Campfire tales: tell us about YOUR old adventures!

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Dark Angel
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Re: Campfire tales: tell us about YOUR old adventures!

Post by Dark Angel »

One of my more recent successes, I had an evil artifact created for good purposes (removing evil from the world, one person at a time). It was a mirror with several cracks in it that mended itself as it drained the evil from the person (effectively making them Innocents). However, the more evil the person the more that was drained (in the form of xps) in a painful way. The fact that the players were TERRIFIED at the xp loss, they protected it from others not realizing that the loss was a one time thing. The catch? The mirror held a unique lower planar creature (all evil, all goes in). The group was tasked with bringing the mirror to a monastery near northern Barovia to finish the mission of a cleric who died trying to bring it in years earlier. They did and found the complex raided by Kargat agents who captured the players and tied them up in a very Raiders of the Lost Ark style. They unveiled the mirror and all of the baddies fell down in severe pain which also filled in the cracks of the mirror releasing the held fiend.

The next several minutes (players still not looking on, scary mirror magic!) are filled with screams, smoke, and heat as the fiend rips through them all. He marks the players on their jaws (burned claw prints) and departs. The one player that looks is a priest of the Morninglord who fails his horror check and gets obsession! He now believes that the Morninglord has come back in a fiery form to cleanse the world of his enemies. The other pcs have no idea, but get their things together and move out. Several adventures later, they are sent to Borca to locate the source of Gundarakian rebel suppliers. One of the first nobles they meet, takes them in and is very welcoming to them. He "hires" the pcs to help them out of some local trouble with the militia and takes them in, food and board in his massive manor (with the French title, the Manor of Harsh Nightmares). This noble is really the fiend (polymorphed) and actually grateful to the group as he sees the group as allies who helped free him.

Several adventures go by and the group knows that this guy has something going on, but not sure what. He does odd things and they know he is an outsider to the Core. The best was when a pc slipped in invisible to see what is really going on only to have the noble turn a corner and see him immediately, but was not upset in the least. When the players and the noble were effectively a Borcan problem, Ivan’s forces stormed the manor. The Dark Angel (as his name roughly translated to) assumed his true form and unleashed fiery storms (the Borcans killed his girlfriend). They would all eventually flee, but the group had no idea they unleashed this creature and that it would spur all of the above events and more. The overall arc was 100% all me and I was happy to see the group enjoy it so much.
"One does not stop playing when they get old, they grow old when they stop playing" George Bernard Shaw
"If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?" Chuck Palahniuk
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Re: Campfire tales: tell us about YOUR old adventures!

Post by Black Knight »

My proudest moment in horror was getting a group of players riled up, anxious and paranoid about each other without the use of a monster encounter. Half the gaming session simply consisted of walking through an enormous forest's path for days on end. It was pitch black and contained no food; a single character's magic allowed everyone to eat (Priest spell, 'Goodberry', level 2) and only the few characters with infravision allowed any real progress. The now-blind human followers and PCs were becoming increasingly irritated about their powerlessness and everyone was worried about the possibility of attack in the silent night.

Then, one 'morning' (the time in the perpetual darkness of the thick forest when people woke up) a player said 'We continue', and I asked 'Which way?'. 'Forward' came the response, to which I replied 'the road goes both ways, and they both look the same. Which way's forward?'. At that point, I got some really wide-eyed looks of panic.

Eventually there was, of course, an encounter with a slaverying firbolg giant, but the real tension and terror was made by casting detailed descriptions about a starving march through and endless, blind, night.
Currently working on a fairy-tale investigation horror - Big, Bad Hunters. Click the link for a free copy.
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Dark Angel
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Re: Campfire tales: tell us about YOUR old adventures!

