The barbarian was going off about the rogue's amnesia. "You're suspicious and weird, I mean, how can we know we can trust you if you don't even know who you are? I think that's dangerous." and such. Ironically, the barbarian doesn't talk about himself, and is all secretive. So my druid just goes: "I think he who is unknown because he does not know himself is less dangerous than he who is unknown because he does not reveal anything about himself". I completely improvised that line.
In an evil-leaning campaign I took part in, my sorceress was effectively the leader of the group due to everyone else being incredibly self-serving or otherwise struggling to not cause issues for the whole group in trying to fulfill their own personal agendas. Yet another instance of this caused the party to break out into an argument, and for a while, my sorceress tried to stay out of it, but eventually she snapped, and according to the group, her meltdown was so convincingly real that the group was actually worried they'd pissed me off out-of-character! I actually had to reassure them that I found the whole thing amusing more than anything, because my sorceress made absolutely sure she had plausible deniability whenever it came to anyone else's shenanigans, and would happily sell them out to save her own skin if it came down to it. So I had no issues with the rest of the party digging their own proverbial graves; I just channeled her inner frustration so well that I had to spend ten minutes assuring everyone that I was still having fun, lmao
My favorite RP moment wasn't as a play but as a DM. My last campaign was pirate themed and I had my players start as members of a monster hunting crew. Well in session 1 they had a bit of internal party RP and shopping before setting off to sea. Now for some context I LOOOOVE to use music to set a tone and to really immerse the players and myself. Now while at sea the players found out they would be hunting a purple worm. The battle music was slowly climbing throughout the fight. During said fight this 50 man crew was entirely knocked out and the captain along with the captain and first mate. At the crescendo of the battle music they slayed the purple worm by coating a cannon ball in acid and rolling double nat 20s. After the battle the players went to find the first mate and the captain. They soon found and healed the first mate enough for talk and when they found the captain he was dead. The captain had chunks of the wood railing sticking out of his throat, chest, and abdomen. At this point the game store we are in is dead quite and the music has gone somber. I could see the tears welling up in my players eyes as I RPed through the first mate telling them that the captain had given the ship to the players bc the first mate had failed in his duty to maintain cohesion with the crew. One of my players cried as the captain exhaled his final breath and his final order. "Set me to rest where all captains die". It was my proudest moment ad a DM
Easy one. In a Kingmaker campaign I’m playing, one of our sessions ran well into the night. We played for six hours that day and the entirw session beginning to end was us having in-character dialogue planning wars, funds, defenses, policies, and civil rights for our kingdom. The entire thing became us having this small council meeting uninterrupted (save five minutes where I had to get a pizza at the door.)
As a player I joined a group mid campaign, they were around lvl 15, so the dm said roll 3d6 and that was the level I'd make a character. I rolled 12, so I made 1lvl cleric, 11 lvl fighter. But I rp'd as a priest that was a pacifist and only wanted to heal the sick. I was being escorted by the party since I was a local do gooder, to a town that was more or less a refugee camp from a war between cormyr and some invading barbarian tribes. The town needed healers, ministry, etc and along the way (a few weeks in game) we had seen atrocities of war, crucified farmers, burned remains of women and children, etc. The party was getting angrier by the day and my character quietly would read last rites and bury the fallen. As a "priest of tyr" I was "duty bound" to lay souls to rest, which the party wasn't against. A few combat encounters happened along the way, where my character simply observed with pained expression. By this point the DM took me aside and was like wtf, you're a fighter in robes and a pacifist. I assured him I had a plan. We continued on, by now the party was protective of me since I was a quiet, good soul, who just wanted to help people. Since I had "no fighting" skills I was constantly being shielded by them. Upon reaching our destination, we saw from the crest of a hill, the town was being ravaged by barbarians. Screams from the victims; men, women, children, the elderly alike were being tortured and killed. The laughter of the barbarians could be heard through all of that. The party starts devising a plan while my character walks off and opens his bag of holding out of view. Out comes the armor, greatsword, rings, amulet, and crown (not royalty, it was an artifact that gave DR5 from the DM). The party didn't notice I was gone until they saw me half way down the hillside approaching a group of barbarians. My character held up the crossguard of his greatsword showing the emblem of tyr and kissed it. He said "after a lifetime of slaying anyone for coin, i swore never to commit violence again to my lord tyr. But for you scumbags, I will break that oath" and proceeded to slaughter the group of barbarians, like 5 or 6 standing together, and great cleave feat. The party rushed to join me, just to see me casually walk into the town hacking people in two, or chopping off heads. The DM didn't make us roll initiatives at first because he was mindblown at my rp. The players were just as stunned for a bit. We had to break for a bit so they could discuss how creative they thought it was. It felt pretty damn good having never played with them before and getting that kind of praise.
Man, if I had a player that always checked for mimics, I'd wait till a good time and let them find some that were "totally there the whole time" and pretend to be SO MAD about it.
In a short campaign I was a part of we ran into monsters that took the form of our nightmares (mine for example was a version of my character who never escaped the life of crime and kept hurting people with his potions) while the other whose name was gwyn(a fairy with monarch wings) was terrified of losing her wings to the archfey. My character Phineas promised her he would never let that happen . At the end of the campaign after we brokered peace with the archfey and fought the final boss gwyn hugged my character and thanked him for upholding his promise . It made me really proud cause it was one of the first promises he actually kept and started to give up the con man life to start travelling
I played an artificer who once was evil and now is trying to be good, he’s basically a very nice and helpful person who the party doesn’t like because they feel his being fake, the thing is that they never seen the artificer angry… ever… till one session where the artificer was getting so stressed that his happy mask shattered and killed an important NPC by grabbing them. H the back of their head and slamming their face into the wood desk so hard that it not only shattered the desk, but also bust the head like a rotten watermelon. It was hilarious to see everyone’s reactions to the happy and nice artificer looks control and immediately went back to being happy again
My proudest roleplaying moment came recently in an Old School Essentials game a couple months back. I was playing a cleric that was, in my own terms, a marshmallow of a personality. She happy, bubbly, and honestly felt that people could be better if they just tried. Heck, she even got a medusa to look her in the eyes (she was temporarily blind at the time, so no petrification) and convinced them that it was not what you were, but who you were that mattered. But that's not my proudest moment. My proudest moment was at the end of the campaign. We had just learned that the leader of our city was using a magic crystal to grow rich and was attacking nearby non-human settlements because racist noble. We got back to the town after and adventure to find it under siege by orcs. We needed to convince the leader of the warband to let us through to try to end things more amenably, or at least bring the noble's head to them. I managed to convince their leader to let us through, even shouting them down when they started giving a "no one is innocent speech" because the noble had ordered a group of soldiers to slaughter a village of orcs. And considering my character was lawful, and believed that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, I was still within my alignment in fighting the Big Bad Evil Noble lady, who turned out to be half dragon, and in fact turned into a dragon during the fight. Definitely my proudest moment.
I've got two. both involve the same two man party of my little sister and I: 1. Party was sneaking into a cultist base and our duo basically swapped roles the whole time. My character, arcane trickster rogue, is usually the face and the other PC, eldritch knight fighter, is better in combat. She put on the robes of a dead cultist and lured them out, then I ganked them from behind. This was early on in the campaign and all three of us (players and DM) are relatively new to playing the game, so getting to see my sister shine in RP for the first time was amazing (I also loved getting to really rogue it up for the first time) 2. We were sneaking into an auction house/casino at night but the guards were on high alert (I had stolen some keys earlier in the day in preparation) and were searching people coming in. My sisters character was a kalashtar at the time (shapeshifting disease) and used a combination of fake drunkenness and telepathy to freak out the guards, distracting them while I slipped by. Her routine was hilarious and had all of us cracking up, it was awesome.
Jesus, that last story..."She wasn't a bad person, but she was manipulative." "The player told me there was no chance their character would ever marry that NPC, and I might have taken that as a challenge." These lines say a lot about this writer, both as a DM, and as a person in general....and none of it's good.
I’ve got two that come to mind:1st has me as the DM, in that moment playing a powerful archfey. Not an evil one, as neutral as it gets. So one of my players (her 1st campaign and we were 9 sessions in) asked the archfey a question and added the phrase „and I demand honesty“ afterwards. Apparently my entire countenance changed from a gentle, welcoming smile to a „who do you think YOU are demanding anything from ME?“ facial expression … I didn’t even realize that in the moment and got told by my players afterwards. Everyone leaned back at the table expecting a TPK to go down in the next minutes. That didn’t happen and was never my intention. But that day I learned the power that a sheer look can have. 2nd one has me as a female fighter and isn’t actually my big moment: I bonded with one of the other pc‘s pretty fast and he became a something like a little brother for my character. His character died or would have if it wasn’t for my fighter to turn to the gods and sent out a prayer to whom ever might listen. One pact with an evil goddess later and lil bro was back to life - yay. Downside was my character had to do something for said goddess or will be hunted forever by her minions to serve for all eternity - booh! So she told lil bro about it a couple of sessions later offering to leave the group for the safety of the other pc‘s and I was ready to actually have her leave. Lil bro looked around the table, grabbed my hand (irl to ad more impact, I guess) looked me straight in the eye and said: „We are family and if it comes to that it’s us versus the world.“ DM teared up, so did I and one of the other players too. That was the first time D&D actually made me cry and still remains one of my favorite moments to this day.
More like my coolest, but my Aarakocra Cleric is a Cleric of Ra, Egyptian god of light. So when a group of undead were walking towards him, he held up his holy symbol of a hawk, and said "Ra take the wheel!". My DM proceeded to go full rule of cool and instead of repelling the undead, IT COMPLETELY ANNIHILATED THEM. Vaporized. The undead are a homebrew species known as The Forgotten, btw, who are created when no one remembers them, and they are NOT chill about that. However, they were thankful to my Cleric for finally freeing their spirits, and letting them move on.
I'm a fairly new DnD player, so i don't have much. But in the first campaign I ever did, I'd say i went out swinging. Our DM didn't wanna DM anymore, so he decided he was going to TPK the party with an explosion wizard. I was playing a Warforged Monk, and our Fighter had just been killed next to me. I knew the wizard was sure to target me next, or was getting ready to use a Fireball to wipe us all off the map. So i picked up my friends corpse to use as partial cover, which gave me enough of an advantage to block 3 eldritch blasts from connecting with me. (Or some other blast magic, i don't recall.) It wasnt enough to save me from the impending Fireball and eventual TPK, but i felt super badass after that.
I'm a half orc half gnome who carries a cursed book that gets me put into suspended animation from time to time. As such he originally only knew orcish and a mix of primordial and had to slowly learn how to speak common. Aside from saying "Ugh" when he first met the party as a response to everyone sharing thier name he never spoke so everyone just called him Ugh. That was until we finally came across a real threat, that's when this little over 4 foot grey gnome made the earth shake when he started speaking "Terran" a form of primordial. He then shape shifted into a long extinct cat and mauled the enemy. It was one of those moments that made everyone understand that one shy cute party member had actually been through so much more than they could ever imagine.
My Half-Elf Storm Sorcerer/Tempest Cleric was a member of a rebellion being formed to stop the mass enslavement of Dragons, and was trying to convince the King of the Dwarven people to side with us. Their king asked me (the party's "leader") if my friends (the Party) agreed with my motives. King: "And what of your friends? Do they share this same sentiment?" Me: "Who, these guys? This rowdy group of lowlifes are the most chaotic, unorthodox, downright vile group of misfits I've ever had the displeasure of acknowledging the existence of. And I couldn't have it any other way! We clawed our way out of our own Rock Bottoms by our own two hands, meaning we'll fight tooth and nail to take a stand. I, for one, share this sentiment. And what of you?" The King then decided to join us.
With preparing my role-play! It wasn’r for once “oh uh… Bob the bandit”. It was like “John McCarter, bounty hunter that has some experience for hunting criminals.
One moment particularly sticks out to me because the DM followed through perfectly. My character - an aasimar paladin - and her mother - a full celestial have a complicated relationship. Long story short my character lost her memory and is trying to re-form the family bond. In one session, the party orders their preferred drinks: for my character, a sweet red wine. For her mother, whatever the strongest thing the tavern has. The two go outside and have a heart to heart, mostly my character talking about her insecurity. Upon coming back, they order another drink. This time, my character orders a shot of the strongest and her mother orders a glass of sweet wine.
