Great Moments In D&D / Roleplaying

[Jason Tandro]

I know we got a lot of roleplayers here from my own Forum RP to Flintlock's Pathfinder games. I'm sure we all have great stories to tell. Well today inspired me to share one of the most insane sessions I've ever had the privilege of DM-ing.

The premise of my D&D Session, which is loosely set in the world of The Elder Scrolls, is that the players are all characters from literature and are in the world of Apocrypha trying to stop the greatest celestial book burning of all time for... reasons.

Anyway the first story my group found was a fanfiction written by Hermaeus-Mora when he was a teenager. Let me amend that, it was a Shrek erotic self-insert fanfiction.

Details:
- Shrek was an angry Scottish Orc who probably represented his father.
- "Donkey" was there, but it was two of his high school bullies human-centipeded together.
- Hermaeus-Mora appeared as a total Mary Sue in the fic as "Hermes, The Mighty" who always announced that he was not only the mightiest but "the best at the sex"
- Hermes also the one who crafted all the weapons and armors but because he hates wizards all wizarding gear and spells cost a fortune and were all but unusuable.
- When referring to Hermes people often used the phrase "He doesn't afraid of anything."
- Since this was a holiday special Santa Claus came to the aid of Hermes when my players battled him.
- Not to be outdone, our heroes summoned Jesus who took the form of a bear (this is long time canon that Jesus appears as JesusBear in this universe).
- The two gods battled for Christmas ala that South Park short.
- Santa revealed himself to be the Krampus.
- At the end the two Gods fusion danced together to become Santa Christ and devour Hermes.

Oh! And at one point I excused myself to the bathroom only to come out screaming "WHAT ARE YE DOIN' IN MUH SWAMP" with this getup on.

Spoiler: Pictures

Annnnyways, your alls turn. Tell me your greatest D&D exploits. The quests that got away from you. The wonderful grandiose derailments.

 

[Joe]

A buddy of mine one-shot a boss by fucking up. He tripped into an encounter with some furry fish man which got him attacked before he rolled initiative. The attack was pitiful and our dumbass warlock was able to react to it with hellish rebuke.
The fiery counterattack crit for damage and did double because the thing was vulnerable to fire.

He killed the boss before the rest of us even saw it, by tripping into a room.

 

[ForceStealer]

I've only ever GM'd one campaign. It was Pathfinder and in the Dragonlance world. The last session was merely because I was moving for a job and wasn't sure if it would continue (it hasn't). So it didn't really wrap up the story, but it would honestly be tough to continue because I really blew my fantasy load on it.

So background: The PCs are around level 8-9 but one of them has secretly been a young copper dragon in the form of a doppy elf bard all along (young dragon stats and just one level of bard. He had to clandestinely roll me performance checks when appearing to take more damage than he actually had). And they have just sneaked their way under the lair of the big big bad (like, the main villain of the books). It's the huge temple in the city that is, of course, built into the side of a volcano.

If you don't know, the bad guys in Dragonlance have an army of Draconians that were created with a horrible ritual corrupting the eggs of the good dragons that the evil guys had stolen and were holding hostage to keep the good dragons out of the war. The party was being sent to determine the actual condition of the good eggs in the hopes of bringing the metallic dragons into the war. Did the mention the name of the setting is called Dragonlance?

So ANYWAY, they arrive at the inner sanctum and, while hidden, witness the awful ritual with cultists, mages, and an ancient red dragon around a gold dragon egg which opens and spews out hundreds of Draconians. Our heroes' dragon friend, unbeknownst to them, spectacularly fails a frenzy check upon seeing this, transforms back into a dragon and charges into the room. This was actually the end of the second to last session and everyone else in the party was absolutely blown away. None of them had even suspected that of their bard, and that was pretty awesome. There was an NPC (from the books) that was travelling with them who was also secretly an Ancient Silver dragon and also transformed upon seeing the party member go into a frenzy.

So the next session was the fight. The main point of having the Ancient Silver with them was so that she could fight the Ancient Red in the cavern above "off-screen" while the rest had a more level-appropriate fight. Throughout the course of the fight they located the stash of eggs, and gathered up as many as they could and made their escape.

The side of the cavern opened to a tunnel containing a swiftly moving lava flow that they knew led into the lake at the foot of the mountain. So the party got onto the backs of their newly-revealed dragon allies and took off down the tunnel with two chromatic dragons giving chase.

(I told you this was the most gratuitous fantasy porn imaginable.)

There several rounds of pursuit, dodging pillars and stalactites while flying at high speed like that level in the Aladdin Sega Genesis game. The Silver had to use her ice breath to harden the lava in turns so she could bank without her wings dipping into it, the works.

Finally they exploded out the end of the tunnel and turned north. Then the Big Bad himself started after them from the top of the temple on his ancient red, one-handing a flaming great sword (Level 23 dude, NOT to be effed with, I just wanted to scare them for the last few rounds). The one player, though, with a miraculous called shot, hit his hand with an arrow, causing the flaming sword to tumble to the lake below. Ariakas pointed at the player, who slumped over dead, only held onto by the rest of the party. And they flew off to where the rest of the good dragons had sequestered themselves, session over.


So yeah, absolutely everything ridiculous about fantasy crammed into one session. But, as someone who isn't terribly confident about my GMing skills, I was super proud of that one. It was incredibly exciting and all the players were super into it. And the reveal of the dragon party member that he had been sitting on for so long was awesome. Sorry that was so long

 

[Jason Tandro]

@Joe: Nothing is funnier then when a failed check goes horribly right. That was gold.

