The DM

We've heard about that dm.

Now lets hear about the time your DM unfolded a plot that made you go home and say "Wow, that was actually pretty clever".

I'll start.

>Our group was hired to await the arrival of a person/thing that would disrupt the world.
>(Save the world campaign)
>Good alignments, and fairly clever players
>We were told a clue at the first session
> "At the peak of the new moon, on near the soil that the first King blessed, a portal will open, and from it, will come the doom of the world" (paraphrased)
>We had to decipher the message every step of the way, each part of it.
>finally learn that "new moon's peak", was a once every 500 year thing where the God's literally replace the moon
>Learned who was truly the "first" king
>Found a book (in a deep deep lair), that told of the 1st king wedding where he blessed a spot of ground
>Arrive at the spot (after a LONG journey), ready to face this "doom" of the world.
>Expecting a minor deity, or demon, or worse...
>We were shocked to see a human male, dressed in an odd blue uniform
>after communicating with him, we learn he's not from this world, and was a federal guard for a government research facility (modern day)
>The doom was in his holster....and his mind, with knowledge of tech this world didn't have, and shouldn't have.
Do we kill the guy? We'll decide next week, when we play again. The dm told us to think about it.

This isn't so much about the plot, just everything else.

>My buddy always plays D&D, admits that he's not good at running shit. And only cares about combat. No role playing. That's just how he does things.
>One winter, there was a bad snow storm and half the town was without power for a couple weeks. We are off work during that time, so we decide to lock ourselves in his basement with some buddies, some snack food, and some board games and wait it out for literally two weeks.
>One night, he says that he is coming up with a campaign for Call of Cthulhu. I warn him that it's pretty RP heavy, and it doesn't seem like his sort of thing.
>That night, he breaks out the candles and wears a blanket over himself like a robe. At first we laugh at how cheesy it is
>But when we start, his voice changes and we can't see his face. It is literally the most immersive story telling I've experienced.
>By candlelight, we play Call of Cthulhu, but it's set during the Renaissance
>We play the role of some nible guardsmen investigating some murders that have happened on our Lord's property
>We solve a bunch of creepy puzzles, and when one of us dies or goes insane, we have to sit silently in a corner, just beyond the dim light if the candle.
>The last mystery involves us finding a clue, a note written on paper. "Well, where's the player handout?"
>GM tells us to come with him.
>He takes us to his back door, overlooking his back yard.
>He had hid the note in his back yard, earlier that day. You had to follow his foot steps in the snow to find it by candlelight in the dead of night.

After all was said and done, the atmosphere and some of the stuff done in-game creeped me the fuck out. To date, it was one of the best games I ever played.

Might steal as a conclusion to my multiverse campaign

I'm trying really hard, but I can't actually think of one.


Fucking hell, Robby. Get your shit together.

Nice.

...

I want to see this thread continue but I haven't played enough to contribute.

I'm the only DM who's played something other than a module so far so I can't contribute either. Hearty bump nonetheless

I want to contribute, but I've never played a game that wasn't a cliche-fest with heavy foreshadowing.

Here's hoping that the new GM is a creative dood.

I do have a couple of stories, but I don't want this thread to slide off while I"m writing them, and I don't have time for a long story right now. I'm just bumping this up and going to write it up in half an hourish.

So, if we're going for clever plots, which isn't the sum total of a game, I'm going to have to go with this story of Ian's.

>Playing the equivalent of level 1 schlubbs.
>We've been conscripted into the army, we live in a kind of !not Roman Empire in its declining days.
>Get orders to go to a particular fort, which is a center for a super-elite military organization.
>It's the sort of place where any random NPC guard can take the 6 of us without too much trouble.
>Nobody seems to know why we got assigned there, most of the regulars dislike us intensely because we might tarnish their good name and elite status
>After running some errands and trying to figure out what's going on, the truth emerges (and we learn about how even in an elite area, our country's military is very badly organized)
>See, despite the fact that we're at war, a lot of the coutnry's elites aren't taking this too seriously, and a bunch of nobles are playing status games.
>One of them in particular wants, and has enough pull to get, a bodyguard unit from the elite soldiers that we've so recently joined.
>We were dragged there just long enough to count as part of the Dasten so they can send us instead of actual crack soldiers to babysit some rich dude's manor.
>Get sent to said manor
>Meet the boss, who is talking with one of his other noble parasite friends.
>They remark about how we look a lot like some other guys they knew, private soldiers of a third nobleman and hero of the empire.
>Start talking about some of their stories and exploits.
>Ian, (GM) takes away our character sheets and hands us new ones, which are enormously more powerful.
1/2