In a really long campaign, who was going from lvl 1 to lvl 20 in the end, the players where at the castle of the BBEG. After navigating true most of the castle, they enter a room with 4 mask's on the door, similar to theathre masks. This was the room of the castle jester, who should have tried to fight them. he was a 5 stage bossfight, and would have been the hardest boss outside the BBEG. This party, while not murderhobos was usually dealing with things true combat. They peek true the door, see the jester on a wooden trone, and at this point i was ready for combat, and have already rolled the jester's initiative. Imagine my surprise, when instead of of attacking him, all 4 of them went in, kneel in front of him in unison, and start talking to him in rimes, and addressing him as your majesty. I was so impressed, that after some really god roleplay i just let them walk off, as well as having the jester tell them the path upwards. Unfortunately i don't remember the exact lines, but after they cleared the castle I've realize they wouldn't have survived if they have fight against him, because inside the castle you couldn't rest to regenerate, and they finished with 13 hitpoints distributed around the 4 of them
Well I'm currently a forever DM but my best roleplay moment as a DM was this. My players were doing a survival campaign and I created a whole list of random encounters of various difficulties. Everything from Giants to a harmless Flumph. So the players decide to talk with it so when it responds I managed to do the highest squeakiest voice you could imagine. So much so one player asked if that hurt my voice which it didn't. But it has the entire table laughing because that was not the voice they were expecting.
I once landed a critical hit that ended up being a killing blow by hacking a dead enemy's head off and throwing it at the enemy. My character still talks about it to this day and so do I.
One of my Transformers players is the result of Shockwave's experiments and is an artificial personality unknowingly inhabiting the body of some pre-war athelete. The original persona recently woke up, and he's been slowly regaining his memories and has gradually been wanting his body back. The player wanted me to play that original persona, since he's technically an NPC, and I'm glad he did, because it's lead to a lot of drama where I guilt trip the PC for stealing the original persona's life.
In my first group we had downtime rp, basically just using a text channel to rp inbetween sessions when our characters are somewhere safe. Setting the scene. My room, on board a wooden airship. I was a Nobleman Aasimar the campaign was about resurrceted heros defeating a also ressurected enemy of theirs. I wasn't one of those but to keep up with their special mojo I was allowed to gestalt (have to classes that level together). Sitting in my room waiting for potions to brew, and tinkering with my prostetic arm's various weaponry. I like the propper deadbeat noble am drinking and enjoying a good cigar. Naturally our party's goodie two shoes Kitsune ninja princess waltzes her fiery little butt into my room, uninvited, unannounced, but not nessarily unwelcomed, as my character was a bit of a flirt. She promptly burns my cigar away, and boils my whiskey into fumes because she believes I could be better then some common drunk and made it her personal crusade to see me reformed and clean. I without breaking eye contact with my only good eye, reach down collect another bottle, and takes out another cigar. Some bickering and arguing and a few ruined drinks and cigars later, I agree to stop smoking for the night, while also goading her into joining me for a drink. Her bodyguard also wanders in and joins us scowling in my general direction as he hates my guts for being irreverent towards her and generally a scummy flirt. We all chat I tell them more of what has changed about the world since their deaths centuries ago, they share stories of their many adventures, eventually our princess is revealed to be a light weight and passes out, unfortunately I wasn't joking when said fiery butt, her tails ignite with mystical flame, I immediately rush to scoop her into a princess carry to keep her tails from igniting the whole bloody airship, as the flames burn up my sleeve, and char the metal arm beneath. I starts trying to wake her before giving up and softly singing a lullaby and saying "Come on little candle, it's time to blow out for the night." This worked, and the flames died down while she snored. Now despite all my character's flaws he's a noble son of the empire, and that means he's a gentleman first and foremost, he carried her to her room and got her to bed before returning to contiune to drink with the bodyguard. Whom we had a heart to heart and worked past our mutual dislike. Morning after was hell for our fiery leader as she had one hell of a hangover, me and the Bodyguard had maxed out con scores so we just shugged and offered her a hangover cure. We had many such moments thanks to the downtime channel where our character could just be people. Not heroes saving the day, or champions of good, just good friends.
The most memorable roleplaying moment I had was that I was playing a Druid that didn’t have any flying wild shapes yet, and they wanted to launch me in a cannon to see me fly. I rolled high on a deception saying that there’s no point since I can already fly. They said prove it, so she flapped her arms in the air and went “CAW CAW!” Another high deception later, Everyone believed I was a bird.
I would say my favorite RP moment was this Dragonborn Paladin I had. Essentially, she was the mother of the group. She cooked for everyone by having this apron that said "Hot Stuff" written across the front. She would also put it on if she thought she was in a dire situation. She had always wanted to die with it on. My character and the party are going through this dungeon to find a kobold that had drank from a pool of intelligence. We find the guy and beat him up, but right before he dies, he reveals he was building a new golem. We end up having to fight the golem. During the fight, the golem knocks down a support beam that was keeping the cave. The golem had this tendency to lock onto a single target and grapple them, then remain still as it attempts to stuff them inside itself. So, as the cave was crumbling down and one of her party members was grappled. My dragonborn chef would put on her apron and charge at the golem, break her party member free. She would lead the golem away from the entrance and fight it one on one. She would end up being grappled, and just before the cave collapsed, she would yell out. "I am the Hottest Stuff around these parts, and I will drag you to the depths of hell to show you!" She then did her fire breath attack as the cave collapsed. The group still talks about it to this day. If for whatever reason a person ends up in a collapsed cave we call it pulling a Parthy
Sitting down at the tavern with the party's other rogue and planning a hiest to steal a witch's bag of magic beans. It was his first game. It was most certainly not mine. His rogue was a classic theif. Mine was a merchant who USED to be a thief and wasn't afraid of a good old 5-finger discount and selling "lightly used" gear from the bandits that attacked us on the road. I helped him figure out his character sheet for several months and it became a very mentor-apprentice relationship both in and out of character. Told him if he ever wanted to steal something properly I'd help him out, for a cut of the loot of course. He saw the lady selling magic beans that he couldn't afford and tapped me on the shoulder. We told the GM what was up so he could plan, and spent a week planning out of game for the hiest via discord. We remained in character the whole time. We got the party in on the gig and pulled it off almost flawlessly. Even made short work of the guardian golem boss when it came up. I took precautions against scrying after the fact behind the party's back just so they didn't have to worry about things and could celebrate without having to worry about loose ends. There were a lot of good moments in that campaign, but taking a week to plan the hiest with a newbie rogue was probably my personal favorite. I let him come up with the plan and just pointed things he might've forgoten about, or made small suggestions for improvements. It was his plan, and I was proud to see another rogue blossom into something more than just another murder-hobo.
I recently joined a new DnD group and we had a starting session to get everyone introduced with other. I was a dimwitted halfling rogue. One of the other players, a dwarf cleric, happened to stumble across our party while we were out camping so I told him about the job that we were planning on doing an asked if he wanted to join us. He accepted, but said he had one condition, to which I responded “Oh I’m terribly sorry, is it contagious”. Everyone at the table laughed. XD
For me, as a DM, it's when the players were talking about their current situation completely in character. As a player, it would be this one player that never played with anyone besides his family. I joined their campaign and he was spooked and barely spoke or took initiative during the game. Since my character was new to the party, I'd ask the frightened player's character for help or advice constantly and that got him opened up a whole lot more. I had to drop the group because of scheduling on my end but there are now new players he isn't familiar with and he's roleplaying like a champ.
In my group's Descent Into Avernus run, we ran into some cultists outside Elturel who were using an old underground monastery as a base to harass a nearby country town. The first group of cultists were taken down easily, and only their leader remained alive for interrogation purposes. When said cultist revealed he was harvesting souls for the Blood War, my LN cleric said "Why bother recruiting other souls for this? Yours will do just fine," before channeling Inflict Wounds through her foot as she curbstomped the cultist to death.
It was a 1st Edition Pathfinder Game where I was playing a 2nd generation surface born Drow, Kazrathane To'ories. A Divine Hunter archetype of Paladin that focused on longbow. We were in a big good vs evil war of Apsu/Bahamut (names were interchangeable) and his sister Tiamat. Near the beginning of the final act of the campaign, the NPC cleric who ran the orphanage my character grew up in was killed by a reoccurring minor antagonist. My Paladin didn't join the fight for the first four rounds since he was absolutely traumatized by the death of the man he saw as his father and was just holding his body while sobbing. Once Kazrathane snapped back to reality and joined the fight, we found out that this antagonist was being mindcontrolled and actually had quite the backstory with the NPC cleric. The party consisted of myself, a gnome Rogue that was host to some other entity calling it self Baron Orpheus and our human shielded fighter. The entity in the gnome was in control and wanted to kill the antagonist. I argued that she is not to blame as her will was not her own and the fighter sided with me. Baron Orpheus went to attack the newly unbrainwashed antagonist against our wishes, so I used Paladin's Sacrifice to take the woman who killed Kazrathane's father figure. Our fighter kept shoving Baron Orpheus away from the antagonist and I kept using Paladin's Sacrifice as I had a trinket that gave me extra uses of it. When Kazrathane was out of all but his last 4th level spells, Baron Orpheus tried to attack again. Kazrathane used King's Castle to switch places with the antagonist and stared Baron Orphues in the eyes as he stopped his attack not wanting to kill Kazrathane. Then my Paladin spoke. "She was not acting of her own will. To kill her would be an evil act. Baron Orpheus, when you first revealed yourself to us you called yourself the Betrayer of Demons. If you kill this woman, you are no better than the demons you claimed to have betrayed." This caused Orpheus' player to break character and yell "Fuck!" Before dropping from the Skype call for about 5 minutes (this was a few years before discord was known to us.) When he came back he told me he was both very impressed but also very mad as he hated that antagonist for constantly screwing him over, but also mad at me because Orpheus couldn't dispute Kazrathane's words. When the antagonist asked for judgment to he cast on her as she felt guilt for all she had done while being controlled, Kazrathane decided her fate. "I sentence you to live as the man who helped raise me lived. You shall take over the orphanage and be a mother to those without family. To heal the injured, care for the sick and feed the hungry. That is your penance and you shall swear this upon any good god you choose." I have been chasing that high of good roleplay ever since.
I, uh....I effectively killed one of the God's in my husband's custome 23+ years old game world in the first one off game I ever played in. It made for great storylines later on. 😅
At a large UK fest LARP I had the great honour of sparring and facing in a rapier tournament a woman who repesenets Britain at World Championship level in epee and she took me serious;y as an opponent
I was playing Alias A elf who was sucked into Curse of Stradd. We had made it to the castle roof and Stradd finished his monologue. As Stradd rode down to meet us Alias Misty stepped up to meet face off with stradds ilk Alias gets attacked and is lucky. He is hit by a lightning bolt.... It's now a 1 v 3 The player is sweating, Alias already has a plan. A smirk spreads across the DMs face. "So Alias, what are you going to do?" Alias, " I am holding the shove action. The next time the barbarian attacks me I would like to cast silvery barbs on the attack, give myself advantage on my shove, and push the barbarian down the castles... Chimney? Well, with my intentions clearly stated to RNGesus I let the round play. The barbarian missed her attack, Alias stepped to the side and using her own momentum shove.. Watching the barbarian fall from the castle the caster was enraged. The caster got too close to Alias. "Okay Alias, it's your turn." Alias jumps up on the ledge of the castle, he looks over the edge before looking back at his enemy. "We can still be friends." The vampire screamed at Alias. Alias raises his hands, and jumps backwards off the castle. "Elactris" With adrenaline filling his lungs he screams. A thin blue line of magical lightning lashed out at the caster, Wrapping around her ankle alias pulls. The caster fails her save and is pulled 10 feet closer to the falling Alias. Off the castle wall. It was epic.
Neither Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder (or Starfinder for that matter), but similar system. In this sort of campaign, the group sailed for North America during the first days of the colonial period (namely, Canada). For added context, the group consisted of a common Devil Hunter, a common Saint, a common Spy, and a giant Knight (myself). All of us were sent on a school-based mission for some training, dealing with some cultists. The primary villain for this scenario could *only* be harmed by miracles and/or holy weapons. Of *all* people to run away from the fight, it was the saint who books it. In comes me, the giant Knight to be the wall between my classmates and I to deal with the bugger. Because I didn't know about his resistance, I fall down after taking quite the beating (therefore I *technically* die) as the rest of the group is fretting about what to do since their tank of a friend went down, my knight slips into the passages of his memory, seeing how his life panned out, and seeing his father, William Wallace. It eventually led to the Scottish Knight falling to his knees and sobbing, saying that he was effectively sorry that he could not live up to his father's name, and failed to make his father proud. The DM, impressed by all this, then showed the scene playing out as William Wallace cradled him like a babe, revealing that he had always been proud of his son. This scene right here gave him a free 'get out of jail free' card back to the land of the living, transforming his father's claymore into a holy weapon that he could use in one hand and roared out "Freedom! Dunmaghlas!" Before turning the bugger into fine red paste.
