Notable Gaming Experiences: The Gospel According to CobiWann's DM

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Androc: Dec 26, 2008

FewtureMD posted:

So, I've been following this thread from the beginning, and I've finally decided to share some stories. For background, my circle of friends had dabbled with RPGs ever since middle school, mostly just running a few D&D dungeon crawls. A few years ago, we got into it for reals. My first really memorable experience was our Hunter: the Vigil one-shot, or as I like to call it, Five Little Hunters.

We were playing a "find the murderer"/"locked in with a killer" scenario, with the PCs being snowed in at a mansion where the other guests were being horribly slaughtered around us. The party had been summoned to the manor by the owner, except for one guy, Q, who was play the social dillettante son of the owner, for a lovely dinner, until the snows hit. The other five guests were also trapped, so we decided to hunker down and wait for a plow. The next morning, Guest A was found with his throat torn out. Everyone else was understandably distressed, so the PCs made a secret plan to track down the killer, led by Q, who knew the house and guests like the back of his hand.

The party failed to save Guests B and C, but kept Guest E close, as they had befriended him. At this point, all the clues pointed to Guest D, and the party barricaded themselves in the study, except for me, who had gone upstairs to grab some ammo from the attic. The ST handed me a note saying "Along with th ammo, you find the shredded body of Guest D, and some bloodstained pieces of paper. Don't tell anyone yet, or I'll kick you in the nuts".

I "ran" down to the study, with the papers, and burst in the door shouting that we were dead wrong. At the same time, the ST reached into his bag and tossed onto the table papers that had been made to look like bloodstained diary pages. More specifically, the pages of Q's diary discussing his hatred of his family, his spiral into madness, and his new "abilities".

Q started laughing evilly, and transformed into a werewolf. Cue audible gasps from the players, as we had been betrayed by one of our own! Combat ensues, and we learned that setting a werewolf on fire only makes him angrier. We only survived because we found some silver chains that had held Q's ancestor, and beat his skull in. High fives were had by all in celebration and general awesomeness.

Post game, we were talking and hanging out, and it came up that the ST and Q had planned this a month in advance, and Q had been built as a born liar and scoundrel. Everyone was in awe of the planning and forethought, and we all agreed that this needed to happen again.

Later:Mage: Drinking contests, "light" irradiation, and making physics cry!

To give slightly more detail on this one (I was the ST): The first 'guest' murdered was actually the owner of the mansion, the werewolf's mother. As detailed in the diary, the werewolf had been an extremely intelligent and promising student who was forced to stay home in order to care for his sickly mother. He became obsessed over his wasted potential, and eventually bitter and resentful towards his mother over the years before his transformation struck.

While escaping from the werewolf, the group discovered a hidden passage to the basement containing two human skeletons, one of which was bound in silver chains. This corresponded to myths they had uncovered earlier about the werewolf's ancestors, a pair of brothers who disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

I pretty much just hit every Gothic trope I could, but the whole thing only worked because the werewolf's player did a great job at convincing everybody to 'split up and search for clues!' while he picked off the other guests.

Androc fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Jan 31, 2012

# ¿ Jan 31, 2012 19:45

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 20:41

Androc: Dec 26, 2008

Doc Hawkins posted:

Ughhh, I've tried to explain this is possible so many times to so many unbelievers. Sometimes they get outright hostile at the suggestion. Thank you and congratulations for having an awesome direct experience of it.

I have a similar story, though it was more about a pre-planned ending changing than about not knowing what the ending was at all. But anyway, I should probably mention the time my players accidentally created God.

Naturally, this was Mage.

While on the trail of an unrelated investigation, my players unwittingly took part in a ritual that transported them to a near-abyssal realm. The body of the sacrifice who died to complete the ritual (a mastigos) was transmuted into a twisted mockery of the watchtower of the Iron Gauntlet (which governs mind and space. This is gonna be important in a second). My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I know that there was a similar reflection of the watchtower of the golden key, along with a central black tower place in a way that suggested that the five towers were meant to ring it. While the tops of the watchtowers could be seen, the black tower just extended upward into the black, stormy ocean that comprised the sky- the abyss.

