Coolest RPG Scene

[Ran Targas]

^ Just goes to show, no matter how long you allow your players to develop a plan, they never do and the little things always kill them!

I always love asking, "So during the week in J-space, do you want time to plan or should we just jump ahead to arriving in-system?" Never, ever, have I heard, "No, we need time to plan".

 

[Burocrate]

Reply to the Top Secret RPG sceen.

Disclaimer first. Group consisted of(then) over active teenagers wanting to re-create action movie sceens while killing more bad guys than any three Bond films combined.

Sceen:
Three captured guards(kneeling on their hands) during gun-point interrogation. High morale/fear keeps them quite. Nominal team leader levels Smith & Wesson Model 57(?) .41 Magnum(homebrew weapons charts). "I am going to make this easy, answer, or I will start at your foot and work up to your head. First guard breaks, spills everything(GM had had enough of the testerone). "Thankyou, that was very informative. Turns to next guard, points excessively large hand cannon at foot and says: "Top that." In character(as the guard), the GM looses it.

 

[GBoyett]

This happen in a Cyberpunk campaign with a friend. He was part of a limosine convoy going thru Moscow. The convoy was a decoy as Russian hardliners already tried to attack his party.

As they pass a municipal park, the convoy is attacked by the hardliners, including a BMP personnel carrier. The PC's armor piercing handgun hits the grenade launcher on top of the BMP, which caused the ammo to cook off.

The hardliners began to retreat into the park. Instead of relying on his normal weaponry (sword, pistol, shotgun), the PC use a military grade SuperSoaker loaded with a very effective knock out neural toxin. So the running gun fight sounded like this:

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Rat-a-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat!

Squirk!

 

[sandman]

Originally posted by George Boyett:
Instead of relying on his normal weaponry (sword, pistol, shotgun), the PC use a military grade SuperSoaker loaded with a very effective knock out neural toxin.

Reminds me one Vampire games where a priest with True Faith got a kid`s SuperSoaker...

Dunno why, but the player`s didn`t really liked it

 

[Ran Targas]

^ Sandy, that reminds me of when a rather immature group of gamers asked me to play "Vampire" with them, just to try it out.

The GM desperately needed to instill some discipline in the group and gave me license to resurrect Musashi Miyamoto (a wooden sword wielding ginsu machine!) as a "Blade" type character. His sole motivation was payback for being made a vampire 300+ years ago. I dumped almost all his points in speed so he had in excess of a dozen actions per round.

His identity and skill were a secret to the other players until one of them antagonized him (some comment about slants or gooks)! In response to the insult, he drew his ironwood swords, made ten neat holes in the PC's chest, and sheathed his swords before the body dropped.

Even the antagonist was left speechless. Aren't vampires supposed to be ruthless?

 

[TWILIGHT]

Mine was Cthulhu:Now...we were circling a proto-shoggoth (like an intelligent 'blob' type monster) in an abandoned gold smelting warehouse in corrupted Innsmouth. The leader of the PC's (an arrogant player playing an arrogant character) says to the rest of the group behind him "It's only a dumb creature...we can sneak past it if were careful. Remember I ve got all the spells and ammo." With that the shoggoth leapt up and swallowed him whole, then sucked him from the outside till he popped...we were left with no spells or ammo so we ran terrified...the GM (putting on the voice of the proto-shoggoth) shouted after us into the night .."I also speak french and Latin!" The moral? The one saying it's only a dumb animal is usually the dumbest animal of all.