So my party was fighting a bunch of end game enemies (low to mid 20's) and they had contingency spells in place that should they be unalive at the beginning of their next turn they are teleported to a room at their base were they are brought back and healed up in three to four turns. So we had a deck of many things and a few were sh spells and so I instructed the wizard and rouge to spell craft (our DM used a spell craft check as a base percentage of success of the wish) to have it so the people we are fighting would be affected by the card the void (mind you in pather finder first edition and 3.5 DND it stats when the void card is drawn your soul is taken and a unknown random outsider now has it) so the whip it up and because there was so many combatants we were facing the DM did a two tice roll and he failed both of them. Ah such a great moment for me that it worked.
Low wisdom/int barbarian in some temple of a god long forgotten by most but known to the very few as Sekhmet had both our cleric and wizard fail their knowledge history check. 4 statues of cats in each of the corners of the room. Obviously in my rookie level mindset this means four offerings. Fish, Beef, Turkey, Chicken. With these four food items which I always had and absolutely nobody ever questioned because barbarian hungry for different tasty foods immediately decided to try to summon this unknown god with the ancient ritual. Meow meow meow meow....
First session, and we were captured by some unknown race of orcs. The other party members thought it was a long-lost race of elves, but I knew something was wrong. Once we got out and to the main city, I went to a library and looked for a book on different races, and found a book with races across the multiverse. Wasn't in there. This was an entirely new undercover race, so we get to name it. I (a supernatural fan) look at my husband (who is also a supernatural fan), and he looks at me. At the same time, we look at the dm and say Jefferson Starships. The dm (who was also a supernatural fan) just went. God damn it.
I'll never forget my proudest moment. To keep it as short as possible, the general of a kingdom's army (and friend of the party) was up against the leader of the secret police/inquisition (bad vibes), with significant forces backing each in a plaza, civil war about to begin. We'd been on an investigative mission for the king, an agent of the secret police tried to stop us, the general's adjutant physically intervened with a dive-tackle so we could move on. Head inquisitor wanted the adjutant's head for assaulting an officer. In this kingdom (all not-inherently-evil undead, long story), the only penalty for crime is death-death. I was playing a wizard, who had previous side-job experience mediating business disputes in a trading city (echoing my real-world profession). He uses winged boots to fly up above the crowd and try to control the situation. I first argued the general into agreeing that his man violated the law, for which the penalty was death, but he referenced that his man was attempting to aid an authorized investigation. So I spin around to the head inquisitor, who cannot deny that we were on an authorized investigation and that to interfere was a crime, which her man had committed, and the penalty was death. "Either two crimes were committed, or each person acted with reasonable belief that their actions were lawful." Inquisitor first argued that they both should die, but I convinced her that given the oncoming threat (main plot of the campaign), it was best for the realm that both individuals live, and that what happened was merely a misunderstanding on both sides. In that entire exchange, I only had to roll twice, both high rolls. The rest was the DM just like "yeah they can't argue with that." Never been so proud in a game. Now, an in-game week later the head of the secret police attempted her coup against the king, but my use of Tasha's mind whip to prevent her using reaction to release a held action made the plot fail then we quickly ended her. So I take no less pride in stopping the civil war before it started. Moments like that are why I play TTRPGs.
I was always an alright role-player, but I was always very quiet unless I was addressed. I don't know if he did it on purpose to enable me to role-play more, but our veteran player in character suggests that my character should lead the party into a dungeon. At first, I hated the idea, but within a few sessions, I went from being silent most of the time from trying to take point in situations I usually wouldn't even try to
TL;DR party ignores plothook resulting in the best RP of the campaign. Had my party straight up skip a plothook as they weren't interested in the "mysterious ruins" just off their chosen path. So after a hasty 5 minute break i drafted up a murder mystery in a town that was their destination anyway. Luckily i had some minor plans for this however most of what went on was off the cuff. They met an NPC known as Exavier from out of town who is there to help them. After some searching of crime scenes my party discover some tracks and make their way into a sewer cistern which houses the dregs of the large town. They are also introduced to a friend of the NPC who i said was familiar to the party's warlock,but she couldn't place where. They find the inhabitants had been butchered days ago, but not eaten. Whilst exploring they hear rocks dislodge by the ladder near the entrance. The party hide in different places and are shocked to see a young red haired half orc walk down the wall by the ladder and into the cistern where she proceeds to sit down. None though are as shocked as the half orc monk in the party as it is his missing daughter, the last known whereabouts of whom was kidnapped by orcs and tithed to someone known as "the father". He proceeds to call out to her and she looks up in his and the Exavier' direction (they hid together) and calls out father. After a perception check our monk realises she hasn't even looked at him. Exavier strides out reassuringly calling her his daughter and they go to embrace. This triggers our fathomless warlock to use a tentacle of the deeps to restrain the daughter where it's discovered she can turn her hands into talons and she becomes animalistic in nature at the restraint. Cue a 20 minute negotiation where Exavier offers to talk and explain if the party release her. They do. Exavier explains that he discovered her with the orcs and she was dying from illness. So he "saved" her by turning her (think a cross between vampire and succubus, she feeds off souls). He promises to ascend her in a ritual and tells the fathomless warlock that he did the same to the female NPC, whom she finally recognises as a very sick girl from before her village was destroyed by said ritual whilst she was a child. Amazingly the party continue to talk despite the revalations and they are doing amazing roleplay in character to boot. It ends with Exavier teleporting out with the daughter but telling them they are travelling to the monks hometown to enact the ritual of ascendancy. Shockingly the monk decided to stay on their original objective as its the bigger picture despite the guillotine currently being hung over his hometown. All of this came from 5 minutes of hasty planning and lots of add lib. And has become my favourite RP moment in our campaign so far.
The best roleplay I've done is during the story of We Iaom, a monk who had lost so much during a war with dragons that he became mad with the thirst for revenge. When the monk was instantly vaporized, body and soul, to cast a wish spell to heal all the pain and sorrow of the war, I played the role of one of his few friends, a paladin named Hubert Jarrel. He ran over to his friend's ashes and dropped to his knees, giving the following fervent speech while desperately clawing at the ashes as if trying to put them back together: "No, you can't be dead! You got your revenge! You won! This can't be how it ends! We were supposed to help rebuild, you and I, and all the others! How can I go home and tell everyone that you aren't coming back!? How am I supposed to live with this!? Damn it, you have to live! Live!" The party had to pull him away from the ashes even as he kept shouting for the monk to live, to come back, and to help him rebuild. But the monk's death was final and no amount of magic could bring him back.
The best roleplay moments are those you get to share with another person at the table. Context: Okay, I may be cheating a little, since I'm not a player, but the DM. The campaign is about the players being Dragon Riding Vikings (Httyd style, with a D&D twist to it) and an NPC the players fell in love with is the village's mage/shaman. A Green Dragonborn female, who's a bit disorganised and loses things a lot, but she's a kind soul. I like to give secrets to each NPC a secret the players can find, if they look in the right places. The secret this Dragonborn held is a book she's reading. While the party was helping her search for something at her home, one of the players stumbled upon this book. She said, she's curious about what she's reading. Opening the book revealed it's some very romantic story about two elves in love, trying to keep their relationship a secret. The player called the Sorceress over, asking about the book. The Sorceress' face turned red, snatching the book and locking it in a chest. I even made a sketch of that moment, since that was the moment, the players fell in love with this NPC. A few sessions later, the party's Changeling Rogue (race important for later) was waiting for the sorceress at her home/workshop while she was away for a short while. And the rogue asked if she sees the book anywhere. A good perception check revealed it was next to a chair near the fireplace. The rogue started reading the book, saying she wants the sorceress to see her reading the book, once she returns. And that is precisely what happened. Again, she turned red as a tomato, standing in the doorway stunned. The rogue macked her a little about the book. The table laughed, until I described how the Dragonborn's surprised face turns into a sad one, as she walks away aimlessly into the frosty forest. The rogue folkowed her to a clearing, where she sat on a large rock, putting her face in her arms, but not crying, just ... Sad. The rogue approached, perfusely apologising, saying that the book is genuinely good. The Dragonborn told her to keep it. That it is only a foolish dream of a naive little girl. Now the part I was trying to get to all along: I roleplayed the whole monologue with a sad tone and fake tears, which soon became real. The whole reason she's reading this book came forth. She spent her younger years studying magic and isolating herself rather than persuing love and happiness and now, she's 34 and has noone. She envies the young folk, because they still have a chance. At this moment, the whole table, including me was in tears and then, the Changeling Rogue's player asked for a minute to think, I gave him some time, while I looked around the silent, glassy-eyed table. And then he said something that left me stunned with an open mouth for a while. He said, his character, having read some of the book reaches into her memory and transforms into the male elf lover from the book and outstretches her arms for a hug. After I collected myself, I described how she also looks at the Rogue in disbelief before accepting the hug and sobbing uncontrollably. I then called a fifteen minute break, to let the players recover, but the one who needed the break the most ... was me. I've never had a magical/emotional moment like this in my 3 years of experience with D&D and DMing. Oh and did I mention, this was the player's fifth session in gis very first campaign? I think I have a lot to look forward to. Thank you for reading my little story, traveller. I bid you a good day.
Long story short! We where trapped in a vampire lord's manor. The dude is pretending to be good, when actually he is just manipulating a cities people. My character Daniel, is a ranger/ monk. With him is a Bard, a rogue and sword mage..? Anyways! My character made up the plan, to have him distract the guards. While the rest would run and escape! My character walk out of the secret room we where hiding in. And proudly made his presence known! He single handedly held off 15 guards, each with 100 HP. I was very confident that my character could pull this off! He is a Shadow Monk with the Ranger Fighting Style of Blind Fight. As well as having his Sub-Class be Horde Slayer. He was designed to fight huge groups and come out on top. Everyone safely got out, and my character ran down a cliff side to escape. Thank you DM, for the Spider Walk Slippers!!!
The bbe had actually got the entire party. We were all bound and restrained before them, as he was monologuing. Being a bard, i decided to attempt to persuade them that i was actually on their side, and i had a message for them, from the powers they served. Convinced them that, due to unforseen actions by opposing powers, the grand plan had changed, and that i was no turncoat, just one of may sleeper agents, and we could confirm this by finding my cards, with which i could ordain the future. Has some henchmen bring in the parties belongings. I am freed and grab my cards. I sit before the bbe, on the floor with my party, and start a tarot card act. After some meaningless dialogue, i reveal to the DM ive been arranging the cards on the floor, just so, to create a *hypnotic pattern* We didnt defeat the bbe, but we booked it out of there, with all our gear, and the partt mainly unharmed
Total improv on my part, but my artificer got jumpscared by a necromorph looking home brew creature skittering up right next to him from the other side of the map in a cave He wasn’t using his gun to avoid drawing too much attention, opting to borrow the Kobold healer’s crossbow instead Whelp…one frightened Tom & Jerry scream, a hit from Thor’s fist (thunderous smite with his Battlefist. Master maker artificer. Lots of fun, but it is homebrew) and a crossbow bolt between the eyes later and that plan goes right out the window Still shaken, he hands the crossbow back to the kobold, and pulls out his gun again One party member was asleep (unknown to the rest of us, because it was done over discord) Whelp, my screaming in character woke him right up, adding to the entire group spending a good minute to stop laughing Great times
In a pretty recent sci fi campain i played as a cyborg beast who recently became more then a product had saved a little girl from brutal brain surgery as my 9 feet tall unit of a blood hunter pretended to be a security unit in this testing facility and has basicly intimidated a entire room of soldiers one of them got so scared that he shot himself in the foot as this hulking behemoth known as Nokia walked out pretending that he was having a glich suprisingly this was one of our cleanest and least bloody missions and the little girl sees Nokia as her "big brother" now
I’m always going to love the time my formerly illiterate young dwarven ranger Kolgrim (7 INT) was taken under the wing of our learned halfling Bard Professor Adelbert. Over many long journeys together young Kolgrim learned his letters and various languages. He was so proud of himself in fact that to prove to his peers he had finally learned Abyssal, he read ALOUD from a strange carven obelisk unearthed in an alien temple and unleashed demonic forces upon the party 😂
I have two: one as a player, and one as a DM. For one mini-campaign played over Halloween (not quite a one-shot, not quite a full campaign), we were a bunch of high school students that essentially got transformed into their "costumes" at the high school dance - thus leading to my firbolg barbarian Brick. I roleplayed him with my best critikal impression, and he was an AVID conspiracy theorist. Full blown alien area 51 style conspiracy theorist. He was utterly convinced that aliens were responsible for what was happening to them. The party tried to deny this, and in character I just looked at them and said, in my best charlie deadpan - "I'm an 8 foot tall cow giant man, [character 1] has horns and can apparently cast spells, and you have a beard. Do you seriously have any better explanation than the fact that this is some sort of alien experiment?" and this caught them so off guard that they had to admit they didn't, and Brick went about his business, very vindicated. In another Campaign, of which I'm the DM, the party had been trawling for in-game weeks, many many sessions in a row, through the underdark. They'd teamed up with two NPCs to help them find a maguffin - the son of the king who was going mad from disease, and an elven mage merchant who had been wrongfully arrested as the king believed he had something to do with the maguffin going missing. What the party didn't know was that, all along, the elven mage was evil, and was planning to backstab the party, steal the maguffin, and escape with it once they had it and were out of the underdark. In this one particular party, one of the players was a drow monk - there was no real animosity between him and the elven mage, however, and in fact they got along decently ok (all things considered) given they were the ones who went on watch at nighttime together. Just before the start of the session where the mage was going to betray them, I pulled the monk's player aside, and told him "Ok. I'm not going to tell you what, just yet, but something is going to happen during the next night, and you are the only one who's going to actually know or be able to do anything in character. I'm offering you a choice; do you want me to narrate it at the table, with all the other players, knowing that their characters will be fast asleep and unable to react, interfere, or even offer advice? Or do you want it in private, so you're the only one who knows explicitly what happens, and has to relate it to the rest of the party once they wake up?" He chose private. Once night fell, I pulled him into the hallway and away from the room, and began to quietly narrate what happened. Partway through the night, with his perception check for being on watch, he hears a gentle creaking at the door to the barn they were resting in, and then a grunt from the elf. However, he didn't roll high enough on dexterity to react, so as he went to turn, he heard a soft whisper, saying a single word, which he couldn't quite make out, and then his entire body locked up. Power word stun. I then described to him that he heard gentle footsteps, and the rummaging of going through the bag where the maguffin was stored. He fully believed that someone had broken into the barn, taken out the Elf (he'd been badly injured in an encounter just before they made it to the surface), and was going to steal the maguffin, but he was particularly terrified that he'd had no actual saving throw against the stunning effect (since I'd made it clear the dex wasn't a saving throw for that, merely to see if he could turn around in time to SEE what was happening, rather than just hearing it). He then heard the footsteps approaching him, and with his eyes open, he saw some silhouetted legs come into focus, before the figure that had stolen the maguffin squatted in front of him; the elf. The way his eyes WIDENED as he realised what was happening was phenomenal - I'll be thriving off that for a while. And then I got to give him a quiet, hushed little villain monologue, which was something along the lines of: "Well. Another elf being in the party does somewhat make this difficult, as it would've been far easier for me to simply take this, and be off in silence. However, you have given me a good opportunity here, so allow me a moment to get something off my chest. You, and your companions, are some of the MOST irritating adventurers that I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with, and, were I not in such a rush, I would take great delight in watching you all burn beneath my boot like the squirming, insignificant pests that you are. Luckily for you, then, I AM expected elsewhere. So heed this warning; do NOT follow me to take this back. Or else I will very much decide that I am no longer in such a rush." The elf then stood, and calmly walked out of the barn, and I guided the player back to the room. He was REELING, and the other players were clamoring to know what had happened. God I fucking love playing villains.
