Ever had an RPG bring a tear to your player's eyes (or your own)?

[Deadguy]

Quite a few times I've brought tears to either my own eyes or to a players. Though almost all of those have been in one-on-one games, where the level of immersion was much greater. It's a superb payoff for investing so much into the emotional drama. Of course I've also had raw anger and even feelings of betrayal, but all told it has been worth it.

 

[pogre]

The only time we even came close was out of anger. A player of mine had just been double-crossed again by the BBEG of the campaign. He was so furious he was nearly crying.

 

[BaldHero]

I have only ever had tears in my eyes from laughing too hard.
Some of the funniest things i have ever heard have been things that took place at the game table.

My players are not the sort to cry, but they have twice errupted into spontaneous applause over the end of two different games. That was a pretty good indicator that they had pretty strong emotions.

 

[Kanegrundar]

The only time any other emotion other than amusement has been exhibited at any of my games was one time one of my players got really ticked at me for pulling a really low "bastard GM" stunt. We were playing the old Seige on the Citadel Mutant Chronicles boardgame. One of the event cards allows the GM to switch two board tiles. Well, I had two players each controlling a different team and the only one that had any chance of hurting the BBEG, the Ezoghoul, had escaped safely, leaving the other player to make a mad dash for the exit. Both of his characters (each team has two characters a piece) were severly hurt as they ran the gauntlet of enemies and were within sight of the exit board when I drew that card. I played it and swapped the exit and starting board pieces, forcing them to head back through the large group of monsters he just barely survived running past. The look on his face when I did that was priceless. He couldn't believe that I would screw him over like that! He just went quiet for a bit, and I could tell that he wasn't happy. He then sighed and started back the way he came...both of his characters were dead in 2 rounds. He still jokes about it anytime we play any game to this day.

Oh yeah, there was another player that got pissed at his crap rolls in the middle of what was becoming a TPK and threw the offending D20 down the hallway. We never did find that die.

 

[TGryph]

You in Charlotte, TGryph? My brother lives there and is looking for new players/DM. If you're interested i can give you his contact stuff.

Just outside of The Queen City In Matthews. We play a Gurps Fantasy Campaign every other Sunday, but I may be interested in starting something in the off week.

Drop me a line at tgriffith@earthlink.net, and I will talk it over with my players

TGryph

 

[The Grackle]

Leaping out from the bushes was Player B. He cried, "Good afternoon, (Player A)!" and proceeded to beat the ever living snot out of him. I was both amused and horrified.

My god, this is funny. I don't why, but something about prefacing a beating with "Good Afternoon," is really hilarious. The only way it could be better is it wasnt' actually afternoon at all. Like he had planned on it the afternoon, but then waited so long the sun went down.

Anyway...

I've never made a player weep, but once I made a guy actually start gagging just by describing a scene. I was pretty proud of that.

 

[demiurge1138]

Then came surprise #2: Jur's primary nemesis showed up to ruin things, and the remaining PCs were able to cathartically blow him out of the sky with a proton torpedo filled with Jur's ashes. (Killing off that nemesis also wrapped up a lingering plot thread, which was handy for me as GM.)

I think that's my favorite of all of these stories. The proper combination of deep emotion and PC ass-kickage. I know that's how I'd want my remains disposed of if I were an adventuring type.

In my experience, I've gotten a lot of emotions out of my players (joy, shock, fear, anger), but I've only gotten one player to cry. And I really didn't mean to. The player was deeply attached to her kitsune character, and a blow from a chaos-ooze turned her into a human. That got tears. Frighteningly enough.

Demiurge out.

 

[Tsillanabor]

After 8 years of campaigning, the world of Corylak came to a close. The last original player (I was DM) was moving, and I had decided it was time for a new world. So the PCs were fighting off the apocalypse. They were in the Abyss, fighting a Demon Princess and getting their rears stomped. The original player's character fell in battle. Now, this wasn't his first character-when characters reached 20th level we retired them. His first, for instance, was a human Cavalier-Paladin (from the original Unearthed Arcana) named Boreal who mysteriously disappeared single-handedly holding a mountain pass against a demonic army.

Now, the Demon Princess Karrissa was a powerful mage who enjoyed turning her enemies into statues with which she decorated her palace. Our mage had been turning them back to bolster our own forces. In her throne room he brought back a knight in shining red dragon armor shortly after the original player's character fell.

Reaching into my filing box I handed him Boreal's character sheet. With a tear in his eye and a savage grin on his face he absolutely wiped the floor with Karrissa, three Balors, and associated other demons. It was a fitting ending. We then role-played the return of the heroes to Eaglecrest (the seat of the Empire, it was actually founded by Boreal a thousand years earlier) and we read a closing statement which I'm not going to type because I'm too darn tired.

 

[Vymair]

I've felt sadness and grief among players at the gaming table, but I can't ever recall someone actually shedding tears over the events of the game. That sense of loss you feel when a key character dies or sacrifices does stir the echoes of those feelings of losses I've experienced. It can make for an interesting session as when people get emotionally involved, it can make the role-play spicier.

As for high-fives of victory, those are much more common

 

[Odhanan]

Ever had an RPG bring a tear to your player's eyes (or your own)?

Yes. Playing Vampire The Masquerade, ran by Jean-Yves Eckert, in 1994. We were playing his own setting, Venice by Night, and we got confronted to a character, Cylia, who had been embraced during the days of the Republic. When she became a vampire, she was pregnant. And for the next two thousand years, she has been carrying the child in her belly.

Jean-Yves started to roleplay the character who entered a sort of gloomy trance and told us, PCs, her tale for the next half hour of game. At the end, you could hear a pin drop, and everyone was in tears. And I mean everyone around the table. Awesome. The only time it happened to me. I'm not saying that this is the only way to have a great moment in a RPG session, but this was certainly a special moment in its own right for everyone involved. We were all fully invested in our characters. We were playing in the attic of an abandoned school, by candle light and all that jazz.

If you are interested about this background, let it be known that a very ancient mummy later performed Rites on Cylia, allowing her to give birth to the child, but killing her in the process. Our PCs became the wardens of this child, who we named Zillah (amateurs of the Book of Nod will recognize the name as one of the Cainites of the the Second Generation, which also included Irad and Enoch). She grew up abnormally fast, and my character ended up in love with her. This created a sort of incestuous situation in which my character, Wheldrake (fans of Moorcock in the room?), fell in love with his own child, and after loads of drama ended up attempting suicide.

It didn't stop there, but that's not really relevant to the topic at hand.