D&D General The story your friends still talk about...

[Kodiak3D]

Gaming is about telling stories. What story do your friends still talk about the most?

For me, it's a boss encounter with a lich that had been antagonizing the party for a long time. They had finally entered his lair and made it to his throne room only to find it empty. An obvious magic circle was around the throne. The druid approaches the throne and crosses the circle.

Me (the DM): "OK, let me look up this spell...(grabs PHB). Let's see...Circle of Death."
Druid: "What's a Circle of Death do?"
Me: "What does it sound like?"
Rest of the the players: (roaring with laughter)
(Yes, it was a modified, higher-level version of the spell.)

Druid fails the save and dies. The cleric decides it would be a good time to cast Mass Heal on everyone. What they did not realize was that the lich was in the room, just invisible and watching. He also happened to be within range of the spell. The cleric said he was healing "everyone in range of the spell" so I ruled that he also got the lich. A painful groan came from the corner of the room as the heal spell nearly killed him. The bladesinger rushed in that direction, found the lich, and put him out of his misery (not hard as he only had 1 hp left). The boss battle was over in just a few seconds.

I may have played a little loose with the rules, but it resulted in a story that they still talk and laugh about 20 years later. As a DM, it makes me feel good having been part of creating a story like that that lives on in their minds.

 

[Sjappo]

Some 20 years ago we had a string of first time players that all gravitated to the Ranger. And all of them wanted to go hunting solo. And all of them encountered a Boar. That never ended well.

And every time the former newby watched his successor being gored by the Boar with an amused look on his face. And to this day we invite players playing a Ranger for the first time to go hunting. They invariably refuse.

 

[Kodiak3D]

Some 20 years ago we had a string of first time players that all gravitated to the Ranger. And all of them wanted to go hunting solo. And all of them encountered a Boar. That never ended well.

And every time the former newby watched his successor being gored by the Boar with an amused look on his face. And to this day we invite players playing a Ranger for the first time to go hunting. They invariably refuse.

Lol, this reminds me of the very first game I DM'ed. It was a published Dragonlance adventure called "Knight's Sword." The adventure started as planned, but when the party camped on the first night, the ranger wanted to go hunting. I thought to 15-year old self, "Um, that's not in the book...guess I'll have to wing it." By the time it was all said and done, the ranger had been chased up a tree by a bear and everyone was having a great time.

I didn't run a published adventure again for nearly 10 years.

(Side note: Knight's Sword is a pretty decent beginner adventure.)

 

[R_J_K75]

Only one of many. 2018 playing Rats of Waterdeep and we get to the part where the neighborhood downtrodden have constructed and are worshiping a statue out of trash and other refuse. One of the players berates them and shouts at the top of his lungs, "...WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU PEOPLE, YOU'RE WORSHIPPING GARBAGE..."! He then proceeded to tip it over and set it on fire. I'm sure it's not as funny having not been there but it was so spontaneous and hilarious that we still bring it up regularly.

 

[Richards]

One that my younger son still remembers well is when I ran a campaign for him and his older brother. They got involved in an attempt to permanently kill Orcus on his home plane, and I played a "long game" of seeing how far I could get my oldest son's PC, a cleric of the "Uber-God" (he'd decided most of the good gods were all just separate factions of the same deity), to travel down the path of evil. In his desire to be the man who personally slew Orcus for good, I got him to: join forces with an information devil; imprison a valkyrie inside the body of my younger son's sorceress PC, to be sent into a kamikaze run against Orcus when the time came; amass and lead an army of devils; help capture an innocent paladin to be transformed into a vampiric servant of Orcus specifically because it would temporarily weaken the Demon Lord; send the calcified body of Cthulhu crashing into Orcus's realm of Thanatos (with the PCs and the devil army along for the ride); and finally betray his sorceress companion so he could slay Orcus. (He found out only at the last moment that the artifact-level fiendslayer spear he'd brought to slay Orcus first needed to be "charged up" by the blood of an innocent, so he stabbed it through the sorceress's body and from there directly into Orcus's heart.)

