Awesome Player/DM Thread

This is fairly minor but I love when GMs describe the environment in a way that is evocative but also good for gameplay.

In the first campaign I ever played we were besieged by hobgoblins and goblins in this room. We were fighting them off for a while and it was pretty brutal as they were all converging on us from different entrances. As we slayed more and more of them the DM described how the floor and thresholds were littered with corpses and the goblins were struggling to climb over the mess. We shifted our tactics to the offensive and pushed them back into their own piles of dead, sandwiching them into corners. They soon fled because of our awesome fighting and we were standing in the middle of what has been forever immortalized in our group as "The Goblin Alamo"
I loved that adventure and that fight because its when the light really clicked in my head that D&D is more powerful than any videogame, the environment around us had changed in an actual and believable way, and when we took advantage of it the goblins didnt act like mindless chaotic stupid dispensers, they lost morale and fled.
That kind of GMing has been a model to me in how I GM my own games, and is an essential part of any good combat.

Yeah thats a great example of it. The diplomat may have a silver tongue but he may say the wrong silvered words.
I kind of think of it as "failing forward" in some respects, because more often than not the failure opens up a new avenue of roleplay and interaction for the characters

Thought it would fit under "stupid deaths"

sound cool. many time DMs forget about stuff (like corpses) as soon as it stops directly mattering

So yeah, youre bad at reading. give it one more go

All that greentext in the OP was what NOT to post. The thread is "awesome players/dms."

The age old adage of no plan survives contact with the players never fails to surprise me. I'm a pretty meticulous guy and try to account for everything but my shadowrun group always manages to give me a moment where I just have to say "well, yeah, I suppose that might work. Let's see what happens next". Some examples that have amused me:

>The rigger doesn't have any silent or nonlethal weapons so he turns off all his aiming programs, turns on all his stealth programs, and rams all of his drones into the enemies at high speed
>Surrounded in a super secure room on a high up floor with no means of escape the samurai cuts her way down into the floor below
>While attempting to not be noticed in a public place during a deal they actually lock down the place and kill all the civilian witnesses as show of force
>They provide a dirty bomb, false identites, and Intel on a political target to a terrorist group and basically help set up an horrible attack just to distract the guards down the block enough to rob a building a little easier
>Any time the mage says, so I can make this object weightless with levitate right?, followed immediately by questions of how ramming rules work or so my mage hands have agility 8 and can interact in line of sight right? Followed by questions of if they can defend against invisible hands stealthing everything on their person
>Mage uses basic fucking psychology and his invisible mage fingers to make a guy spill his soy coffee on his pants and makes him leave his high security detail outside the bathroom while he cleans up out of embarrassment
>When they suspect they are being set-up for a trap when trying to make a trade the Rigger says, why don't we just rob them on the way to the meetup if we know what they are driving? This results in a 3 hour chase scene on motorcycles that uses none of my set pieces but ends up being great.
>The face makes a point of getting a Trideo Star as a good friend. This becomes backdoor access to everywhere.

The most badass thing any player of mine has done by far is when he and his party were stalking this kidnapper who had grabbed a girl. The player in question was a warlock and he used invisibility and stayed close to the scumbag so they wouldnt lose him. But the kidnapper took a turn through a complex alley and the warlock decided to keep on after him so they wouldnt lose him and the girl, but this meant that the party had no idea where he went and no chance of reaching him in time.

The kidnapper was opening up a cellar and was about to get inside when the warlock's invisibility ran out, and he had to make a move. With no spell slots left, and only cantrips he made what the most impressive and badass last stand ive seen in a long time.
Hurling an eldritch blast at the kidnapper who was about to enter the basement with the girl, he attracted his attention and immediately casted shillelagh on his quarterstaff because he knew he'd have to fight in melee. The kidnapper charges at the warlock, all 7 feet of half orc fighter, and they enter melee. The warlock fearlessly bats at him with his quarterstaff but its clear hes getting owned. He continually yells for his companions in the city but when they finally reach him hes on the ground with his last death saving throw.
He died the next round. But the party cleaned up the kidnapper and found the girl and several other victims in the basement and freed them. It was the warlock's sacrifice that made it possible.

It was really fucking heroic, and that player had my respect for being so invested in the story of what was going on that he sacrificed his character for it.

>Mage uses basic fucking psychology and his invisible mage fingers to make a guy spill his soy coffee on his pants and makes him leave his high security detail outside the bathroom while he cleans up out of embarrassment
wow, that's so simple, yet brilliant!

