We all have those memorable moments in a game that stick with us afterward. Even if we can't remember the name of the arch-villain out to take over the kingdom, we probably remember getting jailed for insulting the King's cat.

One of my favorite moments was in a Call of Cthulhu game I was running, where one of the characters was a dance student who'd gone insane and somehow ended up in control of a powerful artifact (and through it, several guardian creatures and a group of cultists).

She decided that, obviously, she was meant to become the Queen of the United States. For the rest of the game (and several days afterward), the music to Abba's "Dancing Queen" was running through everyone's heads.

What's one of your favorite role playing moments?

I have to say that they are too many so here are a few.
L5r is a game that resembles the social structure of fudal japan and china so....

1. The samurai/magistrate cannot touch dead flesh so he has a "slave"-eta (unclean) to touch the dead people and do the "forensics" part of the job. As a testament of my sense of irony i named him Corpse. The poor fellow ( an npc actually) finds himself on the wrong place at the wrong time and gets killed. The other players started joking about the dead "corpse". *corpse is dead* *no a corpse is dead. how can a corpse die ?* They were tormenting the player for weeks with that.

2.A shugenja aka mage/priest is in a place that casting doesn't fanction properly and while he is a capable fighter ( he could feed dust many fighters of the same lvl ) he elects to "fry" to goblins who attack him. He misses the spell's roll and falls on his knees nauseated and helpless. To save the pc i told the players that the goblins thought that he was bow to them and began to roll on the floor laughing.At that point the pc vomited. The player was named the "goblin vomiter".

3.The players are captured by the meanest, scariest and most powerful human villains in the game at the time. They are beaten to a bloody pulp ( john mc clain from die hard had only scratches compared to them ) and are finally brought before their captors master, the dreaded Buggy man of l5r.Now the players are all aware of how this guy is and what he is capable of and their characters are even more aware of what they are about to become so they decide to start an intellectual confrontation about samurai ethics in the off chance that they might live through the whole ordeal. At that point it was way late ( 3 am ) and i had grown a bit tired when suddenly the characters begin a verbal assault which i believe that is intended for me, surprised as i was i fell of the stool i was sitting on and the players around went from shivering terror to belly-holding laughter...

4.In the game there is an npc who is a clusso ( from pink panther)joxer ( from xena ) hubrid. I gave him as a help and guide to the players. As the story progresses they get attacked in an inn and long stories sort the guy actually gets the whole building crushing down. The attackers are killed, the characters are all badly wounded and he doesn't get a scratch. After that the players started joking about "unleashing the guy on the evil god-the poor god wouldn't stand a chance" and " watch it or the guy will fall on your head from a clear sky".

5.Super cool samurai with statistics to same many a high level fighter participates on a seige by monsters.He attacks an ogre and kills it with one stroke, then he attacks and kills two trolls and a demon. No damage on him. The player starts bragging about the chop machine he has created and is attacked by two goblins which he misses and gets killed by the first with a single stroke...

6. The player with the worst roll ( he always roll 1-3 in a 10dice,where you keep and re-roll 10s) is asked to roll for damage on a fellow player ( it was an act of mercy really) he roll 13 and knocks the other guy off the edge of a waterfall...

Well these are the ones that come in mind at this moment but i will discuss it with my players. They tend to remember how they get killed and worse better than i do.

Oooops sorry about the spelling in many a word there. I will try to be more careful in the future.

On with the moments...

The pcs are in the shadowlands, a living place full of monsters and demons created by the evil god of the game. They are on a scouting mission trying to save a boy from the bad guy. The place has a sinister intellect of its own so they start to have hallucinations about the place -green hills instead of marshes and bogs, groves in place of sculls and flowers where there are only the hair of half buried zombies... The best part was that they Never saw the same thing as a group and were quite unsettled. After an incident where they actually sat around a fire and ate with a quartet of undead whom they "saw" as fellow scouts, the players lost all appetite, and i got "stuck" with all the food we had ordered. After i ate everything ( we were 4 ) they started calling me tsuburu which is the name for a demon with a huge appetite in l5r...