@Force: As well you should buddy. That definitely sounds like something fantastic (forgive the pun). Secret character falderal is a lot of fun, especially if the others aren't in on it.

Case in point I ran a Zombie Holocaust themed game but I added a bit of a kick to it - Each of the players had their own personal goal which - if they succeeded - would horribly screw over, and effectively end-game the other two. So they had to work together for the sake of the zombies but also were incredibly mistrustful of each other. The final reveal at the end was a shitload of fun and I've never had a session as suspenseful since.

We actually record all of our sessions and edit them into albums, which is amazing because whenever I want to I can go back and relive the magic. The only ones that are public (so far) as some Harry Potter themed ones that my friend has been editing and threw on his channel.

Spoiler: Example

 

[Lord Noctis]

I have a number of tales from my last group, but the one that sticks out right now is the "Joey-Kiting" incident.

Here's the setup. The party had been working for one Lord Constance, who ruled over a large area. They'd done a number of missions for him, and it had become clear over time that he was rather corrupt. After a time they were approached by another Lord, named Winston, who requested their aid in bringing down Constance. After a bit of haggling ("Can we have some magic items?") they agreed. Fast forward a bit and Winston's forces are laying siege to the city of Constance. They manage to breach the walls, but are grinding to a halt inside the city, being held up by numerous gates and the like, and its looking to be a long, bloody battle.

The party had previously acquired a poison that was basically a zombie plague, which they fired into an enemy held part of the city by catapult, hoping that the ensuing chaos would allow Winston to gain the upper hand. Thing is, they underestimated the potency a bit, so before long much of the city was overrun by a zombie horde, which sat directly between the party, and the castle that they were trying to reach.

It was clear that the horde was far to large to fight. Thus a plan was formed. Our mage had robes of levitation, and the invisibility spell. The monk, who had fucking ridiculous speed, tied a rope to the mages waist, and was made invisible. That done, the mage levitated himself into the sky, about a hundred feet up iirc.

So the invisible monk dashed through the city streets, towing Joey through the air like a kite, and thus drawing the zombie horde away. Consequently the party was able to proceed. End of the day, Lord Constance was executed by Lord Winston, who then spent the next couple of in-game months doing his level best to clear the city of zombies. The party, rather wisely, never bothered to mention the role they had played in unleashing the zombie menace. Best to let Winston think Constance had done it as a desperation act.

So, thats one tale, I have others I'd like to share as well, but they'll have to wait. Work calls, sadly.

 

[Lord Noctis]

Here's another of my favorites, same campaign as before. So, normally I DM, but now and again I get bored and let someone else in the group take over for a while. I rolled up a tiefling warlock and handed the DM role over to another of the guys. He set us out on an adventure where we basically went to the wonderful land of Oz, only it was a bizarre version where the wicked witch was running a massive weed operation, for some reason.

Anyway, the Wizard of Oz also had his own weed operation going in competition against the Wicked Witch, and he hired us to take the fight to her.

It didn't take long for the Witch to catch wind of our involvement, so she came on down to size us up, threaten us, and maybe try to recruit us to her side. During the ensuing conversation our Wizard, Joey again, talked her into discussing things over a cup of tea. Now, he had a potion that could turn a person into a cat, with all the stats that implies. See where this is going? He rolled a nat 20 to convince this Witch that the potion was in fact a sweetener that would make her tea taste amazing. Next thing you know the Wicked Witch is just a cat, and one good round of dissonant whispers from me put an end to her.

Keep in mind, this wasn't meant to be the final battle. This was still early, intended to just be a preliminary meeting with the big bad. Oddly enough, that guy hasn't been willing to DM since.

 

[Superespresso]

The last game I played in, someone was solving the traps too easily so we got locked in a room with one door. No way in, no way out besides the door. The door was locked.

It took us 3 hours to just knock on the door. That was apparently the answer.

 

[Lord Noctis]

It has been my experience that most D&D groups are so used to the concept of picking locks and finding hidden passageways that the most simple solutions don't even register anymore.

I typically find that if the party is taking to long to find the answer it might be best to just provide an alternative. Otherwise people just get frustrated and the fun element starts to decline.

 

[Jason Tandro]

To both of you all I can relate a somewhat similar experience - vis a vis simple solutions not registering.

My party (and really me personally) got a room full of hostages killed because we didn't spot check. Not we didn't spot check for traps or spot check for hidden enemies, we literally didn't spot check at all and rushed into a room with an enemy who proceeded to trigger a trap killing all the hostages and himself.

But the next session opened up with us fired and in a bar, so that was fun.

 

[Superespresso]

It has been my experience that most D&D groups are so used to the concept of picking locks and finding hidden passageways that the most simple solutions don't even register anymore.

I typically find that if the party is taking to long to find the answer it might be best to just provide an alternative. Otherwise people just get frustrated and the fun element starts to decline.

It was more funny than anything else. It doesn't happen very often, so our DM was being a little bit of a smart-ass about everything. He was having fun doing it to us and past ten minutes trying to open the door we were all making jokes and just having a good time.

To both of you all I can relate a somewhat similar experience - vis a vis simple solutions not registering.

My party (and really me personally) got a room full of hostages killed because we didn't spot check. Not we didn't spot check for traps or spot check for hidden enemies, we literally didn't spot check at all and rushed into a room with an enemy who proceeded to trigger a trap killing all the hostages and himself.

But the next session opened up with us fired and in a bar, so that was fun.

...oh my god.