The only time my players metagame is when they do it to the entertaining detriment of their own characters. I love my players.

>They provide a dirty bomb, false identites, and Intel on a political target to a terrorist group and basically help set up an horrible attack just to distract the guards down the block enough to rob a building a little easier
This is basically my SR group. We once burned down a block of Redmond with Willie Pete as part of being security for an underground fight club.

(Then the sniper/hacker kidnapped one of the MCT security responders, locked the guy in a shipping container, and committed some warcrimes because TM haet MCT.)

>This is basically my SR group
I think this is basically every shadowrun group. Black trench coats and mirror shades never fully cover up the pink mohawk in the group.

We always liked to refer to our style as "Pink Trenchcoat and Mirrored Goggles"

Fucking ace player, right here.
Send him my regards, he needs to know a stranger on the internet likes what he's doing.

Thanks I will. Hes pretty humble about it too. But really that player is a joy to DM for, my whole group is great and I love them all but that one player is always my go to guy whenever theres something to get invested in or some hook to pursue.

Too many players nowadays take this really edgy and cynical perspective on being a hero. But heroes and heroic acts are the heart of D&D, and those are the stories you tell with your friends and on the internet.

I fucking love players that arent afraid to face death and become legendary, too many players hoard their characters and never take any risks for fear of letting their precious character die. Becoming a HERO is what this game is about IMO even if its just a local hero of a town who stood up against a kidnapper.

And of course a good DM will make sure that their heroic actions are in fact remembered and celebrated. Not just some forgotten wretch who nobody gives a shit about. Nothing will give you cowardly players faster.

Here's a neat one my party did a while ago:

>Party tracking down a Drow raiding party through a forest
>Have to cross a small cliff ledge with a river running through it
>Only path through is over a rickety wooden bridge, but the bridge has been claimed by a sleeping troll
>Instead of risking a crossing, the sorcerer realizes the part of the cliff near the bridge is not as wide a gap as the path leading up to it
>He has a magic broom, which can operate independently of him in a small distance
>Just enough distance that his Magic broom could reach across without leaving it's maximum range.
>The broom starts ferrying the party across one at a time (the broom can't carry much weight, which is why they couldn't ride two at a time across the cliff earlier. Only the party wizard, whose a literal skeleton, could ride side straddle with the Sorcerer at the same time).
>Unfortunately, the troll wakes up to find the last two party members still on his side.
>The last two have to bite the bullet and pay the troll toll to cross while the rest of the party (and the broom) hid on the other side
>They contemplate killing the troll, but decide they need to catch up to the Drow first.
>They capture a Drow forward scout shortly after leaving the bridge behind them
>After a little interrogation, they discover the Drow have set up camp for the night up ahead
>They also skipped paying the Troll Toll by going over the mountain past the bridge
>Party suddenly has a devious idea
>Drag the Drow at knife point back to the troll
>Said they found him sneaking past HIS bridge
>Drow rats out his companions in exchange for his life, and the party asks for "but a small supplication for helping expose these foul Toll dodgers"
>The half of the party that didn't have to pay tolls is laughing about this across the bridge
>Troll ends up believing the party, and tells them to "Wait here" while he deals with the trespassers, promising a reward when he returned.

(cont.)
>Party of course desides "Fuck that" and doubles back to the group and follows troll
>Troll gets into big fight with a 30-40 man Drow encampment.
>Fights close to ending, and both sides are injured.
>suddenly, the Tiefling Sorcerer that looks like Satan, and the Wizard that's a sentient skeleton start pelting down Fire and grease into the middle of the camp riding on the magic broom they snuck across the bridge on
>Entire camp is engulfed in flame
>People dying in semi-napalm strikes while the Druid throws fire from the trees on the ground, and the fighter picks off anyone that tries to run into the woods.
>Everyone burns, including the troll who can't recover fast enough.
>Drow encampment leader (who would've been a tough fight on his own) just breaks down in the middle of the burning camp in hysterical laughter
>Fight cracks his skull with a tonfa.
>They take all the non burned loot in the camp, including the stuff the Troll stole from them
>They walk off into the woods as the sun rises over the desolate ashes of the encampment
>mfw my party pulled a Vietnam and they're only level 5

My first character ever was a paladin and mother hen, but when it came down to his party getting hurt he'd turn into a fucking grizzly bear. His specialty was severing the jaws of his enemies with his warhammer for being potty-mouths. One day another player(barbarian) accidentally enrages a silver dragon, but instead of running like everyone else I swoop in front of the barbarian to heal him and block him from the next hit. Pally dies via claw through the chest, and two others of our party still die, but I got a slow clap at the end of the game.

