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Cleverdan22
2009-08-21, 01:50 PM
So I looked back like six pages, and couldn't find anything like this. This thread is for posting any interesting or awesome moments that you had as a DM, or a DM had with your party.

I'll start with something from the last session I played. My friend (Anathemus, if anyone has seen his posts around here) was DMing, and we get to a room with a treasure chest at the top of some stair, and four large iron skulls in the four corners of the room. The rouge is wary, as the room is obviously trapped. He checks the skulls and doesn't find anything, he checks the floor, and with a spear, prods and opens the treasure chest. Finally, he goes back into the last room, beheads a dead hobgoblin, and throws the head onto the stairs. Four zombies tumble out of the now open mouths of the iron skulls. One snaps its rotting leg and is prone for a few rounds.

That's right. Zombie trap. It was awesome. And a bit of a challenging fight, as well.

Name_Here
2009-08-21, 02:29 PM
This is from my Dark Heresy campaign.

The group was investigating the disappearance of an entire regiment of Imperial guard troopers who went out for a patrol and never returned.

Their investigation brought them to a huge cave where all of the troopers had been sacrificed to chaos and either impaled on spears around the cave floor or nailed to the cave ceiling. I had intended for the group to get out of their Chimera (a Light transport tank) and investigate on foot. They of course decided they didn't want to give up the protection of the tank after I said that the entrance to the cave was large enough to allow the chimera to enter.

So of course what was meant to be a creepy fight as they engaged in a firefight with cultists using bodies as cover turned into the driver trying to run down every cultist with the treads of the tank, and a brutal hand to hand fight inside the tank after the bad guys pried open the top hatch. I still can't help but laugh everytime I think about that fight cause it is so over the top and needlessly awesome.

Dekkah
2009-08-21, 02:46 PM
My players are still talking about this game session (DND 3.5) they found awesome that we played a couple years ago. (as DM, my fun come making stuff that my players will find challenging and remember)

As a test to judge de worthiness of the players, i decided to make them fight themselves. I planned this and took time to listen and search (even prompt come chit-chat about it) whom among themselves each players were afraid of and would dispatch first, a couple session before it would happen.

For the test (the funny part is that they didnt know it was a test), the players come into a big cave, with a lake in the middle. When they approach the lake, a kind of cyclon start in the middle of the lake, and water start spinning around soaking them (for my encounter purpose, it warn them of possible trouble, and is how the magic "probe" them to make their clone).
Then the cyclon stop, and from the lake, rise a water copy of themselves.
I remember hearing some "omg" "crap" and things along that line.
I ask each players to keep note of exactly what spell they have memorized for me so i can use them with my copycat. When the clone turn came, i took the player sheet, decide it course of action (going for the character they were afraid of) and execute the attack.
The fight was tough for them and very challenging, but they managed make it without any death on their side. Of course, i didnt play their copy as a team (each one were going for whom they sees as the biggest threat), but i still tried to maximize the effects (area spells) around focusing on their target.
It was quite fun as a DM also :).


I also remember an huge battle they made against a Drow and goblin army. It took 3 sessions to complete it and every bit of their stregth (around lvl 12). We were playing once a week at the time. The thing that make me smile the most was when of them included me in an Email by mistake(during the week between the 2nd and 3 game) , revealing me they were pooling ideas and planning strategy to win the battle (behind my back :) ). In the end, they had to Planeshift in the plane of shadows to escape (was a close call - they were out of juice and werent sure if their ennemies were lol).

sofawall
2009-08-21, 02:53 PM
So I looked back like six pages, and couldn't find anything like this. This thread is for posting any interesting or awesome moments that you had as a DM, or a DM had with your party.

I'll start with something from the last session I played. My friend (Anathemus, if anyone has seen his posts around here) was DMing, and we get to a room with a treasure chest at the top of some stair, and four large iron skulls in the four corners of the room. The rouge is wary, as the room is obviously trapped. He checks the skulls and doesn't find anything, he checks the floor, and with a spear, prods and opens the treasure chest. Finally, he goes back into the last room, beheads a dead hobgoblin, and throws the head onto the stairs. Four zombies tumble out of the now open mouths of the iron skulls. One snaps its rotting leg and is prone for a few rounds.

That's right. Zombie trap. It was awesome. And a bit of a challenging fight, as well.

I'd be wary whether or not the room is trapped, if I were a rouge.

Doc Roc
2009-08-21, 03:07 PM
I'd be wary whether or not the room is trapped, if I were a rouge.

