#RPGaDay2024 - 18 - Memorable Moment of Play

 

This year's RPGaDay (full text list here)

Q. Memorable Moment of Play?

A.  After 40 years gaming, there are many; shortlist below.

First of all, I’m not going to mention anything from Curse of Strahd, even though there were many moments in that. I’ve written everything up from that campaign except the final session, so you can read here if you fancy 60 sessions of Barovian fun.

I find that a lot of things fade after games; I’m not good at holding onto the detail like some of my friends, but here are some of the things that have lasted.

As a player:

From Steve’s run of the Dracula Dossier at Longcon;

• Absolute terror on a bridge covered in mist at night as our contacts were attacked by agents of Dracula or perhaps the big bad himself. Reader, we ran away.
• A scene on the sea wall at Staithes where my character talked down Julian’s character who was a traitor until then.
• Destroying Dracula at the end (with a rocket propelled grenade), but having to kill my character’s closest friend in the team as they’d been turned. and more

My detached and damaged cold war former agent facing down the enemy in a nuclear submarine at the end of Rich’s campaign of Albion’s Ransom for The Esoterrorists and dying to save my colleagues and the world. A form of redemption.

Knowing what happened to Beorn when he disappeared between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings because we were there in Dr Mitch’s The One Ring game.

As a GM;

A clear memory of the ending of Song of Loeul, a Stormbringer game hacked into Wordplay where the players cunningly stacked the odds at the climax to make it a walk over. I was worried I’d made it too easy but the players delighted in their ingenuity.

The moment in a run of Delta 3 is Down from Traveller at UK Gencon at Loughborough when I vapourised the party. The scenario is one where you’re a group of Zhodani trying to escape off an Imperial world after you’ve been shot down. They decided to fly onto the spaceport in the equivalent of a Ford Transit van (an Air/Truck version of an Air/Raft); as the base was on full alert, the starship laser batteries to defend it were live. The party decided to avoid all stealth and go in high and fast. They could have flown under the guns, but didn’t. They ignored the two warning shots and so I vapourised them. There was a moment of stunned silence and then one of the said ‘Well, fair enough, we were being a bit daft going in like that’. Phew.

The moment that the party faced off with Elric in Black Sword/Stealer of Souls under TRIPOD this Longcon, and lived to walk away. That and the debauched night in the Melnibonéan camp that set Debbie’s character on a different path which left the space to survive.

The campaign killing death of one of the character’s - Art - in my Traveller Twilight’s Peak campaign leaving SteveH’s character Kira pregnant and bereft, and the campaign imploding in its wake. I do have a wonderful write-up on this by Steve, which means I really should get my website live again (or put it here).

I’ll stop now…

18 August 2024