>get plunged into a LONG line of pretty linear adventures as we "hear" about these other guys our characters resemble
>Often get hints directly provided to us by meta-commentary. Once or twice we "know" things that they couldn't possibly have known, like the sequence in which the runes to summon a super-demon would activate; whenever that happens, purple twinkling appears both in the "story" and in the room we're actually in.
>Othertimes, meta-commentary literally warps history/reality. One time, we got ambushed by a bunch of troglodyte mercenaries. Or maybe they were lizardmen mercenaries. The two guys telling the story couldn't agree, and as they were arguing (Which we can hear "real time" in the middle of the fight) Ian keeps swapping out the monsters that we're facing.
>Every time we try to break away in a very visible, radical way from what our counterparts "historically" did, really weird improbable shit happens, like giant red wall barriers appearing out of nowhere and prompting us to run into famous sages of the day who are studying the phenomenon.
>And then, when in "second character" sleeping off one of our adventures after a large magical battle, we have a dream (which is again partially related to us by our charges). This dream features us interacting with a general of our own forces in the war going on right at this moment, and how he's going to be captured and mindbroken into serving the other side. We wouldn't find out about that one for literal years in real life in a different campaign in the same setting.
>Eventually, the "story" ends, and we all spot a curious figure, robed in purple, with a face a blur, lurking outside the parlor window. We chase him, but never manage to find the guy. He too, would be very important in later campaigns in the setting.
To be fair, it was a blatant railroad campaign, with the only real choices we made were tactical ones. But it was one of the most surreal things I have ever played in my life.

that is literally the most correct way to railroad

I've got some others from the same GM, if anyone is interested in hearing them. Any sort of tone you guys are looking for? We played a lot of great campaigns over the years.

All throughout a year-long campaign where we were running away from an empire led by a masked emperor who hated magic, we would occasionally bump into an obnoxiously over-the-top hippie elf at the scene of the empire's latest invasion.

Eventually it turned out that the elf and the emperor were the same guy, and the elf was intentionally rallying his brethren into getting themselves killed fighting his own empire because he was really petty over being the only elf born without magic.

He had been a total comedy relief character up to the reveal, so the ruse cruise caught us all completely off guard.

user... I don't know how to break it to you but I'm almost positive that was beat-for-beat the plot of Overlord 2

>Looks this up
Oh, what the fuck

Jared you fucking hack you even gave him the same name

Same desu

>ITT how did your gm run you through his favorite book/video game you never saw before

Post them user.

If this is real, it's hilarious.

Sheit, im laughing!

Kek

truly, the greatest tip for any DM is to read and play more than your players

Anything in particular you want to hear about? I've got a good betrayal story, or the one that became a pseudo-horror campaign, or the Big War with our Big Screwup, all in the same campaign arc. Probably more that I'm not thinking of at the moment, I'm not feeling so great.

>Be me, DM forever + 2 games
>Players want some type of "global", or "nation vs nation" type game.
>I whip out a map.......
> A map ripped directly from David Eddings Elenium series
>I go into detail about the various countries, and the Church's influence and the various orders of knights
>I explain the threat of the big evil empire to the west...
>I tell them of the sick queen trapped in ruby, and the dangers of a possible invading army to the south.
>Players are enthralled and immersed and amazed
>TPK 3 sessions later
>Players are sad that I invested so much time in that world's creation, and they fucked up and died, ruining it
>I tell them "Well, look, we can always bust out this setting some time, and replay it, maybe even starting off in a different Knightly order, or serving a different court."
>They are so happy, that they pay for the pizza for the next couple sessions.
>trollface.jpg

I literally used names like "King Wargun of Thalesia".......

My players should read more. lol

BETRAYAL!