If I were a rouge, I'd be pretty red-faced if I was caught out like that. :smallbiggrin:

Swordguy
2009-08-21, 03:22 PM
My players still talk about this episode in hushed terms of reverence and awe.


GMing Shadowrun a few years ago. The runners are going through an underground base in the Redmond Barrens - it's some sort of advanced weapons facility sponsored by Ares Macrotechnology. The first floor is security. The second floor down is, oddly, full of bunkrooms and kids sleeping. They bypass the next several floors (training and "care of kids" areas) and got down towards the bottom, where the labs are.

In one of the labs, there this huge metal forearm - about 12 feet long, with a pair of cannons mounted on the back, all pointing down a test-firing range. They download a bunch of material off the lab computers, when the decker (going for extra paydata) sets off an alarm. The team tries to hoof it, but takes a wrong turn and ends up in a massive rocky underground chamber (50' ceilings, etc). They can hear some sort of heavy machinery moving off in the darkness. But wait! There's a huge cargo elevator - more of a platform, really - there that should take them (according to the floorplans they'd stolen) straight up to the warehouse outside which they'd parked. They load up and the elevator takes them upstairs. They engage in a brief shootout with the warehouse guards, when one of the notices that the elevator has gone back down. They peer over the edge and shine flashlights down, but it's too far. Then the elevator starts coming back up. They decide to get to the van, since they're afraid it's reinforcements.

They're just piling into the van when the elevator reaches the warehouse. I ask the PCs to step into the kitchen while I set the scene, and then they come back, this is what's sitting on the table (on the elevator platform):

http://www.fanen.com/files/produkte_cover_12735.jpeg

For reference - it's 13" tall...and IN SCALE with their 25mm miniatures. As they filed back into the room, one by one, every single one of them paused for a moment and said something to the effect of "oh ****".

The Mech smashed its way out of their warehouse, and a wild chase through the barrens ensued, with the team frantically blowing off their emergency LAW rockets (each one carries one - just in case. This is the ONLY time they ever used them) at the BattleMech.

The game was supposed to end at midnight. The players insisted on staying the extra four hours it took to resolve everything (since I had planned for it to be a cliffhanger game).

Typewriter
2009-08-21, 03:25 PM
While playing in a campaign my character got tired of all the people who kept giving us quests being intolerant. The city was full of lawful people who would hire people to kill goblins and kobolds, even when it was just women and children goblins/kobolds. I attacked someoen butchering women and children, and he knocked me out. I was arrested, and told my views were wrong, then forced to work in the mines as punishment (basically as a slave as I saw it).

Bitter, I told my DM in the other room that I was going to spend all my money on anything explosive I could find and attack the town then flee, but that I would be making a new character whose views would work better with the rest of the party and the city so as to not create a disturbance in the gaming group.

Turns out the DM had been trying to trick us as people we had been working against were the real good guys, and that the city was the bad guys. It was just that we hadn't figured it out yet, so by having my character hate on the city and run off he had allied himselves with the actual good guys much earlier than the DM had expected.

Hijax
2009-08-21, 03:53 PM
about a year ago(my group has sessions very rarely), we was attacking this small fortresses, where we had good reason to believe the artifact we were searching for was.
we were examining some small outhouses on the edge of the courtyard. my ranger entered a very dirty and messy room where, wierdly, one of the walls is entirely clean. I tell my dm i fire an arrow at the wall. the wall sprouts a pseodopod and beats me out of the outhouse.

later on, something our dm described as "looking like a living piece of card" dropped on me from the cieling and tried to suffocate me.

when we had gotten the artifact, rid the village of its troubles(which involved me using our rogue[halfling] as ranged weaponry to knock down some unidentified small creatures from the stairs), and were celebrated accordingly, the townspeople song praise of the undetectable rogue, the mighty wizard, the holy cleric, the splendid bard... but nothing for me! frustrated, i said "They forgot bambo, ranger and slayer of wierd creatures!"
That was a source of major lulz for about a month(somebody commented i should get favored enemy(wierdoes) at next opportunity)

RandomNPC
2009-08-21, 04:28 PM
I'd linky the breakfast golem, but i don't know what it was actually called. So i'm calling it the breakfast golem. I got this idea from the boards but here's how it went over in my game.

DM: everyone sits down around the table for breakfast, and a clay golem with a hard baked chest walks up to the table. "good morning" it says, "Would anyone like a bit of lamb for breakfast?"

Party: OK, why not?

