & to head down the West road & look for the usual sign. This information was passed onto the group who decided that they should track all of the miscreants down & deal justice to them. They saddled up & headed down the West rd, with two trackers they were able to search both sides of the road & eventually one of them found a hunter’s mark next to a game trail. They followed it & came across the camp with 6 bandits & the manager discussing their plans. The party played out the attack pretty well & managed to take down the entire group. They ransacked the camp & found details about the main bandit camp further into the wilderness. The party decided to that they were going to take out the main bandit camp. I called an end to the session there, knowing I’d have a week to generate a bandit camp & decent conclusion to this story & how to get this group back on track.

After we’d finished the player who’d bungled the initial tracking roll came up & asked “I thought I’d failed my tracking roll?”
“You did, spectacularly.”

[demons6i6x]

Polekatt said in /404:

In this topic, I would love to hear what some of your favorite moments are, from roleplaying with your friends, and some of the craziest things that have happened in your roleplaying games.

I will start, with what is undoubtedly the craziest thing I have EVER seen happen, in my roleplaying gaming career.

I was DMing this game. I had about 8-10 players I think, it was really too many in my opinion, but they all wanted to play, and we never turned any friend down, that wanted to join us and play. The setting was AD&D, and it was a typical fantasy adventure.

Back in those days, we did a lot of communicating by notepad. Every one of us had a notepad assigned to our character, and we could write stuff on it, and give it to someone else, or the DM, if we wanted to have a private conversation, or let someone else know something that you didn’t want the entire group to know. It was way more fun if you didn’t know everything, even in real life. Like if the group was in a room, and only one character noticed something from the die checks, I would write it on their notepad, and it was up to them if they wanted to tell the rest of the group what they noticed.

So we had been playing this campaign. One character, we will call him M, had been secretly trying to join the local thieves guild. I don’t remember the story, and I don’t remember why, I just remember he was trying to get in, and impress them for some reason. But he had done the whole thing via notepad. Nobody in the rest of the group knew anything about this. Things came to a head one day, when the group decided to break into a warehouse and steal from this thieves guild. So this put M in a very precarious position. He was trying to join this guild, but his party wanted to break in and steal from the guild. Of course, they were caught, when they broke in, a confrontation was about to happen.

Now, a side note - When I DM’d, my first and foremost role was, to continue the story, and make it fun for all my players, to stay in control of everything, but make them believe they had total freedom and control. I did all my rolls behind a screen. I was honest 98% of the time, but I will not lie, (to you, hahah), I had been known to fudge on a roll here or there, but ONLY IF I thought the outcome would break the storyline, or cause some game breaking problem. Sometimes I would already have made my decision, but I would roll a die behind the screen, just so they would hear a die being rolled. Those die rolls were secret. The players all did their own die rolls in the open. My rule was, if you roll a die on the open table, then that die roll counts. You don’t get to re roll. As such, if they announced that they wanted to do something, and I thought it was a bad idea, I could ask them before they roll, are you sure you want to do that? Or if they did roll, and it was something that would have went horribly wrong and game breaking, I always figured I could just fudge the stat they were rolling against. Until this-

Back to our story. M was wanting badly to impress the thieves guild. The rest of the group had broke in, and was caught. A fight was getting ready to happen. Later on, after this, he told me that he had to do something that would impress the guild, and make them think he was on their side, so he decided to do the most flamboyant outrageous thing he could think of, knowing that I could apply enough modifiers that even a high die roll could be made into a miss. The big mistake was, he didn’t give me any warning, or any time to think about it, or control it.

All of the sudden, before the fight starts, M, draws his sword, and other do the same. M says he wants to do another action. Everyone is tensed up, so I nod and let him. M shouts, I turn to P, the player IN HIS GROUP, beside him, and with my long sword, I want to do, (and he roars this out in real life), CALLED SHOT! DECAPITATION!!!

And before I could say a word, he throws the 20 side out across the table, and it lands on a natural 20.

You could have heard a pin drop in the room.

I could not think of any way to change that. That one moment splintered that particular D&D group, and all but 5 players ended up leaving. They were so mad at M, they turned on him, killed his character, and had it drawn and quartered, and then hid the pieces secretly in different parts of the kingdom. They raised enough money to have P resurrected, but it was chance, and he came back as an elven girl, and he lost interest and stopped playing the character with a few weeks.

Like I said, craziest thing I’ve every personally had happen. What about you guys?

That is one of the greatest RP moments ever!! Sorry to hear you lost half your players, but that must’ve been awesome in person.

[Polekatt]

Here is my other moment that I like to share.

The first, was the craziest thing that has ever happened in a game I was involved in.

This one, this is the greatest roleplaying moment, that has happened to me, personally, with one of my characters.

I was playing Aragon, my wood elf. The setting is AD&D, another typical homebrewed fantasy world. I had played Aragon for years. He was a rogue, but although he stole, pickpocketed, and generally drove the paladin of the party crazy, his true class if you defined it, would be recon/sniper. I had him specialized in the long bow, in long shots, and sneaking.