Antidisestablishmentarianism may be the word you're searching to describe.

DnD 5e starter kit. I DMed for my first time for just my younger brother. He chose the pre-made mage. I was retarded and didn't read the book at first, so there were too many pauses until I decided to just wing the whole damn thing. So many goblins died. I kept letting him barricade himself in parts of the cave to take long rests. When he found the old kidnapped man the goblins almost killed him, so I had to make the old man into old man conan. The rest of the cave up to and including the bugbear was fire spells and a half naked old man beating goblins with the charred remains of their brethren. The bugbear died from lots of burning, and a broken stick jammed through his back. I was terrible, but it looked like he had fun.

>tfw a player actually thanks you for the session

I feel bad for the troll. Poor guy was just doing his day job.

I love it i didnt realize sorcerer was a tiefling til after ayyy lmao

>tfw this happens every session

Jealous.

I LOVE IT

Quick and dirty Shoop

>fellow player in 5e campaign
>I'm from the other half of the group so I don't know his character
>he's playing an amnesiac old man
>calling everyone "sonny" or "lad" because his character keeps forgetting
>rolls occasionally and often wanders aimlessly because of lower rolls
>can't get a fix on his class
>he says he's a wizened old wizard
>beating things with his cane
>and throwing boulders
>while saying stuff like 'I cast a thunderous blow upon thee, whelp!'
>I had my doubts
The voice sold it. Think a deeper-voiced Sultan from Aladdin. The best parts would be whenever he was reminded of the existence of either an overarching story or some technobabble by another character. He'd just look at the speaker for a minute, then go "What?" like he'd been told the mic was still on. Dude was a great roleplayer.

Did you ever figure out anything about this guy?

Was he a Wizard after all? A muscle wizard, perhaps?

Yeah, the group somewhat felt bad for him too.

He called himself "Da Strongest" and talked in a phony Jamaican accent, and he seemed to keep his word.

He did destroy they other bridges though, so theres that.

Full-on martial iirc. It was glorious.

That Magnificent bastard.

>thought my campaign was gonna be SUPER SERIOUS CYBERPUNK BUT WITH ALIENS AND ALSO IN SPACE MAYBE
>players ham it up
>the tone and setting are basically fudged because I can't stop laughing at the idea of a trio of super-suited mercs having to rely on spotty Google Maps directions to get to the super-secret base

>eventually make it to space

>one player keeps making incredible bartering/mercantile skill rolls, making offers they can't refuse left and right
>he has a small business now, but he's making connections and blackmailing left and right

>the other player is murder-bossing his way through everything
>he's basically an interplanetary small-time crime boss now, through will of bullet

>I myself can't stop accidentally giving every other NPC a stereotypical accent of some sort
>we are officially addicted to the best tasting soda in space, Slurm
>half the worldbuilding and mythology is made through missed rolls, improv'd throwaway lines, and running jokes
This is way more fun.

I've got a story, I suppose.
>Playing WFRP 2e
>Party consists of a human pitfighter, dwarf smith, elf envoy, and a human graverobber.
>2nd session
>Party is in the woods on a trek between towns
>Gets ambushed by Orcs
>Envoy has a ridiculous starting ballistic skill but no ranged weapon and a piss poor weapon skill
>Missing every round with his sword
>At this point I just suggest finding and throwing a rock, as the penalties for doing so would still be less awful than his terrible melee stats
>Finds a smooth stone, chucks it at an Orc
>Finally a hit! And a headshot at that!
>I ask him to roll for damage
>10, Ulrich's Fury, go again.
>10, 10, 8
>"Okay, roll on the critical chart"
>99
>"The Orc's head explodes in a cascade of blood and gore,his lifeless body slumping to the ground. The other Orcs ate so terrified by this that they all break and flee"

He went back and found the rock, called it his lucky stone and kept it for the rest pig the campaign.

>girl's eyes suck tears back as she calms down and turn to the guy
and then I remember jap porn comics are right-to-left for some reason

that's completely awesome!

I ran a campaign about a place people just end up when 'banished' by a wizard or the time police or whoever. Basically there's a huge city made out of whatever drops in. Setting isn't too important, what's important is that I had a party that looked like they were going to be the ABSOLUTE WORST to GM for and they turned out to be one of the most awesome parties we ever had. First let's look at how bad it looked at the start.