Our party finally managed to kill the strhad, journey is about to end. Big feast has begun, everyone who helped/supported us joined to celebrate. As a true dwarf, I want to drink quick and efficiently. So I casted water breathing spell on me, then dive into huge barrel and started nonstop drinking. In tomorrow, barrel was empty and I was sleeping inside of it. That was the proudest roleplaying moment as I think.
I... Know there was something but i honestly? Don't remember ... Which i only learned now and that hurt beacuse i remebered how long ago was the last time we have played toghether.
Mm. Its basic but, TLDR I said "No Balls" after a long convo with an ex adventurer. He processed to sacrifice himself to save our asses. So, this guys heroic essence was stolen and he was charged with maintaining the room his and others' essences were held. You could simply destroy the container.. but you'd most certainly die. We then entered another room.. which was trapped. When we returned, I laid into him for not telling us about it. His response was simply he'd never dared explore a single inch. Can't remember exactly what led to "No Balls"... but that charisma check really came in clutch, and we didnt even know it would. Didn't expect to even see him again, let alone find he'd shattered another hero's vessel, who then processed to bail us out of the fire. Went to check on him out of curiosity to find his body blown up n mangled. His last words? "Here... i have a gift for you..." Processed to pull middle finger out of pocket, before immediately croaking.
More of an overall compliment, really, but I was told that I roleplay EXTREMELY well as a canonical character in a tv show, even for situations that that would NEVER have come up in the show. My secret is that I have no idea what I'm doing, so I just let the character "take the reins", as it were. Often, she surprises me as much as she surprises those with whom I'm roleplaying with.
Mind you, this wasn't in a dice-rolling scenario, just a random "Ask (character)" blog on Tumblr. Also, I'd *always* find reaction images from the show that depicted the character (even, in one memorable occasion, body-swapped with her little sister) in the moment, and they were always perfect. I might even call them fabulous... Darling.
For me, it was getting so immersed in my own character as a DM that i actually screamed "GET THEM!!" As one of the BBEG's i have realized he was fighting the daughter of his nemises (the Goddess Demeter) and that she was getting away he was so enraged that he was given the oppertunity to kill the daughter to get back at a GOD AND SHE WAS GETTING AWAY, He was so angry that I (like i said) Screamed in real life, which i never did before, my players were suprised and starttled and went "Uh oh, we really gotta bolt BBEG gonna murder us, no holding back"
I once made my party's Grave Domain Cleric cry. In a good way. So one of our party members once saved a very important NPC from death via sexism by marrying her. It was a convenience marriage at first but they quickly bonded with each other. Time went on, the girl got pregnant. But also our cleric got a prophecy of doom for that girl. She knew that she would die tragically, but that her death would save everyone's life. The foretold day came and the mother-to-be found her demise. Body completely broken, nothing anyone could do. She died with a smile, thanking her husband for the short time in her life when she experienced real happiness. It was then that the cleric could reveal that she knew that death was coming for her. The party rested up in a big city for several months. Our cleric grew distant and depressed. She had only ever learned to handle her emotions through stoicism and silence. So my character, a wizard, was the one who tried to reach out to her. Just showed up at her temple with two horses and a basket of food. He persuaded her to join him in a ride outside the town and just led her to a nice and quiet place. He opened up to her that he of all people knew what she was going through, since he had made mistakes in the past that led them astray and ended in the death of a party member. He told her that he knew how she felt like she deserved the burden on her shoulders for letting that girl die. And he talked with enough empathy and warmth about how he really cared for her and her wellbeing that she cracked up and let her emotions flow for the first time in her life. They had a very long, good talk about processing their own shortcomings that he managed to snap her out of her mindset of isolation. Proudest roleplay-moment of my career. Also the first time my future wife told me "you're gonna be an amazing dad."
I have one that happened in the game I was just in tonight. Two of the characters are the same characters we played in the previous campaign, that was set in a completely different timeline. The other player and I just sat there doing our own RP where we thought the other one looked familiar and made the connection. Each of us starting with "You look familiar" and remembering the story of how her character got a disembodied hand as a pet. That story probably should be in the stupid things in a game session, but I hadn't started playing with the group at that time. The story I was told, was another player was playing a bard. He was trying to play a horny bard, but he didn't know how to do it and not hijack the game. They were trying to get a door open that was locked. And the bard decided to seduce the door. Yeah, not really smart. The result is he lost a hand, and another vital portion of his anatomy that I'm sure you can guess. The character that has the hand, picked it up and some shenanigans happened and it became sentient and her pet.
My proudest moment in dnd so far is a tie between 2 events both on the same character so the party and Dwarven grave cleric of kelemvor Father Amon Greybeard were chasing an elder brain for some magic item in the under dark we found their base we were 15th level at this point so 8th level spells where on the table I had a magic item that boosted a spells duration by 10x up to a max of 24 hours once a day I proceeded to drop a 10 minute long earthquake spell collapsing there entire base on them it was hilarious and awesome the other moment was a session later where after some tomfoolery we ended up fighting Cyric my gods archenemy we managed to kill and have some guy replace Cyric and my character got to personally deliver Cyrics Godsoul to kelemvor for judgement best day of my 280 year old dwarfs life
A morally ambiguous sci-fi campaign. My PC was a former slave that was born into it and only rescued after losing his parents. He'd signed on with the same freedom fighter group that helped him, and of course, they all died in his backstory. Very unhappy, morose person from his many losses. The party started the campaign in prison and escaped with the help of some cyborg zombies and a group of NPCs, one of which grabbed some fallen guards' comm units to reformat and give to us to use. I had my PC go through the comm, just out of curiosity. Turns out, this guy had a teenage daughter who'd just gotten to college, and he was texting with her right before the breakout. Her last message to him had been just before the chaos and was a message she loved him. GM was really rubbing in the tragedy. So my freedom fighter, without hesitation, wrote back, "I love you, too. Always." When one of the party, a rather vicious alien warrior, asked why he did it, I replied, "So she has something I never got."
After subjugating multiple demon lords and my own goddess through "normal" Blacksmithing I subjugated a rival goddess on accident and made them work so closely together the churches started calling them sister goddesses. After I paid druids to awaken the entire forest to dig for iron and coal the poor nature goddess could either play along or be seen as a lesser contributor than a dwarf
So during Rime of the Frost Maidens, my druid character, Daphne, had been unable to stand up when she saw a person being sacrificed to Auril in the first session due to her being weak, both in level and in lacking a spine at the time. Fastforwards to when we were committing a heist of Auril's fortress to steal her magic book, and in order to do so, we would have to complete the tests Auril's faithful have to undergo to join her cult. Well...Daphne got the party's attention, and proceeds to tell the party about that first day in Ice Windale. How she couldn't stand up. How they'd seen the horrible things Auril forced her followers to do, including a serial killer we'd met. Daphne...refused to stand down this time. If the rest of the party wants to take the trials? She won't stop them. But after seeing what kind of monster Auril is, Daphne wouldn't take the tests. She's not going to play Auril's game and do what she wants knowing what a monster the Frostmaiden is, they can find some other way. And the rest of the party agreed. We weren't taking the tests, we were going to track down another way to do it. She then blew a raspberry at Auril's tablets detailing her tenets, because matured or not, she's still kinda childish. Not only was that a great roleplay moment showing just how much Daphne had grown as a...homebrew skunk horse chimera thingie, but also letting us avoid the infamous Tests of the Frostmaiden, and everyone agreed we dodged a bullet there.
as a DM its really hard to pin down a favorite RP moment... I do have a good one I was reminded of recently though. it was a "heist episode", where the party was meant to break into this large vault holding a powerful magical item desired by multiple people who offered valuable potions or magical weapons, depending on who it went to. They got past the puzzle lock and opened the vault without much issue (only activating one stone golem guard). The item was in a large obvious box at the far end of the vault room, guarded by 2 stone golem guards. The vault also had several tables with stacks of gold bars (more than the entire party could carry) and safety deposit boxes lining the wall. The entire party immediately forgot about the main goal, leaving it to be taken by NPCs of one faction while they stuffed their bags with gold and began breaking into the boxes along the walls. One of the group failed a check.. got frustrated... and fire bolted the safety deposit boxes. This triggered the alarm and deadly gas began to fall from the ceiling. A panicked scramble ensues, the NPC that went for the magical item got paralyzed by a trap on the item and attacked by a golem. The rest of the NPCs got sealed in the vault as the party barely made it out before the gas got to them. as they gathered themselves outside of the vault they could hear the last gasps of the NPCs inside... it was pretty dark. "But hey, we got the gold so who cares?" the murderhobo artificer says to the rest... "OH?!? hehehehe WhAt GoLd?!?!?! HAHAHAHAHAH!!!!" cackles the floating illusionary head of the BBEG, Redeye the Mad. He likes to show up when the party has a big win or loss and tease them. He is one of my favorite characters to play, as he's batshit insane... and this time he got the party good. The party empties their pockets in horror as they find every single bar of gold has turned into dirt. They filled their bag of holding as well... the artificer poured out a 500lb pile of dirt onto the floor as the BBEG just laughed at them. This was the moment my players, or at least the artificer for sure, vowed a solemn oath to kill Redeye the Mad. This was easily my most evil moment as a DM as well lol
imma be honest, that last one is a bit of a dick move and if a player has a backstory they like, the DM should not try to fuck with it and do things the player specifically said they don't want to happen.
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The barbarian was going off about the rogue's amnesia. "You're suspicious and weird, I mean, how can we know we can trust you if you don't even know who you are? I think that's dangerous." and such. Ironically, the barbarian doesn't talk about himself, and is all secretive. So my druid just goes: "I think he who is unknown because he does not know himself is less dangerous than he who is unknown because he does not reveal anything about himself". I completely improvised that line.
Wisdom score kicking in
That's awesome 😭
Hey everyone listening in, this video released on my birthday! I turned 35 today!
I hope everyone is happy, healthy and stayin strong.
Happy late birthday
fuck i teared up at the first one...
same man
Me too 😭
As did I.