The basic flow of things was, it was Aragon’s job to scout ahead of the party, and stay hidden. Come back and report the situation so a plan could be formed. Any time a battle started, everyone in the party knew, and supported, that Aragon’s job was to run away. Yep. run, get to higher ground, then start picking the enemies off. He was a wood elf, so usually he would find the nearest tree and climb as high as he could, to get height advantage and better line of sight.

So one day we had been on this adventure for weeks. We had finally gotten to what we felt was probably the end of that arc. We came to this temple thing, where the “boss” we were after, was inside. It was my job to sneak as close as I could, inside if I could and get a look as to what we were up against. So I sneak inside, make all my checks.

Inside, I see a bunch of temple worshipers, not sure of the race, but they were all being controlled by a Vampire Illithid (mindflayer). Yes you read that right. That was the boss of the entire story arc, and it was pretty apparent that we would have to kill it, but go through all the temple worshipers controlled by him first. I sneaked up to the balcony get a better look, and made that check.

Now, I suddenly had a hair brained idea. This particular DM did all our die checks in the open, and told us before we rolled what we would need to beat. Probably everyone does it that way. So I’m sitting there, and I somehow had already figured out the thing was a mindflayer, AND a vampire one at that. At this point I was supposed to go back and report to the party.

But instead, I ask the DM, what I would have to roll, if I took a shot at the creature with my long bow. I was specialized in this, and had height advantage. He looked at me like I was crazy, but told me. Then I ask what about if I call my shot. He says, you do realize one shot, and you give up your sneak, and all these creatures know you are here, don’t you. but here is what you need to roll. Then I ask, well, if I break the head off of an arrow, and just file the tip into a sharp edge, what modifier would that be? He is like, what??? but he made up a modifier and told me.

Then I ask, so if I can shoot the vampire, with a wooden arrow, in his heart, does that qualify as a stake?

I got that look that a DM gives you, like…oh no… but he thought and said, yes. yes, it would.

I say, ok, I want to do it. called shot to the heart, with an arrow like this, just the wood, no head. He made sure, and said, ok you have to roll 17 or higher, and your stealth is broken immediately.

I rolled a 19. The entire table erupted in a huge cheer. The DM took his stack of character sheets for the vampire and the minions and just tore them in half and threw them up in the air. He gave me massive exp, for both killing the thing singlehandly, and thinking of doing that in the first place.

[Sgt_T8ie]

Polekatt That’s phenomenal! Epic moments deserve epic rewards!

[Sgt_T8ie]

I played in a campaign of D&D as a dwarf “B’hrian B’hloodaxe the B’hull B’huggering B’harstard of B’harston Wells” (it was late 80’s at the height of Terry Pratchett & Blackadder). He was the quintessential Dwarf Tank. He could hit hard & be the keystone in the party’s frontline, as a pure damage sponge - allowing the rest of the party to do more surgical damage. He was fiercely loyal to the party & racist towards other dwarves.

He formed an unlikely mutual hero-worshipping partnership with our Elf Ranger. They formed a tactic for scouting whereby my Dwarf would “sneak” through the forest, creating a vast amount of noise as a distraction to allow the hidden Elf the opportunity to spot & flank any potential ambushes. But additionally the Elf, when the chips were down, would join the frontline to fight side-by-side with B’hrian until someone finally hit him & he’d drop like a sack of potatoes (he was a true glass cannon). I was also highly distrusting of the party’s thief - especially seeing as how often the thief managed to get the killing blow on enemies & they have a less than friendly rivalry.

We were up to the final battle of a quest, against a very powerful (I think a demon?) adversary and the battle took a very bad turn for the worse. In the space of one turn the Cleric was knocked unconscious, the mage was exposed to incoming fire and the minions of the demon started entering the battle.

Being lowest on initiative I had to declare intentions first but react last.

B’hrian: I stand & fight.
Cleric: I lie unconscious
Paladin: I move to the Cleric & get ready to pick him up to retreat
Mage: I’m legging it
Elf: I shoot at the new minions
Thief: I’m gone <DAMMIT!>

By the end of the next round I’m still stood there toe to toe with a demon, alone, apart from my Elf friend peppering the minions & actually doing well enough to keep them off my back. As soon as the rest of the party had extricated themselves from the battle our DM removed them from the table & got them to wait in the next room.

From then on it was a step-by-step fighting retreat from that chamber, down the corridor, upwards & out of the dungeon. Every new room The Elf & I got to, we hoped the party would be waiting, but each and every time it was empty, at some point the DM gets up & brings the thief back into the room, but he literally just sits at the table for the next 10minutes not saying or doing anything. Finally we were at a point where we had entered a large enough chamber that the enemy could surround us. The Elf fired his last arrow & drew his sword. I stood firm in front with the enemy pushing it’s way into the room.

The Elf and I choose to make our last stand at the exit of the room and we try to fight back to there without being cut off. We’re fighting in a purely defensive style now, trying to get into the least awful position to mount that epic last stand. The next round the Elf drops as a big hit finally connects. I step forward to shield my buddy. At this point the DM looks at the Thief who simply nods & rolls the d20. Our Thief emerges from the far shadows of the room behind the demon & backstabs the hell out of it. DM declares the demon incapacitated for a round so I call a decapitation shot and succeed. The minions proceed to fail morale checks with their Big Bad gone and flee in terror.