Now, here was my plan before the players did what they were about to do: their central antagonist was The Dragon, an enormously powerful abyssal entity who could act only through granting the wishes of others. The watchtowers were part of a ritual to fulfill a wish by The Gate, who had grown weary of holding back the abyss for so many eons and wished only for an end. That black tower was essentially The Gate personified. The Gate's suicide would essentially allow an abyssal incursion on a scale never before seen, so obviously the central thrust of the remaining story would be the players stopping the ritual.

All that was supposed to happen at this point would be that the players wander about for a bit and get to have a chat with The Dragon, without necessarily divining his true nature or intentions, before being returned home.

Then it got complicated.

Out of curiosity, one of my players climbed the force/prime tower and cast a simple light spell. I didn't have anything specifically planned, so basically just for the hell of it I said something like "okay, it works, but the light is so bright you can see the outline of your finger bones through closed eyelids when you raise it to shield your face. So, of course, one of my players with a penchant for throwing a monkey wrench into things announces that he's going to climb the mind-affiliated tower and cast create consciousness.

At this point I pretty much had to call for a break in the session just so I could figure out what the gently caress they just did. Finally, I decide that they ended up creating a self-contained consciousness of indefinite duration that was immeasurably smarter than all of them. Then, they used the prime tower to give it an indefinite-duration phantasm for a body.

Then they had it sign its name to the watchtowers.

So, fast forward, the players are back in the real world along with the newly-named Adam, who has busily read several libraries and also the internet. Though he has no actual capacity for magic, he has developed a way to mathematically model it and can comprehend and analyze things like complex rituals and Atlantean (which probably doesn't TECHNICALLY work, but who cares). Eventually, the players discover that the rest of the towers are going up very soon, so soon that they'll need to split up to stop them all. Adam is troubled by the runes recovered from the previous tower rituals that he's analyzed and asks to go along with one of the teams: though he's figured out some basics of the overall ritual, a significant portion of the runes appear to be 'junk data' whose purpose he can't figure out without access to another set.

It's important to note, incidentally, that Adam is essentially benevolent. He views the characters and humanity as a whole as his parents, and helps them out freely.

This is starting to drag a bit, so to make a long story short(ish): they stop the rituals, but discover a sort of failsafe that would allow the overall ritual to continue without those individual sites, so long as the caster is able to substitute a release of energy about on par with a hydrogen bomb. Adam takes out some chalk and begins frantically scribbling on the last ritual circle, and then the world stops.

The bomb has gone off, or rather, is going off. The players have been piggy-backed onto the ritual, essentially, and they look on the skyline of their city midway through a nuclear detonation. Feeling a rather obvious spike in power on their unseen senses, they walk into the blast, passing through the initial pressure wave where there are gaps immediately after building's silhouettes. Then I handed them Adam's character sheet which basically consisted of filling in every dot (plus a powers/gnosis section) and told them that, as a member of the group, his actions would be decided by group consensus in the coming fight.

Obviously, this has already strayed a lot from the initial plan I had of stopping the ritual, but the real change comes when they come face-to-face with the Dragon again. He reveals that he is serving the wish of many for power, by constructing the ritual in order to send himself back in time to lead humans to Atlantis and ensure their fall. The players decide that they want to try to change the past, and they throw down with the Dragon.

On a side note, the fight was explicitly designed so that the players wouldn't feel excessively overshadowed by Adam, even if they were controlling him. The false reflections re-emerged and could be used as they were previously, though in the second half of the fight they had to be destroyed to put actually make the Dragon stay dead.

So, they've killed the Dragon, history is going to change. But the portal the ritual created is still open, and will still take exactly one person back to the time before Atlantis. They choose to send Adam, believing that he can guide humanity on a better path. Then, they basically sit down and wait for themselves to have never existed.

Nothing changes.

Another portal opens, and they follow it to the near-abyssal realm in which they created Adam. The reflected watchtowers are smashed, but the central watchtower remains. In fact, stairs began to emerge spiraling up around its outside, and the abyss seems to part around it, making way. The characters ascend.