In an evil-leaning campaign I took part in, my sorceress was effectively the leader of the group due to everyone else being incredibly self-serving or otherwise struggling to not cause issues for the whole group in trying to fulfill their own personal agendas. Yet another instance of this caused the party to break out into an argument, and for a while, my sorceress tried to stay out of it, but eventually she snapped, and according to the group, her meltdown was so convincingly real that the group was actually worried they'd pissed me off out-of-character! I actually had to reassure them that I found the whole thing amusing more than anything, because my sorceress made absolutely sure she had plausible deniability whenever it came to anyone else's shenanigans, and would happily sell them out to save her own skin if it came down to it. So I had no issues with the rest of the party digging their own proverbial graves; I just channeled her inner frustration so well that I had to spend ten minutes assuring everyone that I was still having fun, lmao
My favorite RP moment wasn't as a play but as a DM. My last campaign was pirate themed and I had my players start as members of a monster hunting crew. Well in session 1 they had a bit of internal party RP and shopping before setting off to sea. Now for some context I LOOOOVE to use music to set a tone and to really immerse the players and myself. Now while at sea the players found out they would be hunting a purple worm. The battle music was slowly climbing throughout the fight. During said fight this 50 man crew was entirely knocked out and the captain along with the captain and first mate. At the crescendo of the battle music they slayed the purple worm by coating a cannon ball in acid and rolling double nat 20s. After the battle the players went to find the first mate and the captain. They soon found and healed the first mate enough for talk and when they found the captain he was dead. The captain had chunks of the wood railing sticking out of his throat, chest, and abdomen. At this point the game store we are in is dead quite and the music has gone somber. I could see the tears welling up in my players eyes as I RPed through the first mate telling them that the captain had given the ship to the players bc the first mate had failed in his duty to maintain cohesion with the crew. One of my players cried as the captain exhaled his final breath and his final order. "Set me to rest where all captains die". It was my proudest moment ad a DM
Easy one. In a Kingmaker campaign I’m playing, one of our sessions ran well into the night. We played for six hours that day and the entirw session beginning to end was us having in-character dialogue planning wars, funds, defenses, policies, and civil rights for our kingdom. The entire thing became us having this small council meeting uninterrupted (save five minutes where I had to get a pizza at the door.)
“That moment was a nat 20” imma have to use that!
As a player I joined a group mid campaign, they were around lvl 15, so the dm said roll 3d6 and that was the level I'd make a character. I rolled 12, so I made 1lvl cleric, 11 lvl fighter. But I rp'd as a priest that was a pacifist and only wanted to heal the sick. I was being escorted by the party since I was a local do gooder, to a town that was more or less a refugee camp from a war between cormyr and some invading barbarian tribes. The town needed healers, ministry, etc and along the way (a few weeks in game) we had seen atrocities of war, crucified farmers, burned remains of women and children, etc. The party was getting angrier by the day and my character quietly would read last rites and bury the fallen. As a "priest of tyr" I was "duty bound" to lay souls to rest, which the party wasn't against. A few combat encounters happened along the way, where my character simply observed with pained expression. By this point the DM took me aside and was like wtf, you're a fighter in robes and a pacifist. I assured him I had a plan. We continued on, by now the party was protective of me since I was a quiet, good soul, who just wanted to help people. Since I had "no fighting" skills I was constantly being shielded by them. Upon reaching our destination, we saw from the crest of a hill, the town was being ravaged by barbarians. Screams from the victims; men, women, children, the elderly alike were being tortured and killed. The laughter of the barbarians could be heard through all of that. The party starts devising a plan while my character walks off and opens his bag of holding out of view. Out comes the armor, greatsword, rings, amulet, and crown (not royalty, it was an artifact that gave DR5 from the DM). The party didn't notice I was gone until they saw me half way down the hillside approaching a group of barbarians. My character held up the crossguard of his greatsword showing the emblem of tyr and kissed it. He said "after a lifetime of slaying anyone for coin, i swore never to commit violence again to my lord tyr. But for you scumbags, I will break that oath" and proceeded to slaughter the group of barbarians, like 5 or 6 standing together, and great cleave feat. The party rushed to join me, just to see me casually walk into the town hacking people in two, or chopping off heads. The DM didn't make us roll initiatives at first because he was mindblown at my rp. The players were just as stunned for a bit. We had to break for a bit so they could discuss how creative they thought it was. It felt pretty damn good having never played with them before and getting that kind of praise.
I did a cain and abel story from the perspective of cain seeking forgiveness which made my players cry
In a campaign that involved time travel, the DM erased my character from existence. I stopped showing up since I apparently no longer existed.
Oof. Damn.
That Sword welding father / wrestling son storyline left me with a lump in my throat.
Man, if I had a player that always checked for mimics, I'd wait till a good time and let them find some that were "totally there the whole time" and pretend to be SO MAD about it.
In a short campaign I was a part of we ran into monsters that took the form of our nightmares (mine for example was a version of my character who never escaped the life of crime and kept hurting people with his potions) while the other whose name was gwyn(a fairy with monarch wings) was terrified of losing her wings to the archfey. My character Phineas promised her he would never let that happen . At the end of the campaign after we brokered peace with the archfey and fought the final boss gwyn hugged my character and thanked him for upholding his promise . It made me really proud cause it was one of the first promises he actually kept and started to give up the con man life to start travelling
Also of note I caused the entire party to gain a level in warlock cause we made a contract between a archfey and a great old one
I played an artificer who once was evil and now is trying to be good, he’s basically a very nice and helpful person who the party doesn’t like because they feel his being fake, the thing is that they never seen the artificer angry… ever… till one session where the artificer was getting so stressed that his happy mask shattered and killed an important NPC by grabbing them. H the back of their head and slamming their face into the wood desk so hard that it not only shattered the desk, but also bust the head like a rotten watermelon.
It was hilarious to see everyone’s reactions to the happy and nice artificer looks control and immediately went back to being happy again
My proudest roleplaying moment came recently in an Old School Essentials game a couple months back. I was playing a cleric that was, in my own terms, a marshmallow of a personality. She happy, bubbly, and honestly felt that people could be better if they just tried. Heck, she even got a medusa to look her in the eyes (she was temporarily blind at the time, so no petrification) and convinced them that it was not what you were, but who you were that mattered. But that's not my proudest moment.
My proudest moment was at the end of the campaign. We had just learned that the leader of our city was using a magic crystal to grow rich and was attacking nearby non-human settlements because racist noble. We got back to the town after and adventure to find it under siege by orcs. We needed to convince the leader of the warband to let us through to try to end things more amenably, or at least bring the noble's head to them. I managed to convince their leader to let us through, even shouting them down when they started giving a "no one is innocent speech" because the noble had ordered a group of soldiers to slaughter a village of orcs.
And considering my character was lawful, and believed that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, I was still within my alignment in fighting the Big Bad Evil Noble lady, who turned out to be half dragon, and in fact turned into a dragon during the fight. Definitely my proudest moment.
I've got two. both involve the same two man party of my little sister and I:
1. Party was sneaking into a cultist base and our duo basically swapped roles the whole time. My character, arcane trickster rogue, is usually the face and the other PC, eldritch knight fighter, is better in combat. She put on the robes of a dead cultist and lured them out, then I ganked them from behind. This was early on in the campaign and all three of us (players and DM) are relatively new to playing the game, so getting to see my sister shine in RP for the first time was amazing (I also loved getting to really rogue it up for the first time)
2. We were sneaking into an auction house/casino at night but the guards were on high alert (I had stolen some keys earlier in the day in preparation) and were searching people coming in. My sisters character was a kalashtar at the time (shapeshifting disease) and used a combination of fake drunkenness and telepathy to freak out the guards, distracting them while I slipped by. Her routine was hilarious and had all of us cracking up, it was awesome.
Jesus, that last story..."She wasn't a bad person, but she was manipulative." "The player told me there was no chance their character would ever marry that NPC, and I might have taken that as a challenge." These lines say a lot about this writer, both as a DM, and as a person in general....and none of it's good.
I'm with you on that one
I’ve got two that come to mind:1st has me as the DM, in that moment playing a powerful archfey. Not an evil one, as neutral as it gets. So one of my players (her 1st campaign and we were 9 sessions in) asked the archfey a question and added the phrase „and I demand honesty“ afterwards. Apparently my entire countenance changed from a gentle, welcoming smile to a „who do you think YOU are demanding anything from ME?“ facial expression … I didn’t even realize that in the moment and got told by my players afterwards. Everyone leaned back at the table expecting a TPK to go down in the next minutes. That didn’t happen and was never my intention. But that day I learned the power that a sheer look can have.
2nd one has me as a female fighter and isn’t actually my big moment: I bonded with one of the other pc‘s pretty fast and he became a something like a little brother for my character. His character died or would have if it wasn’t for my fighter to turn to the gods and sent out a prayer to whom ever might listen. One pact with an evil goddess later and lil bro was back to life - yay. Downside was my character had to do something for said goddess or will be hunted forever by her minions to serve for all eternity - booh! So she told lil bro about it a couple of sessions later offering to leave the group for the safety of the other pc‘s and I was ready to actually have her leave. Lil bro looked around the table, grabbed my hand (irl to ad more impact, I guess) looked me straight in the eye and said: „We are family and if it comes to that it’s us versus the world.“ DM teared up, so did I and one of the other players too. That was the first time D&D actually made me cry and still remains one of my favorite moments to this day.
man that first one had me tearing up
More like my coolest, but my Aarakocra Cleric is a Cleric of Ra, Egyptian god of light. So when a group of undead were walking towards him, he held up his holy symbol of a hawk, and said "Ra take the wheel!". My DM proceeded to go full rule of cool and instead of repelling the undead, IT COMPLETELY ANNIHILATED THEM. Vaporized. The undead are a homebrew species known as The Forgotten, btw, who are created when no one remembers them, and they are NOT chill about that. However, they were thankful to my Cleric for finally freeing their spirits, and letting them move on.
I'm a fairly new DnD player, so i don't have much. But in the first campaign I ever did, I'd say i went out swinging. Our DM didn't wanna DM anymore, so he decided he was going to TPK the party with an explosion wizard. I was playing a Warforged Monk, and our Fighter had just been killed next to me. I knew the wizard was sure to target me next, or was getting ready to use a Fireball to wipe us all off the map. So i picked up my friends corpse to use as partial cover, which gave me enough of an advantage to block 3 eldritch blasts from connecting with me. (Or some other blast magic, i don't recall.) It wasnt enough to save me from the impending Fireball and eventual TPK, but i felt super badass after that.
I'm a half orc half gnome who carries a cursed book that gets me put into suspended animation from time to time. As such he originally only knew orcish and a mix of primordial and had to slowly learn how to speak common. Aside from saying "Ugh" when he first met the party as a response to everyone sharing thier name he never spoke so everyone just called him Ugh. That was until we finally came across a real threat, that's when this little over 4 foot grey gnome made the earth shake when he started speaking "Terran" a form of primordial. He then shape shifted into a long extinct cat and mauled the enemy. It was one of those moments that made everyone understand that one shy cute party member had actually been through so much more than they could ever imagine.
Starting an entire drug cartel off of some background description
My Half-Elf Storm Sorcerer/Tempest Cleric was a member of a rebellion being formed to stop the mass enslavement of Dragons, and was trying to convince the King of the Dwarven people to side with us. Their king asked me (the party's "leader") if my friends (the Party) agreed with my motives.
King: "And what of your friends? Do they share this same sentiment?"
Me: "Who, these guys? This rowdy group of lowlifes are the most chaotic, unorthodox, downright vile group of misfits I've ever had the displeasure of acknowledging the existence of. And I couldn't have it any other way! We clawed our way out of our own Rock Bottoms by our own two hands, meaning we'll fight tooth and nail to take a stand. I, for one, share this sentiment. And what of you?"
The King then decided to join us.
With preparing my role-play!
It wasn’r for once “oh uh… Bob the bandit”. It was like “John McCarter, bounty hunter that has some experience for hunting criminals.
One moment particularly sticks out to me because the DM followed through perfectly. My character - an aasimar paladin - and her mother - a full celestial have a complicated relationship. Long story short my character lost her memory and is trying to re-form the family bond. In one session, the party orders their preferred drinks: for my character, a sweet red wine. For her mother, whatever the strongest thing the tavern has. The two go outside and have a heart to heart, mostly my character talking about her insecurity. Upon coming back, they order another drink. This time, my character orders a shot of the strongest and her mother orders a glass of sweet wine.
