- Had a PC’s longtime girlfriend seduced by a butt-ugly vampire.
- Replaced a resurrected PC with his evil twin… permanently. (As a result of this)
- Force said evil twin into working with the PCs after he was disowned by the rest of his doppelganger crew.
- Killed a PC’s roommate, brought him back as a Frankenstein’s Monster. His personality remained mostly unchanged.
- While investigating a missing professor’s home, they came across a pathetic looking dog who seemed to be malnourished… in fact, was filled with demon-rats who exploded out of the dog at an appropriate time. (This is the only time I have made a player cry in one of my games.)
- Forced the players to stay up far, far past when they usually go to bed in an adventure where their characters were unable to sleep.
- Forced the players to listen to a single track on repeat for the entire session to represent the omnipresent nature of ringing bells.
- Sent the PCs back in time to September 10th, 2001, and have them fight for their existence the entire time instead of being able to change things.
- Based an entire adventure around a typo, that if noticed, negates the need to go on the adventure. (Stolen from DarthCthulhu.)
- Put a PC in a Truman Show–style adventure… and told every one’s player but his.
- Put the PCs in a Groundhog Day-style time loop that robbed them of sanity every time they went through it, and robbed them of lots of sanity whenever they died. Ran multiple times, and the most recent time not all the PCs looped, but the entire party was needed to complete the adventure.
- After a player left the game, had her character commit suicide.
What are yours? (So that I can steal them for my own games)
Once I possessed a PC’s familiar and they only thing he could figure out to do was to kill it. He didn’t cry, but I thought he was going to tear up.
* Had curtains/tree branches/clothing move without wind in every scene of an adventure (drove the players batty).
* Had the bards tell the PC’s tales about 6 in-game months behind the party’s actual adventures. There was just enough truth that the party could recognize events, but only just.
* Gave the party a base, then proceeded to have the NPC bad guys take it over and turf the party. It started a gang war that lasted most of the game.
* After a player left the game – had his character kidnapped and tortured. The party went and rescued him, but he was never quite the same again.
* Had the party fight statues/golems of their evil selves. The evil versions had lots of loot and magic items; most of which the party recognized as items stolen from areas they had saved (and thus had protected the goods, and not been able to take).
* Took all the treasure out of a dungeon so that the party had to scavenge everything (broken furniture, worn tapestries, making plans of traps to resell, etc).
* Dropped a dragon on the party (quite literally).
* Put the party up against 100 zombies. They wanted mindless combat.
– Melded PC’s little sister with the two main bad guys.
– Player missed a session, everyone else went into a dream battle, and woke up with almost no hp left.
– Kidnapped a character into the plane of nightmares and forced the party to go save him.
– Made all the players sing in a “Musical Episode”
These are awesome!
“- Made all the players sing in a “Musical Episode””
Ha! That’s actually how my song on repeat adventure was originally designed, that the PCs could avoid saving throws by singing whatever they said. It wasn’t strong enough to keep them doing it, but to see that someone else has tried it makes me want to try it again.
Not that much on my end… not YET at least.
Joshxorfz ran a single adventure of Cthulhu where I got a strong feeling of the need to improvise and survive as if you were really fighting for survival in reality. I enjoyed that, but it was sadly short-lived.
I’ll throw in my two cents:
-In a much changed Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, turned all the PCs into half-elementals.
-as they turned, gave them really creepy, gory dreams where they killed, or were killed by, loved ones with all deaths involving their element
-had a new PC joining the party be implanted with a bad guy’s spy device, allowing the bad guy to feel all five of that PCs senses
-killed off a best friend of one character and made it look like it was that character who did it, increasing party suspicions
-put character with a phobia of fire in an exploding building
-turned all the PCs into lycanthropes with high moral stakes (yes, i love templates)
-continued to saddle characters with creepy, gory dreams as they devolved further into insanity
-left wierd, powerful objects around that slowly sap at users sanity and morality
-worst of all: had D&D characters work with a realistic and working morality system
Hey, Bartoneus, what did that GM do to get you feeling like that? I’m gonna be running a Hunter chronicle soon and that’s just the feeling that I’m going for.
Based an entire adventure around a typo, that if noticed, negates the need to go on the adventure.
Nice. What was the typo?
Graham´s last post: Pathfinder 26 – One month after the fact.
I was running a high level Forgotten Realms game where half of the PCs got turned into vampires (Four from Cormyr was the adventure we were running when we went off the rails). The rest of the party was trapped in a keep out in the middle of a swamp, which had a chapel that undead couldn’t enter – but most of the PCs couldn’t recover spells in it either (it was aligned). The vampires lost their vamp powers in the daytime but the light wouldn’t kill them.
We ran session after session with half of the players in one room and the other half in another, in which the PC vampires tried to turn everyone and the PC humans tried to escape, kill the vampires, retrieve dead colleagues’ bodies and raise them before they turned… Oh, everyone loved it. The best trap was when the vamps got the body of one of the humans and put it in a swampy pond (a body had to be underwater for 24 hours to turn). The party went out using divination spells and found the pond. One of the vampires was lurking, and summoned a mess of giant crocs into the water. The humans didn’t see that, and one of them, not suspecting anything, dove right in to get the body. They grabbed him to pull him out, but only got the torso.
Normally people counsel against intra-party conflict, but that was one of the high points of our gaming group. One group of live players against another in a high level free-for-all! Now that’s a challenge.
mxyzplk´s last post: Asian Monsters
My group and I were playing an ‘Evil’ campaign. I was an Orc Barbarian, another one of the character’s was a Human Ranger. Wee began to argue over something, and he attacked me. To make a long story short, I powned him, then his animal companion proceeded to attack me. I powned his wolf and then skinned, cooked and ate it.
The best part is that I didn’t kill the ranger (I was told not to by my superiors) and when he woke up, I had turned the hide of his wolf into a loin cloth. Once again, he attacked me and once again I powned him.
He eventually stopped attacking me and waited until I was passed out drunk (my Orc had a drinking problem) and did a Coup de Grace on me.
Ugh, I remember that damned adventure where you played the TMGB song “The Bells are Ringing” on repeat for four fucking hours. I still can’t listen to that song without cringing. As an aside Dave, you forgot to mention how, in your current game, a character who has missed a few adventures “came down with dysentery” and was sold into slavery.
I am stealing the demon-rat filled puppy. Just FYI. ;p
Now I just need to find a spot in an adventure to put it…
Minion on PC Necrophilia…
That is all!…
Reverend Mike´s last post: Robert Frost’s Cajun Invasion!: Puns, Explosions and Implied Strippers…
That’s totally going into my article on minions…
One of the players in my Pyramid of Shadows adventure has to carry around a life-like skull head with long black hair that is constantly telling him to find things that don’t exist and to “make her look pretty”. He’s getting married soon so I’m getting him ready.
Mike´s last post: ReviewofDraconomicon