>One char was dressed entirely as an edgy anime stereotype. Leather jackets and pants, superfluopus chains and inverted crosses, needlessly streamlines shades, and white hair with a blue streak in it. Literally used a pair of katanas, even had a backstory with a family killed before he was banished.

>A girl who wanted to play 'a small fox person, like tails from sonic'. Equipped with laser guns and took kleptomania so I knew there was going to be problems in EVERY encounter because she'd probably be stealing everything.

>A guy who played the overcomical comic relief wizard who was basically magic man from adventure time. Got banished because he turned a king into a frog and then did a jig on the frog. Said he was banished while trying to PEE on said frog.

>Lawful stupid paladin WITH GUNS who wanted to KILL EVERY DEMON IN THE WORLD AND WANTED ALL TO KNOW THAT THIS WAS RIGHTEOUS AND JUST AND THAT HIS GOD WOULD PUNISH EVERYONE, EVEN THOSE WHO MAY BE DEEMED GOOD, IF THEY WERE DEMONS.

Any GM worth his salt would look at that and nope the fuck out, but I decided to stay with it out of morbid curiosity. Literally everything about my initial reaction changed over the course of three sessions...

I hope you're gonna provide more details? Don't leave us hanging like that.

Here's how it actually went down.

>The edgy anime character with the tragic backstory was the motivator of the party. He was genuinely nice to people, helped kids, and even got the party into a lot of trouble when he attacked a made guy in the 1930s mob (long story) for hitting a prostitute for getting his drink order wrong. His reasoning was that, after so much tragedy, he wasn't going to fall victim to it and become like the people who hurt his family. There were tons of one-liners he delivered that were genuinely hilarious, too. Oh, and when one of his katanas broke, he just swapped it for a plank with a nail in it because it was close by and it became his signature weapon. The fashion was actually just based on some anime character his character liked.

>The girl who I thought would yiff up the place and steal everything was actually the party face. Her kleptomania was something she often brought up, but wanted to roll to resist. she stole not out of compulsion, but because her family never had many supplies or much to eat, and so she always wants to make sure to have SOMETHING on hand. When I told her beast races were looked down upon in a lot of cities, she made sure to hide her ears and pretend to be a robed gnome or something similar. Her stealing even saved the party's life, when a keycard she stole happened to be MUCH higher access than the party thought, and got them away from a security force that did not have access to that area.

>The wizard did a 180 the first session. All his comical bullshit was basically him snorting too much magic dust and going on a multi-month mage bender. He was hung over and very anti-drug, but the dust also made him into a mage god. So the party had to balance out whether they wanted an all-powerful but incredibly annoying guy (that said wizard DID NOT WANT TO BE) or keep him sober as he wished.

>the paladin took a while to crack, and his demon hunting ways got him into a lot of shit. However, over the course of the story he realized that his god had little to no power here, and he actually roleplayed what that kind of a crisis would be like pretty well. Eventually, he made close friends with a demon who was also locked away from his god and thus lost all his urge to do evil. When the demon got killed in a bar fight the paladin went apeshit, and since the party was close to him their revenge mission ended up being one of the most badass raids I've ever run in a tabletop RPG.

Also, ya gotta be patient, typing takes time.

My group does this all the time.
Is it so rare among you that you need to show it as something special?

You have no idea how common the opposite is. You have a good game group, user, and that's a luxury. Hold on tight.

This is pretty rad, my friends have never made terrible character ideas then proven me wrong. Perhaps we should branch out and skirt the edge of bad taste.

I mean, you have top have friends who are trying to subvert tropes some of the time, which takes a little bit of genre-savvy to do. A lot of people also really like the generic (after all, people liking it is what made it generic to begin with) but one thing to do is ask players questions they never would have thought to ask their character. For instance, I could have booted paladin after his screaming neck punch to an imp that was basically just delivering mail, said he was too tryhard. Instead, I gave him a revelation to work with/through. If your players are invested, they'll want to answer the questions you pose to them. How WOULD losing something this important, or meeting a person who could change my viewpoint, really change this character?

In the GURPS campaign I play, I like my semi-regular GM a lot.
He runs is plots well enough, and acts out characters well enough, but what I really love is his attitude.
He usually just lets us get away with whatever bullshit we're doing, very rarely says no, and doesn't at all seem "possessive" about the story, allowing us to succeed beyond reason, or more rarely fuck up and derail everything. It's fun, and it feels like a cooperative effort. He's also good at trying to make sure everyone has something to do, even if the party splits up.