 

[jwdh71]

The funniest death scene happened in a CT game I was running. It was a Mission Impossible style campaign, and the traditional types of characters, the gun bunny, the techie, the actor, the seductress,the muscle boys, etc. were all represented. At one point in the game, one of the characters (the actor) was snatched by the bad guys, given a hasty interrogation, and replaced with a lookalike. I had the player run the replacement, and he showed up at the residence of the (very paranoid) gun bunny for a meeting. He rang the bell, and the gun bunny asked through the door a question about a previous adventure. I ruled that the replacement didn't know what he was talking about, and he told the gun bunny, "What are you talking about, I wasn't even there!", upon which the gun bunny opens up with a full auto assault shotgun through the door, spreading the imposter all over the front yard. It was only after the carnage and the quick cleanup that the gun bunny thought about it, turned to another character (the seductress), and said, "You know, I think he was right, he wasn't there for that operation." At that I just about fell onto the floor laughing, and had to stop the game for the night.

 

[GJD]

Originally posted by TWILIGHT:
Mine was Cthulhu:Now...we were circling a proto-shoggoth (like an intelligent 'blob' type monster) in an abandoned gold smelting warehouse in corrupted Innsmouth. The leader of the PC's (an arrogant player playing an arrogant character) says to the rest of the group behind him "It's only a dumb creature...we can sneak past it if were careful. Remember I ve got all the spells and ammo." With that the shoggoth leapt up and swallowed him whole, then sucked him from the outside till he popped...we were left with no spells or ammo so we ran terrified...the GM (putting on the voice of the proto-shoggoth) shouted after us into the night .."I also speak french and Latin!" The moral? The one saying it's only a dumb animal is usually the dumbest animal of all.

More CoC: I once beat a Mi-go to death with a chair. His electric ray gun and brain swapping shennanigans didn't help him then.

D&D2E, we were reaching the climax of an adventure where we had been pitted against a whole village of vampires and had just cornered the head vampire in his dark temple below the Earth, perched above a giant lake of lava (he liked the view, I suppose). We were getting a right good kicking from the vapmire and it was looking quite grim, so our noble paladin calls out the name of his god, rugby tackles the vampire and dives over the edge of the cliff. Halfway down the vampire smiles at the paladin and turns into gaseous form....

 

[Cymew]

jwdh71,

LOL!
That one was good!

 

[Zutroi]

My old Top Secret GM loved throwing in horror elements. At one point my group has traced a vampire to a shack in the Amazon. We were supposed to break in, confirm the vampire lord was there, and drive the traditional stake thru the traditional heart.

Of course, we all knew that his vamps could function quite well during the day, as long as sunlight never touched them, he wanted us to go in and get decimated!

We stood outside at high noon and started blasting the shack with shotguns and automatic weapons fire! The poor Vamp died a glorious death as the sunlight penetrated thru hundreds of holes, although we did lose the opportunity to question him about Dr. Smegma's Ultimate Plan...

 

[kaladorn]

Originally posted by rmckee78:
I could only sit in horror as my group of very experienced (5-13 years of playing) players did the unthinkable.
After the last one had been pulled in they turned to me expectantly and asked "so where did it take us?"
The oldest lesson in gaming: If your players dont take you by surprise with their genius they will shock you with their stupidity

And how did you save the situation? This is where you say "hmmm... I could kill them all... or I could come up with another plan....".

 

[kaladorn]

Well, I'll contribute a few of my own:

RedCon some years ago (Kingston, RMC). Some guys from were up refing a CT event set at the beginning (very much so) of the Rebellion. We were (three groups) each key officers on the three AHL ships in the fleet. Game starts with the refs describing the news of the assassination reaching the fleet, only its cutoff in the middle (before the Adm in charge of the battleship can identify which faction he thinks is legit) by the fleet carrier coring it with a spinal mount shot. The BB was hurt, but it turned around and blew the fleet carrier to heck. (There were some attackers on the Fleet Carriers bridge too...). End result: 3 shiploads (at different tables) of players, each group of which had 2 Lucan, 2 Dulinor, 2 neutral PCs. And one big board to track fighter/screen/firecontrol status. You should have just seen the pandemonium. I got my ship out in one piece, though I did have to have the Marines suppress a deck of rioting gunners and then threaten to have the Marine officer "assist" the Chief Engineer in jump drive repairs. Oddly, he suddenly developed new talents and the Jump Drive was quickly back on-line letting me get out of the madhouse before one of the other PC ships opened fire....