The pcs are trying to get admitted into another clan's castle. After failing many social rolls one of them shows the officer a medallion they had found on a crime scene..The officer rolls and with 2d10 ( rerolling 10s ) gets 74 and they and up in the dungeon for bringing a cursed artifact in the castle...

After being beaten by the bad guy on two alterations the pcs finally "corner" him in his lair only this time they have a few aces up their sleeve.
1. They have the element of surprise
2. They outnumber him ( 4 pcs 1 is a shugenja=caster )( 4 npcs 1 is a shugenja )
3. Most importantly they are about to carry off a huge marble chalice which the villain needs.
The villain comes into the scene just as they are pushing it off its place near a 10 floor stair. Furious he threatens them to leave the chalice in its position or else... The players comply but the thing is already pushed and once they stopped keeping it in balance it falls..on the 10 floor stair...breaking...leaving them trapped -the thing was huge and now they can't make a run down the stair if they want... They end up in a gloves off fight with the guy whom they witnessed massacre a dozen guards, survived an explosion that leveled a castle and has trashed them twice already. They never gave a thought of ambushing him nor did they bargain with him so in an 8 vs 1 fight they get their butts kicked. Not wanting to kill them off ( i was trying to make them understand that this situation required more brains and less violence ) the villain grabs one of the casters by the throat and demands the fight to stop. At this point most of them are no longer capable to actually defend themselves. The "leader" of the party, the guy who 9 out of 10 gets them into trouble- yes he is the "i roll 1-3 at best, get us thrown into dungeons etch", insults the villains by calling him a coward and so on. The poor pc that was used as a hostage gets his throat cut open and after another pc manages to do some massive damage ( the bad guy actually went crushing through a thick stone wall ) the fight ends... The players are dumbfounded ; that was their first true casualty, and they never believed that they could kill off the villain. It is time to return home but the the pc/player that got his fellow killed is wounded badly..The other pc/player that "saved the day" turns to me and without thinking how he can judge the situation -he had no relative skills- he ask me-the gm- if the guy is going to make it, no rolls on estimations, and through the only npc ( a scorpion which was played by a guy who couldn't make it that day )which Hates the wounded guy still on his feet I answer "no". Before anyone has a chance to react in this, "the hero of the day" pc cuts his fellow samurai's head to "preserve" his honor...

And now for maybe the best of all..

In l5r there is a campaign setting named "city of lies". Apart of the many plots and stories to be played there there is an adventure called "Night of a Thousand Screams" co-written by the one and only Ree Soesbee. After putting some elements to the adventure to make it stick in my campaign, the players start a chase in a huge city with the clock running against them. The "black sheep" player, a very good guy actually, is given a samurai from the dragon,a strange clan full of monastic orders, who is mute, in order to minimize the "threat" he posed. After the first encounter that practically bonds the pcs together the crab pc, a bulling samurai, thinks he has taken an oath of silence and tries to force him to speak every chance he gets which of course led to many a laugh since the guy started to make noises like Kenie from south park.
After we were in about the middle of the adventure and the players are starting to get a bit frustrated, they had a very bizarre encounter with an oni ( a demon )the dragon samurai almost gets killed by a mahobujin ( very very broken fighter ) i make the ultimate twist : I have them play the part of the true villains in the story. So they go on a restricted rampage in order to bring together the "components" they require to open a hellish portal in the middle of the city!!! Turns out they were better in being bad, no mess ups, everything goes as planned and now comes the good part. They lair is hidden next to the building their previous characters had their showdown with the demon they killed ( the players as villains went through the story from the beginning so some things were re-happening from the evil perspective this time ). The lair is exposed as the demon, crushes on the lair's wall and the debris falls on one of the villains burring him ; when he freed himself he had a quick fight with the mute samurai whom he almost kills. Now after a random pick the player with the dragon samurai was playing That mahobujin.. the guy had the ability to sense blood through solid objects and realized that somebody what battling with the demon at that point i ask him where he is standing and he calmly answers "next to the wall the fighting is taking place" at that he goes " oh [censored] the oni is about to drop on my head" and of course that was what happened, he got buried by the debris and when he got free he was attached by his previous character whom he attacks and does the exact same damage....