In a really long campaign, who was going from lvl 1 to lvl 20 in the end, the players where at the castle of the BBEG. After navigating true most of the castle, they enter a room with 4 mask's on the door, similar to theathre masks. This was the room of the castle jester, who should have tried to fight them. he was a 5 stage bossfight, and would have been the hardest boss outside the BBEG. This party, while not murderhobos was usually dealing with things true combat. They peek true the door, see the jester on a wooden trone, and at this point i was ready for combat, and have already rolled the jester's initiative. Imagine my surprise, when instead of of attacking him, all 4 of them went in, kneel in front of him in unison, and start talking to him in rimes, and addressing him as your majesty. I was so impressed, that after some really god roleplay i just let them walk off, as well as having the jester tell them the path upwards. Unfortunately i don't remember the exact lines, but after they cleared the castle I've realize they wouldn't have survived if they have fight against him, because inside the castle you couldn't rest to regenerate, and they finished with 13 hitpoints distributed around the 4 of them
Well I'm currently a forever DM but my best roleplay moment as a DM was this. My players were doing a survival campaign and I created a whole list of random encounters of various difficulties. Everything from Giants to a harmless Flumph. So the players decide to talk with it so when it responds I managed to do the highest squeakiest voice you could imagine. So much so one player asked if that hurt my voice which it didn't. But it has the entire table laughing because that was not the voice they were expecting.
I once landed a critical hit that ended up being a killing blow by hacking a dead enemy's head off and throwing it at the enemy. My character still talks about it to this day and so do I.
One of my Transformers players is the result of Shockwave's experiments and is an artificial personality unknowingly inhabiting the body of some pre-war athelete. The original persona recently woke up, and he's been slowly regaining his memories and has gradually been wanting his body back. The player wanted me to play that original persona, since he's technically an NPC, and I'm glad he did, because it's lead to a lot of drama where I guilt trip the PC for stealing the original persona's life.
In my first group we had downtime rp, basically just using a text channel to rp inbetween sessions when our characters are somewhere safe.
Setting the scene.
My room, on board a wooden airship. I was a Nobleman Aasimar the campaign was about resurrceted heros defeating a also ressurected enemy of theirs. I wasn't one of those but to keep up with their special mojo I was allowed to gestalt (have to classes that level together).
Sitting in my room waiting for potions to brew, and tinkering with my prostetic arm's various weaponry. I like the propper deadbeat noble am drinking and enjoying a good cigar. Naturally our party's goodie two shoes Kitsune ninja princess waltzes her fiery little butt into my room, uninvited, unannounced, but not nessarily unwelcomed, as my character was a bit of a flirt. She promptly burns my cigar away, and boils my whiskey into fumes because she believes I could be better then some common drunk and made it her personal crusade to see me reformed and clean.
I without breaking eye contact with my only good eye, reach down collect another bottle, and takes out another cigar. Some bickering and arguing and a few ruined drinks and cigars later, I agree to stop smoking for the night, while also goading her into joining me for a drink.
Her bodyguard also wanders in and joins us scowling in my general direction as he hates my guts for being irreverent towards her and generally a scummy flirt. We all chat I tell them more of what has changed about the world since their deaths centuries ago, they share stories of their many adventures, eventually our princess is revealed to be a light weight and passes out, unfortunately I wasn't joking when said fiery butt, her tails ignite with mystical flame, I immediately rush to scoop her into a princess carry to keep her tails from igniting the whole bloody airship, as the flames burn up my sleeve, and char the metal arm beneath. I starts trying to wake her before giving up and softly singing a lullaby and saying "Come on little candle, it's time to blow out for the night."
This worked, and the flames died down while she snored. Now despite all my character's flaws he's a noble son of the empire, and that means he's a gentleman first and foremost, he carried her to her room and got her to bed before returning to contiune to drink with the bodyguard. Whom we had a heart to heart and worked past our mutual dislike.
Morning after was hell for our fiery leader as she had one hell of a hangover, me and the Bodyguard had maxed out con scores so we just shugged and offered her a hangover cure.
We had many such moments thanks to the downtime channel where our character could just be people. Not heroes saving the day, or champions of good, just good friends.
The most memorable roleplaying moment I had was that I was playing a Druid that didn’t have any flying wild shapes yet, and they wanted to launch me in a cannon to see me fly. I rolled high on a deception saying that there’s no point since I can already fly. They said prove it, so she flapped her arms in the air and went “CAW CAW!” Another high deception later, Everyone believed I was a bird.
PANR has tuned in.
I would say my favorite RP moment was this Dragonborn Paladin I had. Essentially, she was the mother of the group. She cooked for everyone by having this apron that said "Hot Stuff" written across the front. She would also put it on if she thought she was in a dire situation. She had always wanted to die with it on.
My character and the party are going through this dungeon to find a kobold that had drank from a pool of intelligence. We find the guy and beat him up, but right before he dies, he reveals he was building a new golem. We end up having to fight the golem. During the fight, the golem knocks down a support beam that was keeping the cave. The golem had this tendency to lock onto a single target and grapple them, then remain still as it attempts to stuff them inside itself. So, as the cave was crumbling down and one of her party members was grappled. My dragonborn chef would put on her apron and charge at the golem, break her party member free. She would lead the golem away from the entrance and fight it one on one. She would end up being grappled, and just before the cave collapsed, she would yell out. "I am the Hottest Stuff around these parts, and I will drag you to the depths of hell to show you!" She then did her fire breath attack as the cave collapsed.
The group still talks about it to this day. If for whatever reason a person ends up in a collapsed cave we call it pulling a Parthy
Sitting down at the tavern with the party's other rogue and planning a hiest to steal a witch's bag of magic beans. It was his first game. It was most certainly not mine. His rogue was a classic theif. Mine was a merchant who USED to be a thief and wasn't afraid of a good old 5-finger discount and selling "lightly used" gear from the bandits that attacked us on the road. I helped him figure out his character sheet for several months and it became a very mentor-apprentice relationship both in and out of character. Told him if he ever wanted to steal something properly I'd help him out, for a cut of the loot of course.
He saw the lady selling magic beans that he couldn't afford and tapped me on the shoulder. We told the GM what was up so he could plan, and spent a week planning out of game for the hiest via discord. We remained in character the whole time. We got the party in on the gig and pulled it off almost flawlessly. Even made short work of the guardian golem boss when it came up. I took precautions against scrying after the fact behind the party's back just so they didn't have to worry about things and could celebrate without having to worry about loose ends.
There were a lot of good moments in that campaign, but taking a week to plan the hiest with a newbie rogue was probably my personal favorite. I let him come up with the plan and just pointed things he might've forgoten about, or made small suggestions for improvements. It was his plan, and I was proud to see another rogue blossom into something more than just another murder-hobo.
I recently joined a new DnD group and we had a starting session to get everyone introduced with other. I was a dimwitted halfling rogue. One of the other players, a dwarf cleric, happened to stumble across our party while we were out camping so I told him about the job that we were planning on doing an asked if he wanted to join us. He accepted, but said he had one condition, to which I responded “Oh I’m terribly sorry, is it contagious”. Everyone at the table laughed. XD
For me, as a DM, it's when the players were talking about their current situation completely in character. As a player, it would be this one player that never played with anyone besides his family. I joined their campaign and he was spooked and barely spoke or took initiative during the game. Since my character was new to the party, I'd ask the frightened player's character for help or advice constantly and that got him opened up a whole lot more. I had to drop the group because of scheduling on my end but there are now new players he isn't familiar with and he's roleplaying like a champ.
In my group's Descent Into Avernus run, we ran into some cultists outside Elturel who were using an old underground monastery as a base to harass a nearby country town. The first group of cultists were taken down easily, and only their leader remained alive for interrogation purposes. When said cultist revealed he was harvesting souls for the Blood War, my LN cleric said "Why bother recruiting other souls for this? Yours will do just fine," before channeling Inflict Wounds through her foot as she curbstomped the cultist to death.
It was a 1st Edition Pathfinder Game where I was playing a 2nd generation surface born Drow, Kazrathane To'ories. A Divine Hunter archetype of Paladin that focused on longbow. We were in a big good vs evil war of Apsu/Bahamut (names were interchangeable) and his sister Tiamat. Near the beginning of the final act of the campaign, the NPC cleric who ran the orphanage my character grew up in was killed by a reoccurring minor antagonist. My Paladin didn't join the fight for the first four rounds since he was absolutely traumatized by the death of the man he saw as his father and was just holding his body while sobbing. Once Kazrathane snapped back to reality and joined the fight, we found out that this antagonist was being mindcontrolled and actually had quite the backstory with the NPC cleric. The party consisted of myself, a gnome Rogue that was host to some other entity calling it self Baron Orpheus and our human shielded fighter. The entity in the gnome was in control and wanted to kill the antagonist. I argued that she is not to blame as her will was not her own and the fighter sided with me. Baron Orpheus went to attack the newly unbrainwashed antagonist against our wishes, so I used Paladin's Sacrifice to take the woman who killed Kazrathane's father figure. Our fighter kept shoving Baron Orpheus away from the antagonist and I kept using Paladin's Sacrifice as I had a trinket that gave me extra uses of it. When Kazrathane was out of all but his last 4th level spells, Baron Orpheus tried to attack again. Kazrathane used King's Castle to switch places with the antagonist and stared Baron Orphues in the eyes as he stopped his attack not wanting to kill Kazrathane. Then my Paladin spoke. "She was not acting of her own will. To kill her would be an evil act. Baron Orpheus, when you first revealed yourself to us you called yourself the Betrayer of Demons. If you kill this woman, you are no better than the demons you claimed to have betrayed." This caused Orpheus' player to break character and yell "Fuck!" Before dropping from the Skype call for about 5 minutes (this was a few years before discord was known to us.) When he came back he told me he was both very impressed but also very mad as he hated that antagonist for constantly screwing him over, but also mad at me because Orpheus couldn't dispute Kazrathane's words.
When the antagonist asked for judgment to he cast on her as she felt guilt for all she had done while being controlled, Kazrathane decided her fate. "I sentence you to live as the man who helped raise me lived. You shall take over the orphanage and be a mother to those without family. To heal the injured, care for the sick and feed the hungry. That is your penance and you shall swear this upon any good god you choose."
I have been chasing that high of good roleplay ever since.
The first one reminded me of Nacho Libre at first
I, uh....I effectively killed one of the God's in my husband's custome 23+ years old game world in the first one off game I ever played in. It made for great storylines later on. 😅
At a large UK fest LARP I had the great honour of sparring and facing in a rapier tournament a woman who repesenets Britain at World Championship level in epee and she took me serious;y as an opponent
I was playing Alias
A elf who was sucked into Curse of Stradd.
We had made it to the castle roof and Stradd finished his monologue.
As Stradd rode down to meet us Alias Misty stepped up to meet face off with stradds ilk
Alias gets attacked and is lucky. He is hit by a lightning bolt.... It's now a 1 v 3
The player is sweating, Alias already has a plan.
A smirk spreads across the DMs face. "So Alias, what are you going to do?"
Alias, " I am holding the shove action. The next time the barbarian attacks me I would like to cast silvery barbs on the attack, give myself advantage on my shove, and push the barbarian down the castles... Chimney?
Well, with my intentions clearly stated to RNGesus I let the round play.
The barbarian missed her attack, Alias stepped to the side and using her own momentum shove..
Watching the barbarian fall from the castle the caster was enraged. The caster got too close to Alias.
"Okay Alias, it's your turn."
Alias jumps up on the ledge of the castle, he looks over the edge before looking back at his enemy. "We can still be friends."
The vampire screamed at Alias.
Alias raises his hands, and jumps backwards off the castle.
"Elactris"
With adrenaline filling his lungs he screams. A thin blue line of magical lightning lashed out at the caster, Wrapping around her ankle alias pulls.
The caster fails her save and is pulled 10 feet closer to the falling Alias. Off the castle wall.
It was epic.
Neither Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder (or Starfinder for that matter), but similar system.
In this sort of campaign, the group sailed for North America during the first days of the colonial period (namely, Canada).
For added context, the group consisted of a common Devil Hunter, a common Saint, a common Spy, and a giant Knight (myself).
All of us were sent on a school-based mission for some training, dealing with some cultists. The primary villain for this scenario could *only* be harmed by miracles and/or holy weapons. Of *all* people to run away from the fight, it was the saint who books it. In comes me, the giant Knight to be the wall between my classmates and I to deal with the bugger. Because I didn't know about his resistance, I fall down after taking quite the beating (therefore I *technically* die) as the rest of the group is fretting about what to do since their tank of a friend went down, my knight slips into the passages of his memory, seeing how his life panned out, and seeing his father, William Wallace.
It eventually led to the Scottish Knight falling to his knees and sobbing, saying that he was effectively sorry that he could not live up to his father's name, and failed to make his father proud.
The DM, impressed by all this, then showed the scene playing out as William Wallace cradled him like a babe, revealing that he had always been proud of his son.
This scene right here gave him a free 'get out of jail free' card back to the land of the living, transforming his father's claymore into a holy weapon that he could use in one hand and roared out "Freedom! Dunmaghlas!" Before turning the bugger into fine red paste.