My own 15 month MT campaign, with about 9 or 10 players... set on Petra in Thorstone/Glimmerdrift Reaches (judges guild). The Rebellion happened and the Solomani were coming. The lead player was the Marquis of Petra, head of local gov't. As the campaign went on, he ended up appointing one of the other players as his security chief. That other player had Solomani loyalties (or developed them). He then constantly screwed the Marquis (and was tasked with investigating the screwings) for the next about 10 months of real world time. Newspapers would print out transcripts of secret meeetings, key people would have accidents, shipments of goods would be lost to pirates, stuff in bank vaults got stolen, lists of people to 'remove' would get substituted with lists of the Marquis' supporters... and the Sec Chief focused blame on the other PCs! At the end, the Marquis was losing the planet (though a bit of a Pyrrhic victory as he left some damage) to the Solomani... and then the Security Chief x-mailed him a 3 page letter identifying all the ways he'd shafted him over the past 10 months (three pages... point form... with sarcasm). He even commented about putting the medals the Marquis gave him next to his Solomani ones. The Marquis' player was... speechless... he was so angry he snapped pencils..... he was shaking with outrage. He'd blamed me (the GM) all along and essentially colluded in his own shafting at every turn (I gave him clues....). I don't know if he was madder at me, himself, or the Security Chief. The rest of the PCs were bursting a gut.... which didn't help his mood.... something about selling the Security Chief to Aliens as a sex-slave....

And one last moment from another Con CT/MT game at RedCon (Welcome Aboard!). Players each playing characters with hidden agendas. Aboard a luxury liner headed for jump point (most will debark beforehand). They're there to visit the Marquis (some of them). The ship is like a Douglas Adams' version of the Titanic. Things start to go wrong. One of the players is a fugitive disguised as a cop (the cop who was transporting him died and he assumed the ID). Another is a bounty hunter. By the end of the adventure, they've ended up off isolated with a third character, trying to get off the ship.... (as it gradually comes to bits). The third character is a reporter. The crook knows the bounty hunter is looking for him, but the hunter does not know who the crook is. The crook finds a pretext to send away the TAS reporter... then the two hop into an escape pod. The hunter has pilot, so he hops into the drivers seat on the pod. Meanwhile, the crook thinks "Here we go.... all alone.... too good to be true..." (he has a gun the bounty hunter gave him earlier...). He goes to draw the gun and put a slug in the back of the Hunter's head. It doesn't pan out. He blows his stealth roll. The confused hunter reacts and tries a taser, missing. The rogue fires, blowing chunks out of pod life support. The hunter, still strapped into his workstation, grabs his shotgun, pokes it back over the chairback and rolls a 12.... down goes the crook. End result: The crook, who had a great plan and manipulated things to put himself in the ideal position to get away, was down. The bounty hunter, who hadn't any idea until after why this 'cop' had just tried to kill him, got his man.

Motto: If you have to choose between being lucky and smart, choose lucky.

 

[kaladorn]

Let me add a couple more from the fantasy realms:

1. Party in the Underdark (2 ed AD&D). Get taken prisoner. We have two deep dwarf brothers and a drow. We're aboard a slave galley. We get whipped or something of the sort, don't remember what set me off. But I was torqued... we'd already lost a digit (yes a finger) to an evil temple and as far as I could see, hadn't really done anything but not know where we were going. So I just snapped. I lept up, broke my chains from the deck, wrapped them around the neck of the drow captain, and went overboard. I was counting on my 19 Con allowing me to drown the bugger. He gave me some knife (poisoned) (several times...). But I held on. He drowned. Meanwhile, my insanely violent reaction sparked my two companions. I remember the drow PC strangling the slaver LT and wedging his two thumbs into his eyes while doing it. And the other dwarf was biting off ears or throats or something.
Anyway, I expected to die, but reasoned that taking down the leader was worth it.

