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While in middle school we would spend hours huddled around the computer playing Pool of Radiance. On one occasion fairly far into the game we had some bad luck with random encounters and were about to die. There was only one party member left - Osar the Crazed. He was a dwarven fighter wielding a morning star I think. Poor Osar stood alone against 20-something kobolds and was down to a few hitpoints, when he connected on a particularly nasty blow and all the kobolds started running! We were amazed and cheered Osar's victory for days to come. Even though all of us are grown and have children of our own, we still reference this remarkable and unexpected victory. Few things are better than gaming with good friends.

Thanks for giving us all a chance to retell glorious victories and to win a beta key!
--Thorgrif

 

This is more of a real life situation but I think it may fit in. We were in the middle of a game when the school bully and his henchmen approached our table. "Hey, you fairies are still playing with these little dolls huh?" He grins as he proceeds to grab our miniatures. His henchmen just snicker like hyenas. Suddenly, a voice boomed from behind: "(cough) I believe those little dolls are mine, sir." Bully's face turn white as a sheet when he realized it was the vice-principal.

BEST. COMEBACK. EVER.

 

My favorite pen-and-paper RPG moment to date was in a Savage Worlds game. The objective we currently had in mind was to speak with a old hag in the forest, but she was being held captive in her cabin by Dire Wolves. The caster in the group called a bird down and was trying to communicate to it that we wanted it to carry a note to the cabin. “Shiny button? Peck. Peck.” was the GM’s response. After trying to communicate with what must have been the simplest bird in that forest for ten minutes we just started shouting at the GM/Bird in frustration about how there was tons of bread and seed in the cabin. Staying perfectly in character the GM, looking overwhelmed with excitement, narrated how the bird took of with speed and slammed into the window of the cabin. While the note never got delivered the old hag, upon hearing a thunk on her window, she came over to investigate and saw us. Thus, we made contact and continued on our adventure with much laughing!

 

I fondly remember an introduction to Call of Cthulhu. Our GM had been first to discover HP Lovecraft’s works, and convinced our group to try a different game. We were young, our only real experience had been with D&D and some super hero games, none of us knew what was coming. All we were told was that this was a horror game, where we would be ordinary people against monsters.

We approached it like any other sword and sorcery adventure, arming ourselves to the teeth and preparing for battle. Though at least our GM insisted that our careers and back stories had to at least attempt to explain the various shotguns, rifles and explosives we were carrying. We thought our motley group of mobsters, cops and private dicks was ready for anything.

Willfully ignoring our various chances to investigate the strange happenings beyond simple, cursory explanations, we charged in guns blazing. And dropped like flies. The entire session lasted maybe two hours. Ending with the final character, now hopelessly insane, taking his own life with dynamite. The GM gleefully explained that having so utterly failed in our mission the world was hopelessly doomed.

Of course it was the most fun we’d had in ages. We kept playing for months, taking pride in surviving an adventure.

 

I was at a convention in Los Angeles (GAMEX, I think.) and my friend was running a dungeon as a GM for dungeons and dragons. Gary Gygax showed up and played a character for two hours and said it was one of the best dungeons he's ever played in. Pretty cool!

Oh, it was in February of 1986

 

Well best rpg game I've ever played was Legend of Mana, about Jumi sidestory. Nice characters, epic adventure, and almost death of your character, that made me to cry.

 

Send me a beta key and THEN I'll write you an interesting pen & paper experience.

 

We were at the end of my first D&D campaign and by this time my character, a dragonborn paladin, had been disintegrated, by my own party, and had his soul entrapped in a soul gem... which was then devoured by a dragon which I somehow gained control of. So on the bright side I got turned into a healing behemoth or destruction. So when the DM declared that the dragonborn necromancer had taken controll of my soul gem, hands me a bunch of necrotic dragon abilities, and says "Have fun." you know revenge is going to be so sooo sweet.​

 

So my group and I were playing Dark Sun (2nd ed AD&D for those that do not know of the game). I played a Wildmage, a blast of a character class, and I do not remember why but we were in the city of Bodach which is the city of the undead. We were all slightly inebriated (not sloppy drunk), but we were goofing off a little too much and our DM started to get mad. He warned us that if we did not start to take the game seriously we would regret it. Well we didn't so as we were along a road, it collapsed into a tunnel. After we recovered from that and I got some light going we started to hear a lot of noise coming from the front of the tunnel. We walked deeper into the tunnel and we came into a huge cavern. As we got towards the center, mind you the noise kept getting louder, it looked to be hundreds of, if I remember, goblins or kobolds, something...Anyway, I cast Nahal's Reckless Dweomer. I had to have Chaos Shield up or something because after everything was said and done, I got 100 on my roll. I cast Meteor, or the equivalent, I cannot remember, and I killed every single monster that came into that cavern. After we stopped laughing our asses off, the DM said I leveled up, a couple of times, and he cleaned his stuff up and left.