A believe i have given enough moments; i hope they were as entertaining for you as mush as it was for us. I hope other people will share their moments as well.

Oh, that's classic!

Yes but what about this one :

The players are trying to figure out what happened in the villains lair and how a previous character got killed. I am talking about the the messy alteration from the previous reply. They "corner" the Scorpion -because it is always the scorpions fault when somebody gets it ( not to mention the fact that he really did cause the pc's death, right on their faces )- and try to use the non existent evidence they think they have against him, to make him confess the "crime". After realizing there are no real evidence against him the player whom his previous character got killed exclaims in front of a large crowed :

Scorpion ( very calmly ): And how do you know that it was i who spoke at that moment

Player ( practically shouting from frustration ) : Because i was there with jim and nick and the other guys you @#@$@....

You can imagine the laughter after this one. We were having tears out of laughter, falling on the floor on all fours.

You know your players are getting into the game when they forget their character wasn't there!

True but it was still hilarious. Not to mention the fact that the guy still believes he could have gone all the way to avenge his previous character. Fortunately he got wiped off the map with the rest of the party and the castle they were defending. You are correct : i am a shadowlands player :):):):)
The worst part, for them, is that the scorpion had left before the seige had begun, thus he is still out there...
Oh by the way the player wanted me to correct something, his exact words ( yes they still remember them as if they were spoken 1' ago) were :
Villain (holding the unconscious character with a knife on the throat " Stand down, don't throw your friend's life away "

The other player responds " What..A disciple of the Kami (gods).. hiding behind a simple mortal...and you were supposed to be some kind of a legend..."

Villain "You are correct" he executes the other guy and then beats them almost to death...

As you can see i am not a sadist, they are asking for it...*rolls 2d10 dice rerolling 10s gets a 58* Yep you believe me hahaha.

Recently, I had the privilege of playing with some folks relatively new to D&D. They already had a half-elven rogue (my favoured race/class), so I picked up and played a gnomish Bard named Simile Shortpipes.

The first time Simile met the party, the DM had to call the game on account of not being able to breath through his laughter...and they told me I was not allowed to drink Red Bull anymore (even though I had -just- opened it when I started in with Simile). Simile also fell instantly in love with the only female character--the Paladin named Faith. She spent the rest of the game trying to figure out how she could kill the Bard without changing her alignment.

The second greatest moment was with that same character. As Simile was a bard and I play bards like rogues (because I prefer 2.0 rules), he had no way of really attacking anything. And, of course, he had the highest initiative, so he began sining...for the Monk named Bao. The song went on for several rounds and was something like this:

"BAAAAAAA-O! Me say Ba-a-a-o.
De fight is on and we wan' go home!
BAO! Me say Bay, me say Bay, me say Ba-a-a-a-o.
Get de fight done so we can go home!"

I think they told me I wasn't allowed to play gnomes anymore...

Oh, that's great!

Bards do tend to have targets painted on them...they're great at annoying the other characters. ;-)

Oh, I forgot one. It wasn't face-to-face, but it was a table-top type game. It was over IRC, but we worked it like a table top.

I played a rogue (go figure) named Damaia. She was a Leathercrafter and Locksmith. I think her shop name was "Locks of Leather" or something silly like that. Anyway...