For me, just about everything else takes back seat to that attitude. For example, we very rarely get detailed environment descriptions, he's not super good at the actual rules, and he has other things he could probably be better at. But that really doesn't matter as much as long as he's good at ensuring people have fun.

Honestly this is the type of GM I try to be. Keep the structure flexible. If you can do a ton of planning, great (and you should) but if you can't, know your setting and characters well enough to know what would happen when the party fucks up that vital quest or kills the important NPC. I have a campaign derail once when one player decided the guy they were working for was DEFINITELY planning to betray them and he 'got to him first'. It pretty much ruined my main questline...so I saved content from it and shaped the salvageable bits into their escape from said employer's organization (who I eventually revealed WERE planning to betray them, even though that wasn't in the original plot).

It's a game about imagination, so if you're not being imaginative you can't expect a good experience.

>have a player who's big into art and stuff
>he draws up designs for all the players and major npcs, completely unprompted
>he absolutely nails all of the NPCs appearances

It doubly helps, because it encourages me to be more descriprive with people's appearances too

>SWN campaign, one shot because a player couldn't come
>we make our chars during the session
>we're all russian tank commanders, each with their own hover tank
>we all roleplay with stupidly racist russian accents
>we use "The Sandbox", a book with extra character options
>a player rolls a thing that makes all vehicles he drives +2 faster than normal (the GM said we'd use all our skills for the tank roles so we don't have like 3 chars for player)
>he decides to go full ham on it, designs his tank with absolutely no armor but with afterburners, the best engine, etc
>also puts 3 fucking guns on it, uses the computer thingy to be able to shoot them all at once
>when choosing the tank tokens, he is given a tank that kinda looks like a space ship
>he makes the joke that he is actually driving a converted jet with hover engines
>GM loves the idea, it's canon now
>the whole session his crew is scared shitless while driving around at sanic speed
>nicknamed "Slingshot"

Most fun I've ever had.

>six years ago
>go to game shop, see post about d&d game starting up asking for players
>obese dm bordering on sperg but is actually a really great guy, me, black guy who was branching out from yugioh, odd looking tall girl in a witch hat, some turbo autist who we eventually had to boot, and guy who never showed up again
>examine odd looking girl closer, realize they're a tranny, first one I've ever seen in person
>me, dm, black guy, tranny have all played together ever since, done lots of different games and campaigns rotating other people to fill out the group
>somehow trans player is always mvp, always picks whatever complements the team best
>is always the last person to take loot and first person to give items to other players who need it or can use it better
>always keeps notes of what's going on, what npc said what, even keeps the dm on track occasionally
>always brings food and drinks for everyone
>draws the party at the beginning and end of each campaign, pretty good artist
>makes little props like bags and potions and hats and stuff for everyone
also pretty neat seeing them look and sound more like a girl over the years

Black guy is cool too. He started off being silly, fucking around and not taking things too seriously but now he probably takes his roleplaying more seriously than anyone. And the DM is great, he doesn't get irritated by shenanigans and actually gives us a ton of freedom, and is really good at making things up on the fly. I only mention he's bordering on sperg because he has some a lot of weird/quirky mannerisms and probably would stick out a lot more anywhere outside of a game shop. Basically I feel lucky as shit because my first few tries at tabletops were autistfest disasters and now I have a group that I hope I play with forever.

Hero death

>final battle of campaign
>each of us fights our own character's demon
>somehow the DM managed to have us all essentially 1v1 them in the same room of a keep (the keep part is important)
>my gnome druid is fighting for his family against his own brother
>I had read a lot of naruto, and hadn't gotten to that one feels part
>wizard, myself, barbarian, and monk all begin the fight
>wizard doesn't want us caught in wizard crossfire, so he challenged the enemy wizard and fucks off to wherever
>enemy wizard conjures minions to "take care of the drivel" and then follows
>barbarian loses self control, rages, and runs full tilt through the enemy front line toward his nemesis
>nemesis apparently rolled a nat1 for defense and gets knocked through a wall
>barbarian follows because he can't figure out how to stop charging through shit in his rage
>I sic my wolf-panion on the leftover front line and start going to town on the ones my paw-pal can't handle in an effort to corner my traitor of a brother
>monk man does some judo shit and thins the ranks as well
>we can't tell what the other two are doing because one went through a wall and the other wizards wizarded themselves somewhere
>enough minions are dead that I can focus on my brother
>can't find that rat bastard
>monk, wolf, and myself manage to finish off the minions
>monk says he will go to find his old girlfriend
>long story
>as the two of them start fighting upstairs I keep searching for that dickweed that I had the misfortune of being related to
>instead of him, I keep finding tokens of his love for me
>tripwire crossbow, wall scythe, the like
>keep following these signed letters of brotherly love until I get to a doorway leading outside
>there's a fucking rat
>it shapeshifts into my brother
>that fucking asshole

