My old DM had good days and bad days *, but he successfully managed to keep up the interest all the way through a D&D allnighter, ending up with a quite nail-biting PVPesque cat and mouse chase right before breakfast. Probably my favorite RPG memory, up there with the one good Call of Cthulhu session I ran back in the day.
Liveblog | DeadblogMy DM once gave me the best game I ever had.
He was in a bit of a depressed mood, and it showed in his games. For this one, he made ALL of our characters, trying to make sure we would play against type of what we usually played. Not trying to ruin the fun, but trying to take us out of our comfort zone. We were playing a homebrewed setting with the Call of Cthulhu d20 system.
The other two players didn't like it. (One of them was tired of playing tabletop, and the other's a bit of a one-trick pony.)
Anyway, I loved the game for a simple reason.
It always felt like we were going to die. There's nothing quite like having two guns for three people, and both of you have 3/4s of a clip left. Especially in deep fog with flying things coming after you. He had perfectly set the mood and my stress level was sky-high. It was awesome.
This thread was threadstacked with "Munchkin (the card game)", causing me to read "Player munches on G Ms".
The way my Werewolf The Forsaken GM played the murderous Dugithim (a guy possessed by the spirit of a Mob hitman) gave me the creeps. Now we seriously want to kill that thing double-dead.
"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von LewisIroneye and Arimnaes Are great D Ms with differing, but complementary stlyes. They're running an eberron campaign eventually together, and I have high hopes for it.
edited 2nd Feb '11 3:59:23 PM by Lanceleoghauni
"Coffee! Coffeecoffeecoffee! Coffee! Not as strong as Meth-amphetamine, but it lets you keep your teeth!"I quite like having Everest as a GM.
He gears the game to accomodate us newbies, and doesn't get too frustrated when the schedule slips or one of us makes a stupid mistake.
He's also pretty good at responding to our actions within the game.
There are too many toasters in my chimney!Blame the Rift beta, a renewed World Of Warcraft account, and further attempts to write.
Unknown Armies. Exploring the spooky magic Nazi house.
"You realise you just left children in a concentration camp. Take a Helplessness and Self check."
The Werewolf The Forsaken GM shafted us. Totally. And then pulled a G-Man-like Hannibal Lecture on us. You know, the "Just step into the portal and I will take that as a yes. Otherwise, well... I can offer you a battle you have no chance of winning; rather an anticlimax after what you've just survived. Time to choose..." bit. Now:
- The guy managed to fool us into thinking that he was sent by the Bone Shadows (spirit specialists) to help us with a spirit-based problem.
- He lured us into the center of said problem, which is chock-full of very powerful, very evil and very pissed-off spirits.
- Who are his employers.
- Now we either die trying to bruteforce our way out (and that's hard, considering our Party Tank is one-third dead) or take the offer and have two months to screw the guy right back over. After that, his employers come to a pre-arranged meeting with local vampires. What happens next, we can only guess, but I expect Seven-Hour War.
- If we do, the "Crusader's Blessing" we took from a very powerful spirit is going to kill half of the party or worse (we weren't exactly informed of the drawbacks).
edited 13th Aug '11 2:04:14 PM by NotSoBadassLongcoat
"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von LewisActually, this is from the exact same guy I complained about in the other thread.
While he has his (very) off days, especially if we butt heads, I have found it utterly amazing how this guy can drop us in a city neither of our character have ever been before with four possible leads, and then after discussion we will choose some unorthodox method on how to proceed, normally resulting in us going to a random location...
... Only to find out that he fully developed that one location, ignoring all the others because he knew that giving these characters that information, they will choose this path, no matter how bizarre or clever we think it is. Sure, he liberally applies Schrodinger's Gun, but he still generally knows.
That's the way to run a linear game. Present the players with an open area, and then have them come to the decision to follow your rails entirely on their own.
I only ever played one 'proper' D&D campaign back when I was in junior high. The DM was a classmate with an ancient photocopy of the (I think it was 2E) Monster Manual and sourcebook. The whole affair is really fuzzy to me now but I do recall our group of 4 or so somehow had shenanigans that would be more at home in the Negimaverse. I wish I could remember how he achieved that.
Okay, gotta give a shout-out to my current GM. She's been storytelling for nearly 18 years now, but she's running a really good nWoD Mage game. She asked us to make teenage characters * and deal with high school drama. We made our characters and have done two sessions so far.
Already, there's 4 love interests (2 of them not likely to happen), 2 cliques and 1 burgeoning rivalry for the position of "in charge". That was in the first session.
If that's not high school, I don't know what is. She doin' it right.
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~Our current GM has us in an homebrew game in an homebrew setting. He has done an enormous amount of worldbuilding, with an overall storyline that we're allowed to change through the game. And then, he tells us what we changed exactly.
Now we hardly play anything else.
Medi: Oh hell yes, I love G Ms like that. You get so used to "alright, mission accomplished, next plot hook" that when you're actually told what impact your characters have on the world, it blows your mind.
Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-
Show him this thread
.
He's got Lazy Warlordish powers, and is a hybrid Psion/Bard with a dual target heal. He's definitely not unoccupied.
I ruled that he's allowed to use Sudden Control on allies to grant them basic attacks (and slide 8). Which is probably retardedly OP but eh, you take a little, you may as well give a little.
edited 10th Nov '11 12:04:12 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

The opposite of the 'gripe about your GM' thread, this is where you talk about the general coolness of your GM and any specific shining instances of their awesomeness.
Here's one from my old group back in Waverly: Tim, our DM, had a campaign centered around undead. More specifically, a three way war between the citizens of an isolated nation sweeped by plague, the servants of the Demon Prince Orcus and the evil god Vecna. At one point, Cedric, our sorcerer, made a deal with a high priest of Vecna. He (and by extension the rest of the party) was to raid a large camp of Orcus' cultists, guarded by hordes of zombies and ghouls and led by a Vampire Lord. In exchange, we would recieve several powerful magic items including the Hand and Eye of Vecna.
We succeeded, and Cedric transplanted the limb/eye combo onto himself. Several months later, we found ourselves on the bad side of Vecna's forces and one of the priests caused the implants to ignite.
For those that don't know, the Hand of Vecna and Eye of Vecna require you to remove your own hand and eye respectively to put them in. In addition, Vecna can decide at any point he doesn't like you having his body parts and tear you to shreds, returning the artifacts to Vecna's domain and giving him all your knowledge. Even if you are resurrected, you are still missing your eye and hand.
So here we were, with a one-handed half-blind sorcerer, in the middle of a war. So, what does Tim do? He has an NPC tell us about a ridiculously powerful family that hold the secret to crafting Warforged. We go there, pay out a few thousand gold and agree to do a few favours, and Cedric gets a freaking fully-functioning Warforged arm a la Fullmetal Alchemist. Later on in the campaign, Bahamut takes interest in us and grants us all a boon. Cedric gets a perfect eye made of an astral diamond and his frail mechanical arm is replaced by one of indestructible godly platinum, and he is granted the title Cedric Airgetlam.
Needless to say, he multiclassed into Favoured Soul afterwards.
edited 1st Feb '11 8:26:04 AM by Diamonnes
My name is Cu Chulainn. Beside the raging sea I am left to moan. Sorrow I am, for I brought down my only son.