 

I always remember that Halfling that used to play with us. He constantly got us into trouble time and time again like that one time where we went into a bar and ordered drinks. Barkeep brings the flasks and asks for the money, Dont worry ,says the Halfling, I got that covered and pays the Barman. Didnt take long for the Barman to realize that his purse was gone and he was paid with his OWN COIN !!! Needless to say we had a Barfight with the local Authorities which wasn`t to bad considering the Halfling had cast a spell which made everyone a fool of themselves as no one could hurt anyone as they were clumsy like a troll and the weapons seemed to be made of rubber.... We narrowly escaped the local authorities and half the townspeople though we still got some bruises though , except for the Halfling as he was still without a speck of dirt on him and even had a pipe in his mouth sitting on a tree trunk by the road and said : Well that was fun, we should come again soon.
In that moment we all had murder in our eyes ......

 

So we were playing the Pathfinder RPG by Paizo and we were exploring this dungeon said to be owned by a cult (The Cult of the Blue Flame). We found a bunch of their blue potions in the store room that created a heatless blue flame on whatever you spread them on. So our barbarian decides to drink several of them, resulting in a blue flame coming out of his mouth at such a rate that he cannot close his mouth. Unfortunately he cannot speak so when he is confronted by the cult leader, he cannot explain himself. So the leader of the cult leaves him on the floor dying. We find him and we have no healing ability. So we grab some random potions from the store room (some blue, red, and a green one). So we start with the blue ones down his gullet. More flames are produced and when we try to pour the red one down his throat it cannot get through the flames. So the only option left is to give him an enema. We pull down his pants and insert what we found out was antitoxin in his rectum. I leave to go and try to find more potions and our druid decides to put some more blue potions up his ass, resulting in more flames. I return to find the druid shoving a JAVELIN in the barbarian's asshole! His response? The druid says "I wanted to see if it would shoot out!?" So we run around checking doors and looking for more potions. I end up locking the druid in a room with a froghemoth, and the next door I run to is trapped. As I go to open the door, a swinging halberd comes down from the ceiling and one-shots me. The best part is, the whole time our fighter was on the telephone. He comes back to find our druid eaten by a froghemoth, the rogue splattered on the ceiling, and a singed barbarian spouting blue flames from every orifice with a javelin in his ass.

 

Not that long ago in The Dark Eye (Das Schwarze Auge):
Prolouge: To get enough points at character creation our mage had to get some hefty disadvantages, with fear of rodents being one of them.
Main Event: The party was strolling around in the woods on the way to adventure, when we encountered small critters watching us. It were squirrels. Said mage failed his fearsave with a crit, aka he was terrified by this beautiful scene. As him being an air elemental riding elementalist he flew upwards, shouted "FLEE YOU FOOLS!" and threw an insanely overpowered fireball at the squirrels. The others ran away luckily being spared by the flames because it rained that night, so the fire couldn't spread far. The party didn't really appreciate the midday campfire but the mage was spared.
Epilouge: The party encounters an abandoned camp, with a backpack. Said mage also had an disadvantage called "curiosity", but this time he didn't failed his save, he investigated the backpack by his own decision. The backpack was occupied by a mouse family so the mage had to roll another save. Just let us say "curiosity kills", but luckily the fire still didn't burn the whole forest to the ground.

 

Our first temple we went in we confronted a huge plant infested bear. While it was sleeping we build a barricade searched for flaming material and burned him to death the best moment was when one of our party members had a critical hit on it while shooting a arrow which was on fire. Double damage, Double and threw a 8 so it killed the bear. The DM wanted to kill us but hadn't seen this coming.

 

One of my greatest gaming memories went like this:

DM:...at end a very long, poetic and cryptic riddle. "You know if you solve this mystery with the correct answer, you will bypass the orc encampment and gain direct access to the tunnels below! It would save you hours!"

*Dramatic pause*

DM: "You have 30 seconds to answer!" (we could all see the smug look in his eyes)

Player 1 to Player 2: " That was the riddle I thought it was, right?"

Player 2 to Player 1: " Yep"

Player 1 to DM: " The answer is time"

DM (studdering): " What??? HOW DID YOU GET THAT? NO WAY!!"

Player 2: " Dude, we've read the Hobbit. All of us."

We still all play together today, and still give him grief for the obvious.

 

Right so. This all started three months ago. We have four heroes, Nark the Dwarf, Stoop the elf, and Jeff and Bob the Humans. They all fell under a curse which could not be lifted by the greatest magic users so they go on a quest for a magic lamp so they can wish for it off. Five sessions (about an three hours each) they finally find the lamp. They have killed hundreds of monsters, traversed countless problems and journeyed all around the world, and finally defeated the dragon guarding the lamp. Nark picks up the lamp and rubs it. A genie comes out and says "Brave heroes, you have braved countless perils to find me and I will grant you one wish. What will that be?". At the exact same time both Jeff and Bob scream "I wish for 100 prostitutes!". My jaw hits the floor. The rest of the party turn and look at them like "what the hell did you just...". Nark and Stoop both, without much hesitation, screamed "I DRAW MY SWORD AND PLUNGE IT INTO THE TWO IDIOTS". It was the best of days and the worst of days. Months of story telling blown away by two idiots.