Cont

This is neat, I've not heard many cases of people actually getting a random, interesting gameshop group they enjoy.

we can pretend his horns are under the hood haha

I love how fucking modular the SWN system is. Yould run anything from Generic Humans only spess opera to fucking Apocalypse Now teir hellhole military campaign.

>demon gets killed in a bar fight

>Babby's First RPG is an Amber one.
>Be part of a campaign for 3 years.
>I'm that Babby.

My GM was pretty much amazing.

I didn't realize I was "That Guy" until I made my character act like an asshole and he got his nose broken for it. Cue my character getting his nose broken pretty often, and it becoming an OOC meme for laughs.

My GM didn't try to force his game onto me, or us. We were just as much the game as his (admittedly massive, literally years-long) campaign was. Every decision we made was an important one, even the stupid ones where I chose to That Guy things up and go solo for a while. Cue massive character growth as my OC fucks up his entire life by killing his own descendants, causing a quest for redemption that RL issues had me cut short.

My GM would basically take our ideas and let them run their natural course. He'd let us have our cake, but then we'd end up having to eat it. This lead to some seriously amazing roleplay. I just wish I had been a player of the same quality as my GM.

Kudos to all the GM's in this thread who let their players get away with shit and then pay hilariously for it without bringing them down.

>tfw you thank your gm but the grumpily brush it off

Me and my friends played in a sort of supernatural campaign. It was hilarious. My 2 friends were a vampire and a werewolf who could pass as human, but I was just a skeleton floating around. We were seeking to unite the human and supernatural world and reclaim our dying cultures.

The GM was super cool and the campaign ended up really pulpy, weird, and overall funny. The monster weaknesses were traditional. Vampire couldn't go in the sun. Werewolf was hairy but human unless it was a full moon. She was a super big and stronk woman raised by wolves. Thick dark eyebrows and killer biceps. She acted like a feral child.

My skeleton was physically weak but could do magic. One condition the GM gave me was I could use a spell to make mortals forget my existence if they saw me, which led to a guy looking at me, screaming, forgetting, then looking at me and screaming again- continue forever until the vampire knocked him out.

The vampire was an ancient gentleman from old timey London who had outstanding manners. When he was mad he started all his sentences like "now see here!" and called people "good sir." Logos and signs with a "t" freaked him out because they resembled crosses and his hand had been burned badly in the past. Many modern customs and developments confused him. Like how your parents think you're a hacker for fixing the wifi, he thought we were geniuses for pressing cross walk buttons and using cell phones.

Adventures included stuffing me in a carry-on so we could board an airplane (and avoiding detection thereafter). Another time they pretended I was a skeleton model for a university and wheeled me down the street. One time the vampire tried for an hour to get invited into a warehouse, the werewolf went on a date and ate out of the guys trash can, and the cumulative battle was with a Van Helsing wannabe who sought to put an end to our reign of terror. Apparently his great great grandpa had beef with our vampire.

All in all a very enjoyable but silly time.

I didn't know Selin was a meme, huh.

>Player tells me they hate the system I'm running.
>But if I were're to run another game in this system, they'd play.
I don't even think I'm that great a dm, but it's got to be one of the highest compliments I've received.

That sounds glorious, what system?