Golem: Opens a door in its chest, revealing a small fire elemental turning a leg of lamb over his head. "Its a living" the elemental says. The golem produces a Knife from a belt and begins slicing portions off for the players. Then he adds "Good, now, would anyone want a potato with that?" as he closes the door.

3 party members: sure, potatoes are good.

Golem: Holds the first persons plate behind him, grunting and making a straining look with his face. The party hears a *plop* and the plate comes back from behind the golem with a potato on it. The other two party members at this point decline potatoes. Having dispenced all the wanted potatoes the golem asks "Who wants coffe?"

Dust
2009-08-21, 05:19 PM
I ran a Mutants and Masterminds superhero game awhile back where one of the PCs was named Big John, inspired by the song of the same name (http://www.lyrics007.com/Johnny%20Cash%20Lyrics/Big%20Bad%20John%20Lyrics.html) by Johnny Cash. The party found him when they pulled him out from the collapsed mine in the song, fifty years later and much worse for wear...but incredibly, alive.
The heroes had built their base in the center of a mountain, and the primary villain was a charismatic sort who left his victims little more than soulless husks.

Big John, being a sensitive sort, ultimately went behind the party's back and started cutting deals with the villain to keep the number of NPC casualties to a minimum. He actively worked against the rest of the group in order to save as many lives as possible, but ultimately allow the villain to continue with his evil agenda.

Eventually, the party discovered this, and attacked Big John...who fought back, using nonlethal attacks to decimate his former team in a few rounds. Big John fled back to the base, where he turned on the communication systems and broadcast one last message out to the world, asking for forgiveness.

The party brought the mountain down on him, trapping him under thousands of tonnes of dirt and rock, just like before.


I call this a DM moment because, unknown to my players, I had been expecting this series of events and final outcome from the beginning, and modified the events of the game so that it was as poignant a moment as possible. Big John's player - a large, emotionless bouncer in real life - still tells me it was the only time he ever got emotional about a game.

Fax Celestis
2009-08-21, 06:05 PM
I call this a DM moment because, unknown to my players, I had been expecting this series of events and final outcome from the beginning, and modified the events of the game so that it was as poignant a moment as possible. Big John's player - a large, emotionless bouncer in real life - still tells me it was the only time he ever got emotional about a game.

See, that. That there. That's why I play, dammit.

Forbiddenwar
2009-08-21, 06:31 PM
I'm pretty proud of a moment in my last game.
the pacing was running slow as the party was trying to search for a secret door in a prison. there were some yawns, and the last encounter ended in 1 round with a good turn undead check from a npc
Then the party trips a magic trap, save or fear. the cleric and sorcerer fled. The next cell door opens. instead of undead or a corpse or a gibbering mad human, like most of the cells had, the party sees a small halfling girl, fully armed step out and sneak attacks the party. that got everyone's attention. the next round instead of attacking again, the halfling rogue tumbled away and unlocked another cell. out steps a vampire. two abysmall saves later the party was facing a TPK from the dominated barbarian. an intense battle that lasted 2 hours, the party pulled through, with the druid hitting -9 before getting a potion that the monk provided by tumbling past the battle line and the barbarian, having just nearly killed his friend, regained his sense and took out the vampire.

Why is this an awesome moment? The preparation i did showed a dead end there. no trap, no halfling fully armed, no vampire. I realized no one was having much fun so I just pulled this encounter out of nothing and ran it. Now it has become the most memorable encounters of our game.

WeeFreeMen
2009-08-21, 08:27 PM
In a game I was playing in..I played a ninja.
Not the stealthy kind, think Naruto with loud and flashy things
(Ninja 3 / Swordsage 17. lol)

Anyway, my teammates rescued the objective, but began to flee before I could meet up with them by way of a carriage pulled by several warhorses. They didnt know who I was because I was undercover (let alone a changeling)

Seeing this, I took the Tower-Shield off a dead enemy solider, put my objectives, a small child and wounded woman onto the shield and attached one end of my "Rode of Ropes" onto the shield then I proceeded to shoot my Rode of Ropes with the grappling hook at the moving wagon, going full speed.

I rolled a 20 to my delight, and snagged on, then I pushed the retract button on the rod of ropes, and saved the objectives while standing up on 2 legs over them, "Snow-Boarding" with the Towershield. Plus, I took out 3 chasing members of the opposing faction with Fuki-Bari.