End result: Orcus was permanently slain, but the backwash of evil channeled through the spear corrupted the sorceress, converting her instantly into the new Demon Queen of the Undead. The cleric of the Uber-God didn't last very long after that.

My younger son still rankles at the betrayal to this day.

Johnathan

 

[payn]

My players were storming a mountain castle and needed to rest up and heal. They found a guard tower with hammocks. Well one of the hammocks happened to be a mimic. The fight was hilarious as they all woke up groggy as the elf Sorc was being eaten. After that, anytime the party crossed paths with a hammock, they would slash it to ribbons with their daggers to be sure.

 

[houser2112]

I don't know if it's still talked about almost 30 years later, but for a few years at least, there was "that time Valgaron Voltronned the efreet".

Our 2E party was ambushed by an efreet while traveling through the desert. He cast fireball on us, and then flew into the air to escape. My PC, Valgaron (half-troll [think goliath] fighter), had a +2 two-handed sword that also had the ability to cast jump and haste (1 round duration, self-only, no side effects) 2/day each. Valgaron was first in our party able to act. He drew his sword (with an audible sharpness sound effect, of course shing), activated both spell abilities, jumped straight up into the air, and attacked the efreet 4 times with his sword. I rolled a 3 and 3 natural 20s. The DM didn't bother asking for damage, but said something like "You slay the creature with an impressive display of aerial swordsmanship. When you land, the head and other pieces of the creature land around you.".

 

[Ruin Explorer]

We had a slightly similar thread a few days ago, and I think it's got to be "The Massacre at the Funeral" I described there. Where my players just completely took me by surprise by essentially completing Steading of the Hill Giant Chief in a single encounter. They still bring it up regularly.

Generally anything which involves them completely blindsiding me is likely to come up a lot, though the next most common is probably "that time we call got killed by a vampire on a train in CoC", which I was one of the players for.

 

[R_J_K75]

In 2E I was playing a Moon Elf Mage 3/Thief 2 with the Spellfilcher kit. We were in Myth Drannor exploring one of the ruins. We came across a stone golem. The other 2 players ran and hid in a closet leaving me to fight the thing by myself. I used all my spells, every magical item, and was down to my last 2 or 3 hp when I finally destroyed it. Think I ended up jumping on its back so it couldnt hit me, hung on long enough to grab a wand out of my boot and blow its head off. Back then you declared your actions then rolled initiative so combat was quite different. Later in the same adventure we came across a vrock, it was another tough battle be we just ganged up on it, got lucky and won rather quickly. I ended up with a +3 luck blade out of that fight. Come to think of it we werent purposely going into Myth Drannor we were just wandering around Cormanthor and ended up there, so the DM just started throwing a bunch of high HD creatures at us. Thats the way we played back in those days, we didnt run modules, we'd pick an area and just make up adventures there. so we kind of knew it was possible to have a TPK because we went where we shouldnt have. For the life of me I cant remember what happened to those characters but I think the game got put on hold and we never restarted it. It was so long ago I only recall mostly vague bits and pieces with a few particulars mixed in, but I remember it being really fun.

Note this is not meant as slur or to offend anyone, that is not my intention, it just happened so organically that it was so funny we had to stop playing for 5-10 minutes to stop laughing. See my above quote for background.

Mid 90's, playing 2E. My compatriots left me to fight a stone golem by myself, both ran and hid in a closet. Round by round the DM would go around the table before initiative asking what every player was planning to do. For about 5 rounds (the same guy who burned the trash heap in my initial post here) said I'm hiding. On the the 6th or 7th round the DM asks him what he's doing, he say "coming out". At this point it was just me and the DM engaged in combat so we'd pretty much forgotten he was hiding and where. The DM say, "Coming out of where", to which he replied, "the closet". Needless to say we still talk and laugh about it to this day. He just happened to show up unexpectedly and play last Friday and someone brought it up.

 

[Richards]

Another one, from my current group of players (but from an earlier 3.5 campaign than the one we're in now), is the time I had three of the four players running doppelgangers instead of their normal PCs (although they didn't find out that was the case until the very end of the session), specifically so they could turn on the one player who was actually running his own PC that session in an attempt to kill him. The details can all be found HERE.

Johnathan