As it turned out, earlier in the module I'd picked up and put on a nice jewelled necklace. I had no idea it was magic. It turned out to be a necklace of adaption. The referee couldn't believe how lucky I was (in that I had no idea I was going to live). What was most vivid was how incredibly vivid the barehanded fight (for vengeance, for survival, or just to 'make the buggers pay') was. It seemed more vivid than a lot of fights where I've had larger weapons and far more effective ones.

Just goes to show you.... a good and vivid scene needn't be the product of magic or high tech... just a dramatic tension, some sharply defined characters, and a few equally sharply defined NPCs.

 

[bodai]

I have many of these but the one i want to tell you about happened to another group in our area and has become legend.The group was a large club taht had a smaller club within and it seemed of all the games they focussed rabidly on was StarWars,the mini club was the Darksiders or somesuch(point made).. any way

A commando mission was underway with a group of 8 or more experienced characters(playing 2x a week or if they couldnt marathon 12 hr sessions to make up for lost time for over 2 yrs)the group was puttering through a fleet of imperial ships in a stolen vessel. A person in character said" oh no,Vaders on that ship!"

Pandemonium broke out ,the plans been upset vaders herer etc.etc. well never complete/get out of this alive .a bustling room of players /bees and this player stirred the nest ...oh my what are we goin to do etcetc.
Uh,wait a minute your not the Jedi ,your not force sensitve...GET HIM!!!

Everybody including the Gm broke into the keystone cops routine chasing him under and over tables and ot be honest because fo the high emotions probably kicked his !$&*@!#

I would have to say that was a tension/dramatic/high energy game but iwouldnt have wanted to be the nest stiirrer in that melee.

---------------------------------------
bodai ninviet -Grand Pirate of the magellenic clouds

 

[Whipsnade]

Gents,

I was running a campaign in which the PCs crewed a Suleiman in some backwater subsector (Trin's Veil in the Marches). This allowed me the GM as IISS to shuttle the PCs to and fro on all sorts of 'step and fetchit' missions. Being a lazy sort of fellow, I decided to recycle 'Death Station' for the night's session.

The PCs so up over Conway, get a hi-priority squawk from the world about the lab ship, and are asked to investigate. Because the PCs are more capable than the original PCs in the adventure, I 'inflate' the opposition a little. Thanks to a series of really bad rolling and worse 'role-ing', the PCs find themselves on the lab ship's bridge with 3 wounded and no idea of what to do next. The guy playing the scout leader makes a quick decision; he's been loosing his cool the entire session. He orders everyone to seal their suits and gets ready to blow all the ship's hatches. He's going to clear the ship by any means possible and hang the consequences.

He gets ready to blow the hatches when I question him as a NPC:

NPC - "Should we be doing this?"
PC - "Why not? I'm tired of trying to gain control of this ship while fighting a bunch of madmen. You got a better plan?"
NPC - "Well, this just seems simplistic..."
PC - "I like simple. Simple works."

And with that, he blows all the hatches.

Of course one of the 'madmen' aboard was related to the subsector Duke. Ooops! I'd put him there as a potential future patron, you know the old "Hire them, they saved me over Conway" schtick. It's always nice when your PCs hand you brand new antagonists to bedevil them with on a silver platter, isn't it?

In another one session adventure, I had a PC kill a vacc-suited intruder with a fire extinguisher. He was being escorted into parts locker aboard a grounded merchant ship (he and the other PCs had been hired to stand 'cold iron' watch) so that the intruders could search the ship for a hidden package.

The PC snatched up the fire extinguisher, bounced it off the intruder's helmet, tripped him, and then began whaling the tar out of him. He quickly cracked the suit's visor, jammed the extinguisher's nozzle against the shattered face plate, and discharged the unit. When the intruder paniced, the PC got the snub pistol and finished him off.