That first one was so sad wtf
So my party was fighting a bunch of end game enemies (low to mid 20's) and they had contingency spells in place that should they be unalive at the beginning of their next turn they are teleported to a room at their base were they are brought back and healed up in three to four turns. So we had a deck of many things and a few were sh spells and so I instructed the wizard and rouge to spell craft (our DM used a spell craft check as a base percentage of success of the wish) to have it so the people we are fighting would be affected by the card the void (mind you in pather finder first edition and 3.5 DND it stats when the void card is drawn your soul is taken and a unknown random outsider now has it) so the whip it up and because there was so many combatants we were facing the DM did a two tice roll and he failed both of them. Ah such a great moment for me that it worked.
Low wisdom/int barbarian in some temple of a god long forgotten by most but known to the very few as Sekhmet had both our cleric and wizard fail their knowledge history check. 4 statues of cats in each of the corners of the room. Obviously in my rookie level mindset this means four offerings. Fish, Beef, Turkey, Chicken. With these four food items which I always had and absolutely nobody ever questioned because barbarian hungry for different tasty foods immediately decided to try to summon this unknown god with the ancient ritual. Meow meow meow meow....
First session, and we were captured by some unknown race of orcs. The other party members thought it was a long-lost race of elves, but I knew something was wrong. Once we got out and to the main city, I went to a library and looked for a book on different races, and found a book with races across the multiverse. Wasn't in there. This was an entirely new undercover race, so we get to name it. I (a supernatural fan) look at my husband (who is also a supernatural fan), and he looks at me. At the same time, we look at the dm and say Jefferson Starships. The dm (who was also a supernatural fan) just went. God damn it.
I'll never forget my proudest moment. To keep it as short as possible, the general of a kingdom's army (and friend of the party) was up against the leader of the secret police/inquisition (bad vibes), with significant forces backing each in a plaza, civil war about to begin. We'd been on an investigative mission for the king, an agent of the secret police tried to stop us, the general's adjutant physically intervened with a dive-tackle so we could move on. Head inquisitor wanted the adjutant's head for assaulting an officer. In this kingdom (all not-inherently-evil undead, long story), the only penalty for crime is death-death.
I was playing a wizard, who had previous side-job experience mediating business disputes in a trading city (echoing my real-world profession). He uses winged boots to fly up above the crowd and try to control the situation. I first argued the general into agreeing that his man violated the law, for which the penalty was death, but he referenced that his man was attempting to aid an authorized investigation.
So I spin around to the head inquisitor, who cannot deny that we were on an authorized investigation and that to interfere was a crime, which her man had committed, and the penalty was death. "Either two crimes were committed, or each person acted with reasonable belief that their actions were lawful."
Inquisitor first argued that they both should die, but I convinced her that given the oncoming threat (main plot of the campaign), it was best for the realm that both individuals live, and that what happened was merely a misunderstanding on both sides.
In that entire exchange, I only had to roll twice, both high rolls. The rest was the DM just like "yeah they can't argue with that." Never been so proud in a game.
Now, an in-game week later the head of the secret police attempted her coup against the king, but my use of Tasha's mind whip to prevent her using reaction to release a held action made the plot fail then we quickly ended her. So I take no less pride in stopping the civil war before it started.
Moments like that are why I play TTRPGs.
I was always an alright role-player, but I was always very quiet unless I was addressed. I don't know if he did it on purpose to enable me to role-play more, but our veteran player in character suggests that my character should lead the party into a dungeon. At first, I hated the idea, but within a few sessions, I went from being silent most of the time from trying to take point in situations I usually wouldn't even try to
TL;DR party ignores plothook resulting in the best RP of the campaign.
Had my party straight up skip a plothook as they weren't interested in the "mysterious ruins" just off their chosen path. So after a hasty 5 minute break i drafted up a murder mystery in a town that was their destination anyway. Luckily i had some minor plans for this however most of what went on was off the cuff. They met an NPC known as Exavier from out of town who is there to help them.
After some searching of crime scenes my party discover some tracks and make their way into a sewer cistern which houses the dregs of the large town. They are also introduced to a friend of the NPC who i said was familiar to the party's warlock,but she couldn't place where. They find the inhabitants had been butchered days ago, but not eaten. Whilst exploring they hear rocks dislodge by the ladder near the entrance.
The party hide in different places and are shocked to see a young red haired half orc walk down the wall by the ladder and into the cistern where she proceeds to sit down. None though are as shocked as the half orc monk in the party as it is his missing daughter, the last known whereabouts of whom was kidnapped by orcs and tithed to someone known as "the father".
He proceeds to call out to her and she looks up in his and the Exavier' direction (they hid together) and calls out father. After a perception check our monk realises she hasn't even looked at him. Exavier strides out reassuringly calling her his daughter and they go to embrace. This triggers our fathomless warlock to use a tentacle of the deeps to restrain the daughter where it's discovered she can turn her hands into talons and she becomes animalistic in nature at the restraint.
Cue a 20 minute negotiation where Exavier offers to talk and explain if the party release her. They do. Exavier explains that he discovered her with the orcs and she was dying from illness. So he "saved" her by turning her (think a cross between vampire and succubus, she feeds off souls). He promises to ascend her in a ritual and tells the fathomless warlock that he did the same to the female NPC, whom she finally recognises as a very sick girl from before her village was destroyed by said ritual whilst she was a child.
Amazingly the party continue to talk despite the revalations and they are doing amazing roleplay in character to boot. It ends with Exavier teleporting out with the daughter but telling them they are travelling to the monks hometown to enact the ritual of ascendancy. Shockingly the monk decided to stay on their original objective as its the bigger picture despite the guillotine currently being hung over his hometown.
All of this came from 5 minutes of hasty planning and lots of add lib. And has become my favourite RP moment in our campaign so far.
The best roleplay I've done is during the story of We Iaom, a monk who had lost so much during a war with dragons that he became mad with the thirst for revenge. When the monk was instantly vaporized, body and soul, to cast a wish spell to heal all the pain and sorrow of the war, I played the role of one of his few friends, a paladin named Hubert Jarrel. He ran over to his friend's ashes and dropped to his knees, giving the following fervent speech while desperately clawing at the ashes as if trying to put them back together:
"No, you can't be dead! You got your revenge! You won! This can't be how it ends! We were supposed to help rebuild, you and I, and all the others! How can I go home and tell everyone that you aren't coming back!? How am I supposed to live with this!? Damn it, you have to live! Live!"
The party had to pull him away from the ashes even as he kept shouting for the monk to live, to come back, and to help him rebuild. But the monk's death was final and no amount of magic could bring him back.
The best roleplay moments are those you get to share with another person at the table.
Context:
Okay, I may be cheating a little, since I'm not a player, but the DM. The campaign is about the players being Dragon Riding Vikings (Httyd style, with a D&D twist to it) and an NPC the players fell in love with is the village's mage/shaman. A Green Dragonborn female, who's a bit disorganised and loses things a lot, but she's a kind soul.
I like to give secrets to each NPC a secret the players can find, if they look in the right places. The secret this Dragonborn held is a book she's reading.
While the party was helping her search for something at her home, one of the players stumbled upon this book. She said, she's curious about what she's reading.
Opening the book revealed it's some very romantic story about two elves in love, trying to keep their relationship a secret.
The player called the Sorceress over, asking about the book. The Sorceress' face turned red, snatching the book and locking it in a chest. I even made a sketch of that moment, since that was the moment, the players fell in love with this NPC.
A few sessions later, the party's Changeling Rogue (race important for later) was waiting for the sorceress at her home/workshop while she was away for a short while. And the rogue asked if she sees the book anywhere. A good perception check revealed it was next to a chair near the fireplace. The rogue started reading the book, saying she wants the sorceress to see her reading the book, once she returns. And that is precisely what happened. Again, she turned red as a tomato, standing in the doorway stunned. The rogue macked her a little about the book. The table laughed, until I described how the Dragonborn's surprised face turns into a sad one, as she walks away aimlessly into the frosty forest.
The rogue folkowed her to a clearing, where she sat on a large rock, putting her face in her arms, but not crying, just ... Sad. The rogue approached, perfusely apologising, saying that the book is genuinely good. The Dragonborn told her to keep it. That it is only a foolish dream of a naive little girl.
Now the part I was trying to get to all along:
I roleplayed the whole monologue with a sad tone and fake tears, which soon became real.
The whole reason she's reading this book came forth. She spent her younger years studying magic and isolating herself rather than persuing love and happiness and now, she's 34 and has noone. She envies the young folk, because they still have a chance.
At this moment, the whole table, including me was in tears and then, the Changeling Rogue's player asked for a minute to think, I gave him some time, while I looked around the silent, glassy-eyed table. And then he said something that left me stunned with an open mouth for a while.
He said, his character, having read some of the book reaches into her memory and transforms into the male elf lover from the book and outstretches her arms for a hug.
After I collected myself, I described how she also looks at the Rogue in disbelief before accepting the hug and sobbing uncontrollably.
I then called a fifteen minute break, to let the players recover, but the one who needed the break the most ... was me. I've never had a magical/emotional moment like this in my 3 years of experience with D&D and DMing.
Oh and did I mention, this was the player's fifth session in gis very first campaign? I think I have a lot to look forward to.
Thank you for reading my little story, traveller. I bid you a good day.
Long story short! We where trapped in a vampire lord's manor. The dude is pretending to be good, when actually he is just manipulating a cities people.
My character Daniel, is a ranger/ monk. With him is a Bard, a rogue and sword mage..?
Anyways! My character made up the plan, to have him distract the guards. While the rest would run and escape! My character walk out of the secret room we where hiding in. And proudly made his presence known! He single handedly held off 15 guards, each with 100 HP.
I was very confident that my character could pull this off! He is a Shadow Monk with the Ranger Fighting Style of Blind Fight. As well as having his Sub-Class be Horde Slayer. He was designed to fight huge groups and come out on top.
Everyone safely got out, and my character ran down a cliff side to escape. Thank you DM, for the Spider Walk Slippers!!!
Time’s up!
The bbe had actually got the entire party. We were all bound and restrained before them, as he was monologuing.
Being a bard, i decided to attempt to persuade them that i was actually on their side, and i had a message for them, from the powers they served.
Convinced them that, due to unforseen actions by opposing powers, the grand plan had changed, and that i was no turncoat, just one of may sleeper agents, and we could confirm this by finding my cards, with which i could ordain the future.
Has some henchmen bring in the parties belongings. I am freed and grab my cards. I sit before the bbe, on the floor with my party, and start a tarot card act. After some meaningless dialogue, i reveal to the DM ive been arranging the cards on the floor, just so, to create a *hypnotic pattern*
We didnt defeat the bbe, but we booked it out of there, with all our gear, and the partt mainly unharmed
Total improv on my part, but my artificer got jumpscared by a necromorph looking home brew creature skittering up right next to him from the other side of the map in a cave
He wasn’t using his gun to avoid drawing too much attention, opting to borrow the Kobold healer’s crossbow instead
Whelp…one frightened Tom & Jerry scream, a hit from Thor’s fist (thunderous smite with his Battlefist. Master maker artificer. Lots of fun, but it is homebrew) and a crossbow bolt between the eyes later and that plan goes right out the window
Still shaken, he hands the crossbow back to the kobold, and pulls out his gun again
One party member was asleep (unknown to the rest of us, because it was done over discord)
Whelp, my screaming in character woke him right up, adding to the entire group spending a good minute to stop laughing
Great times
In a pretty recent sci fi campain i played as a cyborg beast who recently became more then a product had saved a little girl from brutal brain surgery as my 9 feet tall unit of a blood hunter pretended to be a security unit in this testing facility and has basicly intimidated a entire room of soldiers one of them got so scared that he shot himself in the foot as this hulking behemoth known as Nokia walked out pretending that he was having a glich suprisingly this was one of our cleanest and least bloody missions and the little girl sees Nokia as her "big brother" now
The gunslinger from Texas sounds like my uncle.
I’m always going to love the time my formerly illiterate young dwarven ranger Kolgrim (7 INT) was taken under the wing of our learned halfling Bard Professor Adelbert. Over many long journeys together young Kolgrim learned his letters and various languages. He was so proud of himself in fact that to prove to his peers he had finally learned Abyssal, he read ALOUD from a strange carven obelisk unearthed in an alien temple and unleashed demonic forces upon the party 😂
I have two: one as a player, and one as a DM.
For one mini-campaign played over Halloween (not quite a one-shot, not quite a full campaign), we were a bunch of high school students that essentially got transformed into their "costumes" at the high school dance - thus leading to my firbolg barbarian Brick. I roleplayed him with my best critikal impression, and he was an AVID conspiracy theorist. Full blown alien area 51 style conspiracy theorist. He was utterly convinced that aliens were responsible for what was happening to them. The party tried to deny this, and in character I just looked at them and said, in my best charlie deadpan - "I'm an 8 foot tall cow giant man, [character 1] has horns and can apparently cast spells, and you have a beard. Do you seriously have any better explanation than the fact that this is some sort of alien experiment?" and this caught them so off guard that they had to admit they didn't, and Brick went about his business, very vindicated.