The party ended up at the Temple of our Paladin's deity. Damaia "followed Loki" as much as any rogue really...follows...a deity. So, within the temple, the half-elven rogue spots the jeweled doorknob on the Temple. NO ONE PAID ATTENTION TO HER...except the GM. She walked over to the door and leaned against it, fiddling with the knob behind her back. I got a message from the GM asking for a dex check, so I rolled and passed it. He laughed. When the party went to exit, Damaia opened the door for them and no one was the wiser that the door knob was missing....until we were out hunting things and the Paladin's "Divine Protection" spell didn't work. He couldn't figure out why and Damaia passed every bluff check. The next day when the GM updated our sheets, Damaia had a rather powerful artifact in her possession... <.<

It was fun and just goes to show that you really can get away with stealing stuff from a temple! :-D

O_o The doorknob was an artifact? That is awesome. >;D

I love playing light fingered rogues, too. I don't know that any of my characters have ever stolen a doorknob before, though...that's a great story!

Of course and GMs reward smart playing on behalf of their players. I am in quite a problem because of that myself. Here is why and please if anyone has a good idea please, please share it.

In a high pace, "see the pcs run,run pcs, run" story the party splits up to chase a band of thugs in a huge maze of a city. Their objective is to catch as many thugs as possible in order to extract information. The problem is that although they are pawns of the lowest level and the info the give ( and know ) is intended to push the story forward the leader knows more. Actually he knows enough to pose a threat in the continuity of the story. The pcs can practically skip the Whole story and change the story fundamentally. So guess what they manage to catch him alive. Smart thinking and good, really good rolls did it and now i can't just "suicide" him nor "execute" him before he talks. So with one pc a living lie detector, another an aspiring torturer and the whole party turning into guard dogs to guarantee his safety....you see my problem. Please if anyone has an idea please share because i am supposed to meet the players next weekend and i need to prepare.

Does the leader of the thugs *need* that much information? It's fairly typical for villains to not let their subordinates know enough to be a danger, especially low level ones. It'd be more in character (for most villains) to have the leader of the thugs know just enough to lead the party into the next trap, rather than enough to be a true danger.

Of course, you do want to reward the party for having done something that wasn't supposed to be possible. So perhaps the next stage of the plot *was* a trap, and the leader knows just enough to warn the party of the trap, allowing them to go into it better prepared.

Oh, here's where I'm totally cruel... >.>

The party knows the Thuggy guys has info, right? The Thuggy guy knows the info he was given to be true....

But who's to say the Thuggy guy has THAT HIGH of a roll to detect bluffs?? I'd totally set it up as a trap--that the Thuggy guy was supposed to be caught, tortured, and inquisitioned by the party. The information he gives them, to his knowledge and theirs, is absolutely 100% correct...except it leads them right into a trap. That way, the next encounter level can be more difficult without really altering the story... much...

*ahem* This is why Kryssie isn't allowed to DM much...

Actually, that sounds more like a reason to force you to DM...the adventures would always be fun!

Ok you are right but ( my bad here ) the big problem is that the villains - who are actually dupes for the real threat, a kick butt shadowlands lost/oni/undead army waiting to be summoned by the dupes and some of their masterminding kin- Do Not Know that there is a gathering of potential heroes ( aka the party ) doing the impossible seem like a child's play in order to track some porcelain masks ( the only lead they truly got ). What is worst the next 3 parts of the adventure ( who the players are threated to skip ) is intended to give them Real information on what is really going on, plus allies And the Only means available to stop the total annihilation of the empire's second largest city ( not to mention that if this goes through then the villain of the story will be armed to the teeth for the next part of the campaign...

Don't know my best, But I'll tell you my worst, I had got to level 5, a level noone else had done, and someone pulled the plug out I was LOL!

Well you know you are allowed to decapitate the culprit and stick his head on a pike outside your door....sorry that is the sadistic, evil GM speaking.

My husband reminded me of this quote from one of our small sessions. I was duoing a half-orc fighter and an elven cleric while a friend was soloing a human fighter. The human failed every spot/listen check...to the point that we ended up fighting a horde of kobold, then he fell into a trap that my two boys had to try to get him out of (which isn't easy with a half-orc with a 3 int...but very entertaining). Upon pulling us into the trap (because the dice were cruel that day), he says, "First kobolds, now traps! Are dungeons just not safe anymore!?!"

We had to take five minutes to settle down from laughter.