>Players are tracking down a local crime lord who is putting together some sort of ritual.
>Discover it's an incredibly powerful scrying ritual. Players decide is in the wrong hands.
>They swoop in to stop it. With knowledge that it is sensitive to the ingredients, they throw in a chicken.
>It's a gigantic vat, like a scrying pool, so it's super easy.
>Instead of destroying it, the dm describes all sapient beings seen in the ritual (the humans, elves, and so on) are all replaced with chickens.
>Full, Human (etc) sized chickens wearing armor cut and fitted to their size and shape. They are not anthropomorphic at all.
>They are otherwise acting normal.
Which was great until we get to the next part.
>Diplomacy was had. Crime lord convinced them to at least see his competitor's (most likely) fates and his own.
>The first two of three appear and die to his satisfaction.
>He does himself next.
>The view is from across the room, looking at him, the party, and the vat, all as giant chickens.
>The crime lord (as a chicken) suddenly looks shocked and turns around just in time to get a sword through the gut.
>The crime lord suddenly looks shocked and turns around.
>The party expends whatever resources they have to save him from what turns out to be the last crime lord come to kill him.
>Add they deal with that, one player gets sick of all this scrying and commands it to just turn off.
>It does.
>That is, the vat is suddenly empty and dry as if it was never there.
It was a pretty awesome scene all around. Once for the impromptu chickens and the other for silly future sight shenanigans.

Yeah it's fucking awesome but it's taken time.

People join and quit, people change their schedule and demand we change game time, sometimes you get total faggots who join and you have to tell them to leave and it sucks.

Eventually we got things into the sweet spot and it's amazing

It was a homebrew based loosely on Apocalypse World.

If everybody's up for it I'll share the storytime of the single greatest campaign I've ever had the privilege of playing:

THE NEKROGOBLIKAMPAIGN!!

>pic related

>is always the last person to take loot and first person to give items to other players who need it or can use it better
>always keeps notes of what's going on, what npc said what, even keeps the dm on track occasionally
>always brings food and drinks for everyone
>draws the party at the beginning and end of each campaign, pretty good artist
>makes little props like bags and potions and hats and stuff for everyone
That's sweet. I'm glad you've found such a great group.

One night, me and my old roommate were up drinking into the wee hours of the morning talking about how great Nekrogoblikon were. For those of you who don't know, Nekrogoblikon is a great, fun, and silly metal band whose gimmick is that they're secretly goblins. Anyway, my roommate mentions how he wanted to run a campaign based on their music and using WFRP 2e, but without the high fantasy bits.

Part of me is a little bit wary because it's his first time GMing anything ever. Also, he was an English major and kind of a ponce at times, so I was a bit worried that it would end up being a massive GMPC fest. Fortunately, I was wrong.

On the first day we roll up our guys:

Me: a protagonist named Erkenbrand who looks like Chris Hemsworth if his nose had been broken 12 times

My friend: another protagonist , Berthold, who only had about 50% of his teeth

The GM's buddy: a marine named Fritz, whi was a goddamn sniper.

We jump straight into the campaign. It's set in this fictional kingdom in northern Germany called Karrrick that has recently become overrun with these crazy, bitey, green people called goblins. Nobody knew anything about them except that they came from the swamp, and we were hired to track down a group of knights who had been sent south to find their nest and hadn't returned.

What really made the NEKROGOBLIKAMPAIGN awesome was that the GM based every single encounter on a Nekrogoblikon song, specifically their album Stench, and would play the song whenever an encounter started up He also had ambient music and sound effect going the whole time and his ability to set a scene was increbible.

Continued...

My favorite was something an old DM did that annoyed our party to no end, but is hilarious in hindsight.

If we failed any speech-related check critically, we simply vomited instead of speaking. Either projectile or not, either way you threw up if you critically failed at speech.

I love my group because they run along with my ideas nicely and take playing their characters out over playing what would be the best decision in any situation.
They also divide in-game and out of character effectivly, which is tons of fun when they go at each others throats in character and then laugh about it after the session is finished over a beer.
Especially the idealistic, young and pro-human Brujah Girl and the ventrue prodigy that was a nerdy shy guy but quickly gets powerhungry fight a lot, blood was drawn, insults were thrown around, but both players were cool with it and said how much they liked the authentic reactions of the characters.
Also, I was running a "filler" horror-mission in the campaign, using notes for the players for the first time, and instructed the girl in the group to scream when I say a certain word. The looks on everyones faces were priceless.

TL;DR: When players experiment.

> Star Wars Saga in K.O.T.O.R., during the Mandalorian war
> Players have to seek MacGuffins, crystals holding huge accumulated force power.
> Quest in three steps, players take two at once because it makes for a more efficient course.
> Introduced crystals that alter a lightsaber blade or blaster pistol, adding various bonuses like Elemental damage.
> MacGuffins are on huge derelict Starships.
> First derelict ship is guarded by a Force Wraith who reconstruct itself and keeps attacking while players are searching.
> Find the wraith's source, bullshit-force-sensitive-red-metal mask.
> Get the first MacGuffin, named "Wrath".
> Get to second ship.
> Mynocks swarm.
> Fuck that.gif

One of them has an idea.