I was quite proud of this, and to see the DM's face was priceless, let alone the laughter of the group when I said "I am for the wagon" :smalltongue:

Yahzi
2009-08-21, 09:31 PM
My players went west looking for the fabled city of dwarves (they'd never seen a dwarf). They find a dwarf sitting on a rock, waiting for them. He convinces them to put on blindfolds so he can lead them by secret passages into the dwarf kingdom.

Of course its a mind-flayer in disguise, and he leads them into a room with a beholder and a bunch of giant spiders. One of the players knew it was a trick, but he just couldn't convince the others, so he went along with it. The monk player actually detected evil, and still didn't realize it was a trap. There was a moment where they first entered into an open, musty area, and they almost wised up... but not quite. Not until the blindfolds came off.

Would have been an awesome battle, too, if it weren't for Tumble checks (monk tumbled past the spiders to attack the beholder).

rezplz
2009-08-22, 12:16 AM
So this one time, I was DMing for one of my friends. They had just fought through a bunch of orcs with beef'd up magical strength that was being siphoned off of this comatose dragon in these caves. So the adventuring group beats up the orcs, one of the party died - quickly making a new, more optimized character - but they finally make it.

They are able to read some runes and stuff on the wall that basically say "Yo, there's a dragon here, so you gots ta push these runes and stuff to open the door, legit?"

The mystic theurge thinks that something's fishy, so he goes up to this door. It's big, it's metal, and it's magical. He looks at what's around this door - stone. He scratches his chin a bit, and decides to rest for a night to prepare new spells.

Morning comes around. The party still ignores the runes and goes up to the magical door and regular stone. Moving to the stone beside the door, the theurge casts stone shape, bypassing my trapped, magical door entirely. I was a bit surprised, but I rolled with it.

He made a hole in the five-foot thick stone, and looks through it - sure enough, he sees the red dragon, looking curiously at the wizard/cleric looking through it. Theurge panicks a little, and hurries off to a corner of the room, looking at the hole.

The red dragon pokes his head through the hole and looks at the wizard. At this point, the entire party started laughing. I was very confused, and it took me a while to get them to calm down so I could see how the theurge was going to panic and run out of the room. He didn't. His reply?

"I cast stone shape".

Hijax
2009-08-22, 12:25 AM
So this one time, I was DMing for one of my friends. They had just fought through a bunch of orcs with beef'd up magical strength that was being siphoned off of this comatose dragon in these caves. So the adventuring group beats up the orcs, one of the party died - quickly making a new, more optimized character - but they finally make it.

They are able to read some runes and stuff on the wall that basically say "Yo, there's a dragon here, so you gots ta push these runes and stuff to open the door, legit?"

The mystic theurge thinks that something's fishy, so he goes up to this door. It's big, it's metal, and it's magical. He looks at what's around this door - stone. He scratches his chin a bit, and decides to rest for a night to prepare new spells.

Morning comes around. The party still ignores the runes and goes up to the magical door and regular stone. Moving to the stone beside the door, the theurge casts stone shape, bypassing my trapped, magical door entirely. I was a bit surprised, but I rolled with it.

He made a hole in the five-foot thick stone, and looks through it - sure enough, he sees the red dragon, looking curiously at the wizard/cleric looking through it. Theurge panicks a little, and hurries off to a corner of the room, looking at the hole.

The red dragon pokes his head through the hole and looks at the wizard. At this point, the entire party started laughing. I was very confused, and it took me a while to get them to calm down so I could see how the theurge was going to panic and run out of the room. He didn't. His reply?

"I cast stone shape".

priceless.

KillianHawkeye
2009-08-22, 06:21 AM
Stone shape has a range of touch. :smallannoyed:

Tallis
2009-08-22, 11:51 AM
I ran a Mutants and Masterminds superhero game awhile back where one of the PCs was named Big John, inspired by the song of the same name (http://www.lyrics007.com/Johnny%20Cash%20Lyrics/Big%20Bad%20John%20Lyrics.html) by Johnny Cash. The party found him when they pulled him out from the collapsed mine in the song, fifty years later and much worse for wear...but incredibly, alive.
The heroes had built their base in the center of a mountain, and the primary villain was a charismatic sort who left his victims little more than soulless husks.

Big John, being a sensitive sort, ultimately went behind the party's back and started cutting deals with the villain to keep the number of NPC casualties to a minimum. He actively worked against the rest of the group in order to save as many lives as possible, but ultimately allow the villain to continue with his evil agenda.

Eventually, the party discovered this, and attacked Big John...who fought back, using nonlethal attacks to decimate his former team in a few rounds. Big John fled back to the base, where he turned on the communication systems and broadcast one last message out to the world, asking for forgiveness.