I will admit it is hilarious

I just had a vision of an OSHA inspector going through the dungeon while the evil villain cringes every time the inspector makes a note on his clipboard and shakes his head.

Oh, and this is the best. Ever.

Oh, that was great! And thanks for the incentive to catch up on my Order of the Stick reading...I'd fallen behind a few strips.

That reminds me of a one-shot game I played in. My character met in some creepy town a fighter (I assumed due to his big honkin' sword) who was played by another character. He seemed nice enough, and I chatted with him a bit. Suddenly he got this enraged look on his face and yelled "SHUT UP!!!" My character, a tiny sorceress, was horrified and just stared at him. He looks calm again and says something like "Go ahead, you were saying?"
Fast foreward to the end of the game, we're hauling [censored] down the road away from the great evil thing we awoke in the village. The guy playing the fighter says to the DM "I throw the damned sword into the bushes!" After a bit, he says "I throw it again!"
After the game it was explained to me what had been going on. Apparently the guy wasn't a fighter, he was a thief, and he had managed to steal the cursed sword of OSHA. The DM had talked to him before game and said that when he did a certain motion, the sword was telepathically whining to the thief about him being unsafe in some way. Since it's cursed, he couldn't get rid of it, and since he's a thief, he couldn't use it!

Oh, now that's an evil DM!

Oh man yes. The expression on the player's face said it all, and the VOICE he gave that sword...:: shudders:: "You shouldn't be driiinking, you'll get sick. You shouldn't be running, you could drop meeeee." This is the same evil DM who loved throwing frogs at us. High hp, low exp, NO freakin' treasure! We were the chronically broke team.

Yep reminds me of ME. I like him already.....

Oh, man!! *dies laughing* Grey, your stories trump all.

I have some truly excellent DMs and players, so it's easy to come up with this stuff.

I just remembered a memorable time playing a LARP version of Star Trek. It was set on a Klingon warship that was carrying a variety of passengers for one reason or another. I was the political officer, in charge of making sure that all the crew were following arbitrary regulations (half of which I made up on the spot).

I was also a shape shifter who'd disposed of the original political officer and was infiltrating the crew. At one point the body of the original surfaced, and so they did a detailed medical scan on me. It showed, of course, that I wasn't Klingon.

I basically spun a wild plot involving time travel, and shouted that "I am a Klingon" when they brought up the medical scan. I managed to make myself obnoxious enough that half of the crew thought I really was a Klingon, despite all the proof.

It's a lot of fun playing the bad guy now and then!

[glances from side to side]

I could mention things about Kryssie and her RP, plus a few favorite moments. But...I won't. She knows my address.

Well, in any game, my all time favorite moment is when...

I am winning over my husband.

I guess my favorite moments are in the Resident Evil games. You are carefully walking down a hallway to check a door and suddenly the window breaks near you and a monster otr a herd of zombies are there.

Scares the bejeezus out of you. It does me anyway.

Oh, there has to be some sort of witness protection program we can get you into...those sounds like some stories I'd love to hear!

Yea come on. I promise i will curse her to eternal housecleaning if she blincks at you....worse if she does more.


And yes fufu's curses Always work.

Hey, now! I swear I'm innocent! Innocent!

*coughs* I'd actually forgotten we'd played together, Julie. Mostly because I've really worked to put that game out of my head...

[gives Kryssie a look]

Forgot? See if I play with you again. HMPH! Especially now that someone is going to give me Eternal Housekeeping Chores. Yeeks.


I'm really just teasing. Kryssie is one of the very best RPer's I know and have the chance to play with, albeit briefly.

*misses Raven* >.>

Well i was going to curse kryssie, as a safeguard for you to "share" your experiences with us but if you ...."volunteer....."


(puts on the ceremonial costume and porcelain mask)

"O great Fu Leng hear this plea ! I, your Servant call to you. Give Julie that for which she craves the most. Offer her the opportunity to prove her knowledge as cleaning editor, prove it in practice, let not one inch of her personal space remain tidy & clean....for 2 weeks"


Hm i think that covers it.