Halfway between the material world and the supernal realms, surrounded by darkness, the tower opens up into a dais containing several pillars that hold up the remainder of the tower. Most are simple, uniform pillars, but at the center is one that more resembles a throne. Seated in it- in point of fact, merged with it for uncountable aeons, having made its body a seal on the abyss when it failed to stop its creation, is their good friend Adam.

And that's how my players created The Gate.

e: also, it bears mentioning that the throne aspect was somewhat borrowed. I apologize for nothing.

Androc fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Apr 19, 2012

# ¿ Apr 19, 2012 00:16

Androc: Dec 26, 2008

VanSandman posted:

Does anyone have any really good Mage: The Awakening stories? I'd love to read a campaign log if you know of a good one.

It's not quite a campaign log, but I had an early description of a campaign in this thread that was basically Mage.txt, give me a sec...

e:

quote:

I have a similar story, though it was more about a pre-planned ending changing than about not knowing what the ending was at all. But anyway, I should probably mention the time my players accidentally created God.

Naturally, this was Mage.

While on the trail of an unrelated investigation, my players unwittingly took part in a ritual that transported them to a near-abyssal realm. The body of the sacrifice who died to complete the ritual (a mastigos) was transmuted into a twisted mockery of the watchtower of the Iron Gauntlet (which governs mind and space. This is gonna be important in a second). My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I know that there was a similar reflection of the watchtower of the golden key, along with a central black tower place in a way that suggested that the five towers were meant to ring it. While the tops of the watchtowers could be seen, the black tower just extended upward into the black, stormy ocean that comprised the sky- the abyss.

Now, here was my plan before the players did what they were about to do: their central antagonist was The Dragon, an enormously powerful abyssal entity who could act only through granting the wishes of others. The watchtowers were part of a ritual to fulfill a wish by The Gate, who had grown weary of holding back the abyss for so many eons and wished only for an end. That black tower was essentially The Gate personified. The Gate's suicide would essentially allow an abyssal incursion on a scale never before seen, so obviously the central thrust of the remaining story would be the players stopping the ritual.

All that was supposed to happen at this point would be that the players wander about for a bit and get to have a chat with The Dragon, without necessarily divining his true nature or intentions, before being returned home.

Then it got complicated.

Out of curiosity, one of my players climbed the force/prime tower and cast a simple light spell. I didn't have anything specifically planned, so basically just for the hell of it I said something like "okay, it works, but the light is so bright you can see the outline of your finger bones through closed eyelids when you raise it to shield your face. So, of course, one of my players with a penchant for throwing a monkey wrench into things announces that he's going to climb the mind-affiliated tower and cast create consciousness.

At this point I pretty much had to call for a break in the session just so I could figure out what the gently caress they just did. Finally, I decide that they ended up creating a self-contained consciousness of indefinite duration that was immeasurably smarter than all of them. Then, they used the prime tower to give it an indefinite-duration phantasm for a body.

Then they had it sign its name to the watchtowers.

So, fast forward, the players are back in the real world along with the newly-named Adam, who has busily read several libraries and also the internet. Though he has no actual capacity for magic, he has developed a way to mathematically model it and can comprehend and analyze things like complex rituals and Atlantean (which probably doesn't TECHNICALLY work, but who cares). Eventually, the players discover that the rest of the towers are going up very soon, so soon that they'll need to split up to stop them all. Adam is troubled by the runes recovered from the previous tower rituals that he's analyzed and asks to go along with one of the teams: though he's figured out some basics of the overall ritual, a significant portion of the runes appear to be 'junk data' whose purpose he can't figure out without access to another set.

It's important to note, incidentally, that Adam is essentially benevolent. He views the characters and humanity as a whole as his parents, and helps them out freely.

This is starting to drag a bit, so to make a long story short(ish): they stop the rituals, but discover a sort of failsafe that would allow the overall ritual to continue without those individual sites, so long as the caster is able to substitute a release of energy about on par with a hydrogen bomb. Adam takes out some chalk and begins frantically scribbling on the last ritual circle, and then the world stops.