Between the Thief & I, we manage to revive the Elf & head off to loot the main room. There is some very nice weaponry, and a set of leather armour that looks highly magical and is signposted as being the most important item in the room. The thief proceeds to grab the armour & stuff it in his bag. Nothing I or the Elf immediately want is discrete enough to be hidden. So I ask the DM for the gaudiest piece of jewelry I can see - turns out to be a large jewel encrusted crown.

We start to head back out to find what’s happened to the rest of our “party”. We meet them slowly edging their way back into the dungeon. They join up & we make our way back to the treasure. The rest of party starts cooing over the treasure that’s there & divvying up the rewards, when the Paladin & Cleric start to question whether or not we’d been here before. They start laying into the thief, who’s been known to sneak extra treasure and accusing him of hiding something. As he’s unsuccessfully trying to extol his innocence I come up behind him, grab his bag & start screaming at him to stop lying, and how I’d seen him take it. I reach into his bag and as he’s cursing me I pull out the crown that I’d grabbed & shake it under his nose about how I never trusted him etc. the Paladin & Cleric back off all smug & determine he gets last choice of the loot. The thief just stands there bemused as I wink at him & pass a note saying that he deserved whatever gear I saw him take as well as whatever I didn’t & fuck the rest of the party.

It turned out that the magical armour was perfect for him (but was also better than anything that anyone else could get for many levels). He also managed to sneak a nice magical dagger & some mundane loot.

[Polekatt]

Sgt_T8ie thats cool. I probably would have told the rest of the party they didn’t deserve anything, because they ran!

[Sgt_T8ie]

Polekatt said in Favorite or Craziest Roleplaying Moments:

Sgt_T8ie thats cool. I probably would have told the rest of the party they didn’t deserve anything, because they ran!

The rest of the party were well known for being pissy little bitches. They were know for withholding healing, "accidentally dropping mass damage too close to the frontline etc.

for that party it was fractured down the line: Cleric, Paladin, Mage vs Ranger & Dwarf vs Thief.

This actually got the Thief on our side for once & we managed to perform some nice power-plays on the other 3 later on with his help.

[MyLifeForAiur]

One of my favourite Roleplaying moments wasn’t anything official and was complete honour system. It happened while bored at work. I’m a forklift operator and I was watching the dock bay (people are unloading trailers and I once their pallet was full I would come and take it away). Watching 3+ doors is a busy day, 2 doors is a nice steady day and 1 door is a boring day. Usually if I have one door I jump into the trailer and help the person load the pallets up. Today however I had one door with two people in it and 3 is a crowd. All day they were talking in pirate accents. Somehow this lead to a mock roleplaying game where I was DM and character sheets were made up on the fly. Also our dice rolls were completely made up. If I said roll a 20 sided die they just throw out a random number. They played pretty fair actually sometimes really screwing their own characters.

I think the thing I enjoyed the most was being able to completely made up a pirate themed adventure on the fly. I had two main enemies that they kept encountering. The Spanish fleets out on the seas and on the islands around them. As well as the tried and true Kraken. I had two main story lines that I was trying to keep them on because I made the huge mistake of placing the main Spanish town and the Krakens lair on the same island. At this point they had raided a Spanish ship and found a treasure map. They didn’t realize it at the time but it was a trap to lure them onto the island of the Spanish headquarters. They played their characters with a low level of intelligence so in my head I devised two scenarios. One they followed the map correctly (I was giving them riddles or vague clues for them to follow). The other was get lost on the treasure hunt and run into the Krakens lair. To my surprise they decided to split up over a disagreement about one of my clues.

At this point I was super happy because I could now play out both scenarios. There wasn’t really anything super exciting or crazy that happened it was just a lot of fun and really random. My personal favourite moment was when one of them confronted the Kraken. He said he wanted to lung off a cliffside (He was in an underground half submerged cave) and attack the Kraken. I told him to roll a 20 die and he responded with 1. I didn’t even give a explanation of what happened I just started laughing and said “You died”.

[Polekatt]

MyLifeForAiur That is awesome!! So cool that you guys were roleplaying a game while working.

Was it on Talk Like a Pirate day?

A coworker and I actually got a small reprimand from our boss on that day one year. His job was the help desk, and the rest of us in IT at that company were assigned to help him on the help desk on different days of the week, because they didn’t want to hire another person. My day just happened to fall on Talk Like a Pirate day that year. He was a gamer too. So he and I started answering the help desk, and helping the people, and talking like pirates the whole time. Most of the people loved it. But apparently someone complained, and our supervisor reprimanded us and told us to stop it.

[MyLifeForAiur]

Polekatt Hmm it might have been talk like a pirate day. If it was I didn’t know about it. All I know is the two of them were doing it all day that day.

Also I’m not going to lie. If I called a help desk and the person on the other line was talking like a pirate I would probably have a great time in that call. Some people are just killjoys I guess.