I should mention that all of this occurred naturally; the PC told me what he was trying to do, made ALL of his throws (getting exceptional success a few times - I used MT's task system then), the NPC intruder (me) attempted all sorts of rational counteractions and failed nearly every throw (including a couple fumbles). There were no GM 'tweaks' or 'nudges' to help things along, the incident happened as rolled and 'role-ed'. It was the sort of thing that really makes you glad you play RPGs!

The whole adventure 'went down hill' after that, 'down hill' for the better that is! The PCs were just 'supposed' to become interested in the intrusion, begin looking for the package themselves, and attempt to figure out who the other interested parties were. Thanks to the resourceful PC, they had some *very* interested parties watching them and the adventure became that much more rich and satisfying.


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[bodai]

THE GRENADE RULE-- I had to institute a you say it you do it rule because i had one too many funny friends who would say stuff like "I P*** on the bouncers feet,nono jsut kidding I french kiss him ,yeah ilike that ,I French kiss him.No No jsut kidding ....
WE jsut started agame twilight and we were brought b4 the general running krakow,who was to hire us as mercs for a few jobs,(probably because of our reputations for sacking soviet convoys between kalisz and krakow,we wer good had it down to a science).

Ok,theres a general sitting at he desk he looks friendly but serioous at the same time.Before i can ask what are you doing Mike(the guy in question) says I roll 2 grenades under his desk.All of the other players are like telling him no and he vehemently says no (in this enclosed space )im rolling 2 grenades under his desk(the guards had searched us and removed our weapons but he had kept 2 grens in his shorts..its a guy thing?)

I gave him one last chance to back out,he didnt take it my other players basicly told him hes giving you a chance ...he sat there smug , I rolled the dice and applied the damage to everybody including the smear that was the general(the desk kind of became a shaped charge )much groanign and whining occurred then he had the gall absolute gall to say "Ha Ha just kidding"

"You hear dozens of guards coming down the hall,Len i said iwas jsut kidding,There coming closer and they sound agitated and are screaming orders in polish ,it looks like you are going to haved to shoot your way out of wawel castle,but len i said i was only kidding!

well it looks like you successfully assasinated the commanding officer in Krakow too bad no one paid you too do it,I SAID I WAS only KiDDING!Ops and you forgot the guards disarmed you,Id run if i were you

Mike when I ask you what your doing and you tlell me 3 times "I'm rolling my grenades under his desk,you willroll 2 grenades under his desk even if the consequences ...."

Use the grenade rule even if it does kill hat game,their behavior will change and the peer pressure will work too because everyone loved their characters and they never forgave him.At future gaems it was"are you sure your gonna do thatt Mike,are you positive?"andthe other players policed him idint havetodoathing

 

[spank]

I remember this one time we were playing shadowrun. We were hired by a group of vampires to hunt down a guy that was killing of members of their group {Because they wouldn't let him into the clan}.
Well me and this other non- gun bunny type. found him and were surveiling him while on a cross town city bus, with the gun bunnies following us in the troll's lo-rider. This other guy goes over and starts confronting this guy on the bus, while it's driving down the freeway. Push comes to shove, and the idiot get into a fight with the guy, and starts shooting his cyber-shotgun at him missing badly, but knocking out the windshield. I clawed my way thrut the crowd toward the front of the bus. About the time I get there the mage kills the street samuri and turns into a bat. I draw my gun he flys out the window, I insist on following, the ref asks, what are you holding onto, I moment of divine insipiration I say "how 'bout the steering wheel It's big and loopy and right there"
So I grab it, the bus skids sideways down the freeway with me on the front bumper shoting at A BAT! I kill the bat/mage the troll and company pull up in the lo-rider, we all pile in and they make me an honorary gun-bunnie

 

[MrMorden]

Here's the funniest, but perhaps not the most glamorous:

I was GMing three PCs as they decide to shoot their way past the highport security personnel and get off the station in their trusty Type-S. The fight goes badly, and all but my friend Adam's character (the notorious Dr. Emilio Zarchachowitz) are shot, and unconsious on the deck. As bullets whizzed past, the conversation went like this:

Adam: "Can I pick up my two fallen friends?"