Post by Dark Angel »

One of my proudest moments as a player was in a short lived Greyhawk campaign where the DM based the abbey we were sent to on Redwall (book series, never read them). So the others are playing their obligatory priests and paladins and I decided on a bard. A neutral evil self centered spoiled brat (my officer father wanted a boy) bard who was very difficult to work with. When the group came to pick me up from an inn I was waiting for them at, I refused to get up as early as they wanted. They end up forcing their way in and dragging my pc out. That is when I screamed like a girl (my pc was a girl) and 2-3 guys came out to see 4 others wearing weapons and armor accosting a unarmed woman. I made lawful good pcs fight off innocent strangers! I am almost worse as a player! Needless to say, I eventually got all my things together and went to the entrance of the inn when I was told it was still raining. I told the others to just pull the carriage up to the front. They didn't have a carriage. I said, "I am going back to my room." That was when they almost lynched me.

-Much later in another session-

We were sent by Halflings (ewww) to find and root out some goblin raiders led by a vicious bugbear. We found them and had a fast battle before the bugbear entered the fray. Actually, the bugbear launched some arrows at the group. Striking me with a nat 20 and another player suggested the DM use their homebrew crit charts (many should be shuddering at the thought). A few rolls later and I just lost my left eye. Didn't kill me, but I went down writhing in pain (others not noting my roleplaying a trauma to the head). Then the bugbear charged into battle. The rest of the group was a bit beat up at first, the priests and fighter types were quick to unconscious land. As I was the last one "standing", I looked at the DM (who just informed me the bugbear was advancing) and said, "I cast Sleep!" The bugbear falls unconscious, I wrap up my eye quickly, and behead him. Then I stabilize the group and they come around. They look somewhat put off when the spoiled little girl who had an arrow in her head took the baddie who took them down in single combat with a decapitating blow!

I then turned to them and said, "And there is no way you can say otherwise! You were all knocked out!" They really didn't like that.
"One does not stop playing when they get old, they grow old when they stop playing" George Bernard Shaw
"If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?" Chuck Palahniuk
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Re: Campfire tales: tell us about YOUR old adventures!

Post by Dark Angel »

In the 90's, running my less than stellar Ravenloft campaign, I had players fending their way through Castle Ravenloft and they encountered Strahd in a less terrifying circumstance. Words were exchanged and the weasel pc (or at least the player was) said that he was going to curse Strahd. I said that's like setting Satan on fire. Then he said he was going to curse Strahd so that his socks would disappear when he put them on forever leaving him, sockless....

I pulled out the books, looked up the various modifiers (he even put it in a rhyming format, but no escape clause and it was not really justified), and he rolled. I do not recall the exact result, but he rolled too well for me to even try to fudge the results. Even though that pc was hanged from the parapets, the player was always proud of the fact that "Strahd has no socks!"

God I hated that one.

Lucky for me when I rebooted the campaign, that went away officially.
"One does not stop playing when they get old, they grow old when they stop playing" George Bernard Shaw
"If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?" Chuck Palahniuk
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Re: Campfire tales: tell us about YOUR old adventures!

Post by NoNeedForNames »

^ So THAT's why Strahd never wear socks...

My current group (where nobody is younger than 30 physically!) started out in a refugee camp in my homegrown campaign Wartorn Lands. Their first adventure was investigating why people dissappeared from said camp. Tracking, scouting, and a bit of luck brought the PC's to a cave where goblins sacrificed people to their god.

So, what does the PC's do? They wait until after the sacrifice, to see what happens. When nothing much seems to, they kill all the goblins except one. The last goblin gets a rope around his neck, and is prodded and beaten into submission. They give him a name, Ziggy (after Ziggy Stardust), and treat him as a slave/henchman/sherpa. None of the characters speak goblin, and poor Ziggy doesn't speak anything but goblin.

Several sessions later, the PC who "owns" Ziggy dies, and his last words are to the new ranger: Take care of Ziggy!

Now, this new ranger actually speak goblin, and decides to treat Ziggy better. She also teaches him, and trains him. Now, almost a year after the PC's captured him, Ziggy is a level 1 ranger npc.
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it's like drinking hot chocolate
but with more screaming.”
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