The bomb has gone off, or rather, is going off. The players have been piggy-backed onto the ritual, essentially, and they look on the skyline of their city midway through a nuclear detonation. Feeling a rather obvious spike in power on their unseen senses, they walk into the blast, passing through the initial pressure wave where there are gaps immediately after building's silhouettes. Then I handed them Adam's character sheet which basically consisted of filling in every dot (plus a powers/gnosis section) and told them that, as a member of the group, his actions would be decided by group consensus in the coming fight.

Obviously, this has already strayed a lot from the initial plan I had of stopping the ritual, but the real change comes when they come face-to-face with the Dragon again. He reveals that he is serving the wish of many for power, by constructing the ritual in order to send himself back in time to lead humans to Atlantis and ensure their fall. The players decide that they want to try to change the past, and they throw down with the Dragon.

On a side note, the fight was explicitly designed so that the players wouldn't feel excessively overshadowed by Adam, even if they were controlling him. The false reflections re-emerged and could be used as they were previously, though in the second half of the fight they had to be destroyed to put actually make the Dragon stay dead.

So, they've killed the Dragon, history is going to change. But the portal the ritual created is still open, and will still take exactly one person back to the time before Atlantis. They choose to send Adam, believing that he can guide humanity on a better path. Then, they basically sit down and wait for themselves to have never existed.

Nothing changes.

Another portal opens, and they follow it to the near-abyssal realm in which they created Adam. The reflected watchtowers are smashed, but the central watchtower remains. In fact, stairs began to emerge spiraling up around its outside, and the abyss seems to part around it, making way. The characters ascend.

Halfway between the material world and the supernal realms, surrounded by darkness, the tower opens up into a dais containing several pillars that hold up the remainder of the tower. Most are simple, uniform pillars, but at the center is one that more resembles a throne. Seated in it- in point of fact, merged with it for uncountable aeons, having made its body a seal on the abyss when it failed to stop its creation, is their good friend Adam.

And that's how my players created The Gate.

e: also, it bears mentioning that the throne aspect was somewhat borrowed. I apologize for nothing.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2012 06:15

Androc: Dec 26, 2008

Gazetteer posted:

Naming a character Sir Twink kind of loses the humour when you then literally rape and murder him. "Hey guys we're playing a game about being chivalrous knights" would not generally be my cue to assume that casual sexual assault is a topic that's on the table.

You sure about that?

Le Morte D'Arthur posted:

Now Merlin, said Arthur, say whether this Tor shall be a good knight or no. Yea, sir, he ought to be a good knight, for he is come of as good a man as any is alive, and of kings� blood. How so, sir? said the king. I shall tell you, said Merlin: This poor man, Aries the cowherd, is not his father; he is nothing sib to him, for King Pellinore is his father. I suppose nay, said the cowherd. Fetch thy wife afore me, said Merlin, and she shall not say nay. Anon the wife was fetched, which was a fair housewife, and there she answered Merlin full womanly, and there she told the king and Merlin that when she was a maid, and went to milk kine, there met with her a stern knight, and half by force he had my maidenhead, and at that time he begat my son Tor, and he took away from me my greyhound that I had that time with me, and said that he would keep the greyhound for my love. Ah, said the cowherd, I weened not this, but I may believe it well, for he had never no tatches of me. Sir, said Tor unto Merlin, dishonour not my mother. Sir, said Merlin, it is more for your worship than hurt, for your father is a good man and a king, and he may right well advance you and your mother, for ye were begotten or ever she was wedded. That is truth, said the wife.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2014 02:13

Androc: Dec 26, 2008

To be fair, if this is a new DnD character then he's 100% justified in treating your average housecat as a ravenous hellbeast that should be put down at the earliest opportunity.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 19:59

Androc: Dec 26, 2008

I wrote that playbook! I was really excited until I realized it was a cat-piss story. Oh, well.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2014 06:01

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 20:41

Androc: Dec 26, 2008

My players blew up Boston once, but in their defense that was by accident.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2014 01:57

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