In another Campaign, of which I'm the DM, the party had been trawling for in-game weeks, many many sessions in a row, through the underdark. They'd teamed up with two NPCs to help them find a maguffin - the son of the king who was going mad from disease, and an elven mage merchant who had been wrongfully arrested as the king believed he had something to do with the maguffin going missing. What the party didn't know was that, all along, the elven mage was evil, and was planning to backstab the party, steal the maguffin, and escape with it once they had it and were out of the underdark. In this one particular party, one of the players was a drow monk - there was no real animosity between him and the elven mage, however, and in fact they got along decently ok (all things considered) given they were the ones who went on watch at nighttime together.
Just before the start of the session where the mage was going to betray them, I pulled the monk's player aside, and told him "Ok. I'm not going to tell you what, just yet, but something is going to happen during the next night, and you are the only one who's going to actually know or be able to do anything in character. I'm offering you a choice; do you want me to narrate it at the table, with all the other players, knowing that their characters will be fast asleep and unable to react, interfere, or even offer advice? Or do you want it in private, so you're the only one who knows explicitly what happens, and has to relate it to the rest of the party once they wake up?" He chose private.
Once night fell, I pulled him into the hallway and away from the room, and began to quietly narrate what happened. Partway through the night, with his perception check for being on watch, he hears a gentle creaking at the door to the barn they were resting in, and then a grunt from the elf. However, he didn't roll high enough on dexterity to react, so as he went to turn, he heard a soft whisper, saying a single word, which he couldn't quite make out, and then his entire body locked up. Power word stun. I then described to him that he heard gentle footsteps, and the rummaging of going through the bag where the maguffin was stored. He fully believed that someone had broken into the barn, taken out the Elf (he'd been badly injured in an encounter just before they made it to the surface), and was going to steal the maguffin, but he was particularly terrified that he'd had no actual saving throw against the stunning effect (since I'd made it clear the dex wasn't a saving throw for that, merely to see if he could turn around in time to SEE what was happening, rather than just hearing it).
He then heard the footsteps approaching him, and with his eyes open, he saw some silhouetted legs come into focus, before the figure that had stolen the maguffin squatted in front of him; the elf. The way his eyes WIDENED as he realised what was happening was phenomenal - I'll be thriving off that for a while. And then I got to give him a quiet, hushed little villain monologue, which was something along the lines of:
"Well. Another elf being in the party does somewhat make this difficult, as it would've been far easier for me to simply take this, and be off in silence. However, you have given me a good opportunity here, so allow me a moment to get something off my chest. You, and your companions, are some of the MOST irritating adventurers that I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with, and, were I not in such a rush, I would take great delight in watching you all burn beneath my boot like the squirming, insignificant pests that you are. Luckily for you, then, I AM expected elsewhere. So heed this warning; do NOT follow me to take this back. Or else I will very much decide that I am no longer in such a rush."
The elf then stood, and calmly walked out of the barn, and I guided the player back to the room. He was REELING, and the other players were clamoring to know what had happened. God I fucking love playing villains.
Our party finally managed to kill the strhad, journey is about to end.
Big feast has begun, everyone who helped/supported us joined to celebrate.
As a true dwarf, I want to drink quick and efficiently.
So I casted water breathing spell on me, then dive into huge barrel and started nonstop drinking.
In tomorrow, barrel was empty and I was sleeping inside of it.
That was the proudest roleplaying moment as I think.
I... Know there was something but i honestly? Don't remember ... Which i only learned now and that hurt beacuse i remebered how long ago was the last time we have played toghether.
Mm. Its basic but, TLDR I said "No Balls" after a long convo with an ex adventurer. He processed to sacrifice himself to save our asses.
So, this guys heroic essence was stolen and he was charged with maintaining the room his and others' essences were held. You could simply destroy the container.. but you'd most certainly die. We then entered another room.. which was trapped. When we returned, I laid into him for not telling us about it. His response was simply he'd never dared explore a single inch.
Can't remember exactly what led to "No Balls"... but that charisma check really came in clutch, and we didnt even know it would. Didn't expect to even see him again, let alone find he'd shattered another hero's vessel, who then processed to bail us out of the fire. Went to check on him out of curiosity to find his body blown up n mangled.
His last words? "Here... i have a gift for you..."
Processed to pull middle finger out of pocket, before immediately croaking.
More of an overall compliment, really, but I was told that I roleplay EXTREMELY well as a canonical character in a tv show, even for situations that that would NEVER have come up in the show.
My secret is that I have no idea what I'm doing, so I just let the character "take the reins", as it were. Often, she surprises me as much as she surprises those with whom I'm roleplaying with.
Mind you, this wasn't in a dice-rolling scenario, just a random "Ask (character)" blog on Tumblr.
Also, I'd *always* find reaction images from the show that depicted the character (even, in one memorable occasion, body-swapped with her little sister) in the moment, and they were always perfect. I might even call them fabulous... Darling.
For me, it was getting so immersed in my own character as a DM that i actually screamed "GET THEM!!" As one of the BBEG's i have realized he was fighting the daughter of his nemises (the Goddess Demeter) and that she was getting away
he was so enraged that he was given the oppertunity to kill the daughter to get back at a GOD AND SHE WAS GETTING AWAY, He was so angry that I (like i said) Screamed in real life, which i never did before, my players were suprised and starttled and went "Uh oh, we really gotta bolt BBEG gonna murder us, no holding back"
hee hee antidote
I once made my party's Grave Domain Cleric cry. In a good way.
So one of our party members once saved a very important NPC from death via sexism by marrying her. It was a convenience marriage at first but they quickly bonded with each other. Time went on, the girl got pregnant. But also our cleric got a prophecy of doom for that girl. She knew that she would die tragically, but that her death would save everyone's life.
The foretold day came and the mother-to-be found her demise. Body completely broken, nothing anyone could do. She died with a smile, thanking her husband for the short time in her life when she experienced real happiness. It was then that the cleric could reveal that she knew that death was coming for her.
The party rested up in a big city for several months. Our cleric grew distant and depressed. She had only ever learned to handle her emotions through stoicism and silence. So my character, a wizard, was the one who tried to reach out to her. Just showed up at her temple with two horses and a basket of food. He persuaded her to join him in a ride outside the town and just led her to a nice and quiet place.
He opened up to her that he of all people knew what she was going through, since he had made mistakes in the past that led them astray and ended in the death of a party member. He told her that he knew how she felt like she deserved the burden on her shoulders for letting that girl die. And he talked with enough empathy and warmth about how he really cared for her and her wellbeing that she cracked up and let her emotions flow for the first time in her life. They had a very long, good talk about processing their own shortcomings that he managed to snap her out of her mindset of isolation.
Proudest roleplay-moment of my career. Also the first time my future wife told me "you're gonna be an amazing dad."
I have one that happened in the game I was just in tonight. Two of the characters are the same characters we played in the previous campaign, that was set in a completely different timeline. The other player and I just sat there doing our own RP where we thought the other one looked familiar and made the connection. Each of us starting with "You look familiar" and remembering the story of how her character got a disembodied hand as a pet. That story probably should be in the stupid things in a game session, but I hadn't started playing with the group at that time. The story I was told, was another player was playing a bard. He was trying to play a horny bard, but he didn't know how to do it and not hijack the game. They were trying to get a door open that was locked. And the bard decided to seduce the door. Yeah, not really smart. The result is he lost a hand, and another vital portion of his anatomy that I'm sure you can guess. The character that has the hand, picked it up and some shenanigans happened and it became sentient and her pet.
My proudest moment in dnd so far is a tie between 2 events both on the same character so the party and Dwarven grave cleric of kelemvor Father Amon Greybeard were chasing an elder brain for some magic item in the under dark we found their base we were 15th level at this point so 8th level spells where on the table I had a magic item that boosted a spells duration by 10x up to a max of 24 hours once a day I proceeded to drop a 10 minute long earthquake spell collapsing there entire base on them it was hilarious and awesome the other moment was a session later where after some tomfoolery we ended up fighting Cyric my gods archenemy we managed to kill and have some guy replace Cyric and my character got to personally deliver Cyrics Godsoul to kelemvor for judgement best day of my 280 year old dwarfs life
A morally ambiguous sci-fi campaign. My PC was a former slave that was born into it and only rescued after losing his parents. He'd signed on with the same freedom fighter group that helped him, and of course, they all died in his backstory. Very unhappy, morose person from his many losses.
The party started the campaign in prison and escaped with the help of some cyborg zombies and a group of NPCs, one of which grabbed some fallen guards' comm units to reformat and give to us to use. I had my PC go through the comm, just out of curiosity. Turns out, this guy had a teenage daughter who'd just gotten to college, and he was texting with her right before the breakout. Her last message to him had been just before the chaos and was a message she loved him. GM was really rubbing in the tragedy.
So my freedom fighter, without hesitation, wrote back, "I love you, too. Always."
When one of the party, a rather vicious alien warrior, asked why he did it, I replied, "So she has something I never got."
1:23
Could not find the link to the forever dms table
After subjugating multiple demon lords and my own goddess through "normal" Blacksmithing I subjugated a rival goddess on accident and made them work so closely together the churches started calling them sister goddesses. After I paid druids to awaken the entire forest to dig for iron and coal the poor nature goddess could either play along or be seen as a lesser contributor than a dwarf
Wooooohooooo
So during Rime of the Frost Maidens, my druid character, Daphne, had been unable to stand up when she saw a person being sacrificed to Auril in the first session due to her being weak, both in level and in lacking a spine at the time.
Fastforwards to when we were committing a heist of Auril's fortress to steal her magic book, and in order to do so, we would have to complete the tests Auril's faithful have to undergo to join her cult.
Well...Daphne got the party's attention, and proceeds to tell the party about that first day in Ice Windale. How she couldn't stand up. How they'd seen the horrible things Auril forced her followers to do, including a serial killer we'd met. Daphne...refused to stand down this time. If the rest of the party wants to take the trials? She won't stop them. But after seeing what kind of monster Auril is, Daphne wouldn't take the tests. She's not going to play Auril's game and do what she wants knowing what a monster the Frostmaiden is, they can find some other way. And the rest of the party agreed. We weren't taking the tests, we were going to track down another way to do it.
She then blew a raspberry at Auril's tablets detailing her tenets, because matured or not, she's still kinda childish.
Not only was that a great roleplay moment showing just how much Daphne had grown as a...homebrew skunk horse chimera thingie, but also letting us avoid the infamous Tests of the Frostmaiden, and everyone agreed we dodged a bullet there.
You said "antidote" instead of "anecdote"
as a DM its really hard to pin down a favorite RP moment... I do have a good one I was reminded of recently though.
it was a "heist episode", where the party was meant to break into this large vault holding a powerful magical item desired by multiple people who offered valuable potions or magical weapons, depending on who it went to. They got past the puzzle lock and opened the vault without much issue (only activating one stone golem guard). The item was in a large obvious box at the far end of the vault room, guarded by 2 stone golem guards. The vault also had several tables with stacks of gold bars (more than the entire party could carry) and safety deposit boxes lining the wall. The entire party immediately forgot about the main goal, leaving it to be taken by NPCs of one faction while they stuffed their bags with gold and began breaking into the boxes along the walls. One of the group failed a check.. got frustrated... and fire bolted the safety deposit boxes. This triggered the alarm and deadly gas began to fall from the ceiling. A panicked scramble ensues, the NPC that went for the magical item got paralyzed by a trap on the item and attacked by a golem. The rest of the NPCs got sealed in the vault as the party barely made it out before the gas got to them. as they gathered themselves outside of the vault they could hear the last gasps of the NPCs inside... it was pretty dark.
"But hey, we got the gold so who cares?" the murderhobo artificer says to the rest...
"OH?!? hehehehe WhAt GoLd?!?!?! HAHAHAHAHAH!!!!" cackles the floating illusionary head of the BBEG, Redeye the Mad. He likes to show up when the party has a big win or loss and tease them. He is one of my favorite characters to play, as he's batshit insane... and this time he got the party good.
The party empties their pockets in horror as they find every single bar of gold has turned into dirt. They filled their bag of holding as well... the artificer poured out a 500lb pile of dirt onto the floor as the BBEG just laughed at them. This was the moment my players, or at least the artificer for sure, vowed a solemn oath to kill Redeye the Mad. This was easily my most evil moment as a DM as well lol
imma be honest, that last one is a bit of a dick move and if a player has a backstory they like, the DM should not try to fuck with it and do things the player specifically said they don't want to happen.