> Hey, the crystal is like an oversized blaster crystal?
> Yes..?
> Its loaded with Dark Side energy that we don't need? That could be dangerous in fact?
> It could fit in a blaster cannon?
> Its force energy, it's not reall...
> We could make an adapter from the red-metal mask?
> ... hum. I don't see why not?

Their Tech Specialist built an adapter. When they Used-the-Force it in place, a critical miss cause a potent kinetic blast, which they saw as good omen. Then they shot it.

Their ship when -4 steps on the condition track (-10 on all actions), the cannon and turret simply exploded, the guy in mega-armor got ejected and had to recover the MacGuffin and make re-entry in atmosphere (which he barely survived due to said armor), their target and the second MacGuffin crashed on the lush planet, pierced the crust, had its generators explode which upseted a very delicate balance causing the planet to go volcanic.

With volcanic smoke, a ship in the -10, they had to make makeshift repairs, find their teammate, board the ship, fight natives and recover the MacGuffin.

We once had a guy at our table who had some kind of fine motor problem, and so his handwriting was a barely legible chicken-scratch. He'd occasionally ask for help getting shit wrote down and we were all happy to oblige, but he was pretty obviously self-conscious about it. Couple of weeks after he joined the table, DM just said 'fuck it' and bought him a refurbished laptop with 4e charbuilder installed and plonked it down at his expected seat at the table. Fucker was choking back tears when he realized what was up, and he's been with us for about four years.

Part 1. Gallows and Graves
Our journey to the swamp took us through the forest south of the capital. The deeper we go, the more obvious the evidence of the little green bastards becomes. Desecrated corpses, both human and goblin are strung up along the path, growing denser the further we travel. Eventually we stumble across this village whose makeshift palisade is absolutely riddled with green bodies. Seeing as how this village is on the way, we figure we should stock up on some minor supplies we didn't grab before we left.

We approach the gate and the guard nearly takes my eye out with a crossbow. After some tense negotiations insisting that we were not in fact more of "them", we manage to get into the settlement and learn the situation from the main guy in charge. They've been getting harassed by goblins for weeks, but it seemed like they'd backed off for the time being.

No sooner than we got the story the watchman raises the hue and cry. There's a carriage rapidly approaching the gate. We all hop up to take a look and quickly see that the horses are absolutely panicked and that the driver is a suspicious shade of green under his really shitty costume.

The carriage smashed through the barricade, practically exploding as goblins start pouring out clown car style. Fritz starts cranking off shots with his longbow, and Berthold and I charge in with the villagers.

Now, this would have been a pretty asic fight if it weren't for one thing: Axe Goblin

Axe Goblin apparently didn't realize that there was a battle going on, and the throbbing German techno beats playing in his wierd little goblin brain put him into a strange dance of flailing and thrashing. Seriously, no one could hit the little fucker, and he couldn't hit anything either, except by accident. We ended up forming a macabre dance circle around as we and all the npcs tried to stab him to death. He. Would. Not. Die. 45 minutes IRL after we had killed all the other goblins and he finally dropped.

We learned something important about the goblins that day, and that they were fucking full of blood. Like, three times the amount of blood in a normal human packed into a body 3 and a half feet tall. A papercut sprayed blood like a pressure washer with these guys.

Whenever we killed them we all had a hoot describing how they died. One got killed by a punch to the arm, so the bruise swelled and swelled until it exploded. Another got his leg cut off and shot off like a roman candle.

My group never does that shit. A lot of people are scared of looking bad, even in a fantasy game.

This is the best

Ok, I was going to continue but fell asleep as I was posting.

The long and short of it was that the barbarian lost the use of his hands in the process of killing his opponent, then saved the monk by taking out his girlfriend. The barbarian and monk's gf fell over the edge of a parapet Sherlock-Moriarty style.

>bifurcated
Since you haven't said otherwise, fighter is a assumed to be a humanoid. Humanoids are already branched. Your sentence is pointless. Learn to use a dictionary before trying to show off your extensive word knowledge.

>bifurcated
Since you haven't said otherwise, fighter is assumed to be a humanoid. Humanoids are already branched. Your sentence is pointless. Learn to use a dictionary before trying to show off your extensive word knowledge.
>bisected
>hemisected
>cut in half
>ripped in two
>divided down the middle
>cleaved in twain

Do you have any of the said drawings user? I'm an art fag my self and need inspiration.