The party brought the mountain down on him, trapping him under thousands of tonnes of dirt and rock, just like before.


I call this a DM moment because, unknown to my players, I had been expecting this series of events and final outcome from the beginning, and modified the events of the game so that it was as poignant a moment as possible. Big John's player - a large, emotionless bouncer in real life - still tells me it was the only time he ever got emotional about a game.

That is a great story. Normally I don't really like to encourage pvp, but I applaud that player for coming up with an awesome character.

Drakevarg
2009-08-22, 02:06 PM
Stone shape has a range of touch. :smallannoyed:

Overwritten by Rule of Cool.

hotel_papa
2009-08-22, 03:15 PM
I ran a campaign that, following a brief intro dungeon, landed the characters in a tesseract, which I painstakingly made as mathematically consistent as possible. All of the rooms were numbered. 7 of the eight chambers held death in the form of synergistic monster and trap encounters, the 8th a sort of respite. The monster/trap rooms respawned when you closed the door behind you, and the only way out was to successfully predict the room that you were about to enter three times in a row.

One of the rooms held an Omnimental and four walls full of swinging, flaming blades that the creature would ignore/be healed by. After the first encounter with it, they learned to choose the doors that didn't feel warm or make the minotaur's fur stand on end with static electricity.

In another chamber, they fought 4 brass golems in a room with randomly determined lava curtains falling every round. Hard fight. They were ALL hard fights. After the battle, when the party was trying to figure out what door to pick next and what number to guess the next room was, the minotaur felt the tell-tale warmth and static on the door on the floor that suggested the omni was on the other side. He had the rogue unlock and open it, but not before tossing one of the brass golems over his shoulder. The moment the door opened, he threw the minotaur-shaped golem through the door.

Can elementals be crit? No. When he rolled a natural 20, did that particular rule matter to me? Not really.

In the omnimental's room, the door on the floor of the golem room ended up being on one of the walls. The sheer majesty of a thousand pounds of brass statue flying into a flat-footed omnimental, powered by a raging minotaur with levels of warhulk... that one still gets talked about.

pita
2009-08-22, 03:21 PM
One of the D&D moments I enjoyed the most DMing was this instance:
The group had just met the villain. He was an old red dragon, and they were level four. They were a group of two. He was supposed to toy with them a bit before leaving to continue his plan. They started fighting with him, and the orc barbarian got a critical with his great axe. Confirm critical... another 20. We have a house rule that every crit you get, the multiplier increases by multiplier-1. Therefore, he had x5 damage. He rolled again and it was a hit, but no crit. He got a 12 on the die. +6 modifier on damage became +9 because of double handed, and he ended up killing the villain with Death By Massive Damage, in the first round, because of a fluke.

CyberRebirth
2009-08-22, 04:31 PM
he ended up killing the villain with Death By Massive Damage, in the first round, because of a fluke.

This is why I don't use the death by massive damage rule.

pita
2009-08-22, 05:03 PM
This is why I don't use the death by massive damage rule.

This was after a long argument with the players about my constantly adding house rules. I allowed it for one game, to see what it was like. It was fun, in any case. Besides, a character dealing over 100 damage with one hit, is pretty awesome.

Woodsman
2009-08-22, 05:16 PM
I'm kind of new at DMing, but one moment that made me proud was at our last session.

Being new at this, I had accidentally let slip the session before about vampire's resistances (and forgotten the specifics of the troll's regeneration ability, which kinda-sorta led to the players killing it without acid/fire (though they didn't stick around long enough for it to actually regenerate. They dealt quite a bit of damage to it)) during a fight with a vampire, which led to the most experienced player in the group changing his actions. He was going to use gloves of lightning, but decided against it. He told me afterwards that wasn't a good idea, and I agreed it wasn't my smartest move.

So, next session rolls around. Near the end, as the group is exploring a big city, the same player sets up shop and scams citizens into buying overpriced dragon parts (that he'd killed earlier in one hit due my stupid house-ruling. Changed it right afterwards. Hey, I'm new). I almost told him, "You know you're coming back, right?" The campaign is an island exploration, where it's basically episodic. He didn't know I was planning on having them come back, so I shut my mouth.

As the end of the session rolls around, I tell the players that they'll be coming back -- frequently. The look on his face -- priceless. The player came up to me after the session and told me that was a really good move. I told I'd remembered his advice, and he responded, "Good."

So, yeah, that was awesome. I have a feeling more is to come, though.