Me: "One or the other, but not both."

Hmm: [muses to self] "Hmm...who should I pick up?"

Darryl: "Me! Pick me up!"

Adam: "Right then. I pick up Darryl's character
and use him as a human shield..."

It only went downhill from there.

 

[stofsk]

I have three episodes I'd like to recount. They're all from D&D 3ed.

The first ep had our party (I played a human monk, there was a Half-elf ranger, an Elven mage/thief, another Ranger and a Cleric. The Cleric's important, and to protect the innocent he shall be referred to as Wayne) exploring a cave. Pretty typical, except the way this ep ended. After defeating a monster, we do some exploring - at the end of the cave we see a portal (yep, to another dimension) that is being maintained by two halves of a single book, connected by a magical web.

The Elf Wizard/thief walks through the portal, without bothering to consult the rest of the party. I go up to the portal, fool around with the books, and the entire thing comes apart. The portal closes, sealing the Elf in the other dimension. I stand there holding a now-intact magical book, looking like a jackass when the rest of the party catches up, and ask where the Elf's got to.

(it ended up alright, as the player had somewhere to be - and the character "erupted" out from the book anyhow - a DM move, I wager)

But we didn't know this at the time, so my monk fesses up and the rest of the party scours the cave looking for another portal/magical construct or any sort of clue. We found an interesting magical amulet - increased one ability, decreased another one (+1/-1) plus had the nasty curse of causing whomever possessed the amulet to become paranoid.

There was now 4 PCs. Ranger #1 (there was 2, one Half-elf the other Human) picked it up first. We saw that he was acting funny. We deduced that it was caused by the amulet, so we attack him to get the amulet off him. We "succeed".

The DM made us take Reflex saves. You'd think that succeeding was a good thing, but no - if you make the save, your character has really grabbed the amulet. Ranger #1 was knocked out because of the "help" we gave him. Ranger #2 becomes cursed.

With help from the Cleric the two of us manage to subdue Ranger #2. DM calls for a Reflex save. I curse my choice of the "lightning reflexes" feat I had taken just a few hours before (at the start of the session). I get cursed.

The party now consists of an Elven Wizard/Thief whose MIA, 2 Rangers who're busy taking a nap, a paranoid ninja and a ruthless Cleric with the "Shatter" spell memorised. Guess what happens to the amulet, my character's internal organs and Wayne's alignment.

 

[stofsk]

Ep 2: Return to the Cave - not as fun as the last ep, and bored me so much that I ended up leaving the group, but it had its moments.

The party survived the misadventure, and returned to town none too worse for wear (my monk was glowering at Wayne the Cleric, as the arse never bothered to heal her - I had to rely on the rangers).

It turns out the portal was supposed to allow the Phoenix entrance into this realm, where it would be a tremendous force for good. My monk now feels as though she's screwed up royally and I get constant reminders from the Elf who was stranded in this alternate dimension. Feeling a Karmic duty to the cosmos to right a wrong, I convince the rest of my party to return to the cave and see if we can't fix things.

So we return to the cave. Trouble is, the DM isn't exactly helpful to us (don't ask me why), no-one has a clue as to what to do, and there's a Displacer Beast preying on the party.

(for those of you that don't know what a Displacer Beast is, imagine a really nasty Tiger with the ability to teleport)

My monk and one of the rangers (half-elf) distinguish themselves in the fight, managing to wound the creature enough to drive it off. The party has to stick together if its to survive another attack, so what does Wayne the Cleric do? He wanders off.

Needless to say, the Beast attacks him. I don't remember what else happened, as I pissed off (the DM was being an idiot, as was the majority of the party, and Wayne deserved to get massacred but I never found out what happened to him) - apparently the Phoenix came through, and the party - being the paradigms of virtue that they were (can you detect the sarcasm?) managed to corrupt the thing so much that it went on a rampage.