 

The most memorable role-playing experience I ever had was an interesting (like the Chinese curse) session that revolved around RuneQuest. My friend Robert and I knew another fellow who was running a campaign and thought it would be fun to join in. We went through the whole creation process: race and profession options (The list was huge. The GM had spent years creating his gameworld, adding hundreds of pages of races, classes, and powers. Which is great, if you don't only have an hour to create a character), birth, childhood, young adulthood, rolling dice just to see if we were still alive after each phase of creation. I had picked a bird-man because I loved the idea of being a crow-dude, and Robert was a human archer. The rest of the group showed up, pizza and beer in hand, ready to play. A group who had been playing with the GM for all the years he had been developing his world and whose character were gods that roamed the planes of existence looking for challenges to vanquish to stave off celestial ennui. A group who decided to kill a pod of Hell Wyrms for sport. Robert and I were game. He shot arrows at the Wyrms from his lonely position on the ground. When he managed to hit one, the arrow simply bounced off the Wyrm's scaled hide. I, at least, could fly alongside the rest of the group, and stabbed the nearest Wyrm with my spear with as much gusto and as little effect as Robert's arrows. Having humored us, the group began unleashing beams of eldritch power that sliced through the Wyrms like a hot knife through butter. One of the falling Wyrms struck me on the way down, sending me plummeting to the earth, where my shattered body was a landing pad for yet another falling Wyrm. I can still hear the echoes of the "oooohs" and "ahhhs" of the group in response the "miraculous" rolls the GM made for all of that to happen...behind his screen. The group vanquished the rest of the Wyrms. Robert had run out of arrows and was sitting, plucking blades of grass and trying to whistle with them. Fortunately, being gods, they could resurrect a pulped bird-man without breaking a sweat. Then the GM flipped through his books and delivered the sad news: I had chosen a bird-man sect (crow) that found the idea of resurrection heretical and foul. The young gods would know this, of course, and thus would not elect to rez me. I opted to not roll up another character and headed home. Poor Robert braved it out for another couple hours, shooting arrows that bounced off cosmic level threats and then sitting and waiting for the gods to do their thing. It wasn't fun, but I will certainly never forget it!

 

@GrimNayShawn god those guys were dicks...if they are playing an established high level campaign then they should just tell you off or at least let you roll up an adequate character for the challenges ahead...and the no ressurection thing just sounds like the GM trying to piss you off
hope you had better times with role playing later on

 

The most memorable PnP rpg moment I've had was the time I DM'ed for a couple of my friends who had played D&D much longer than I had. We were playing 3.5, and one of the players was using a ranger he had played with in previous campaigns with another DM. I already had a little bit of a reputation as a PKing DM, so I was trying to go easy on them this time. The friend who suggested I DM liked to play "interesting" characters, in that there was always something they were absolutely horrible at. In this case, weapons. He played an orc fighter named Thog. Thog was so dumb that the only weapons he could use without hurting himself were gauntlets. All his skill points went into jump, climb, and swim, and after his magic items he had a strength of 24.

So they go through the campaign, fighting cultists & generally doing well. The original final boss was a hydra, a bit of a challenge, but one they could overcome with some luck & skill. They're fighting in a cavern carved with runes & circles, the general cult flavor descriptions. The ranger sees the hydra, and pulls out an item - I think it was a custom one from the previous DM - that let him cast a 15d6 ranged energy attack 3 times a day. He hits he hydra once, and the orc smashes the hydra's one remaining head to a pulp. Needless to say, I was a little ticked, so I pulled the time-honored DM tactic of winging it. The runes & circles on the floor became a summoning ritual, powered by blood that the hydra had so thoughtfully donated. The adventurers are going through their loot when a balor rises out of the floor. The ranger fires his magic item again, the paladin uses Smite, and Thog hits it with his fists. DR reduces Thogs hits to no damage, and the balor ignores him as it attacks the other two.

Thog's player was very creative, though, so as I'm calculating how close to death the other two characters are, he asks if there are any stalagmites on the floor of the cave. "Yeah, sure," I reply. "There's one about 6 feet from you."
"How big is it?" he asks.
"I don't know, about 5 feet tall, maybe 150lbs," I reply as the paladin hits -2.
Thog's turn comes up, and he uses a strength check to rip the stalagmite off the ground. The ranger goes down to -5, and the balor turns to finish off Thog. Thog - aided by a ring of jumping & boots of springing - does a jump attack. His roll? 20. So he leaps almost 25ft into the air and comes down stalagmite first onto the balor as his attack. As he describes this, the player states: "-and I called shot his face with it!"
"Okay," I said. "Roll it."
He rolled 2 natural 20s. I looked at him and just said, "If you think I'm going to take the time to calculate the damage for called shotting a balor in the face with a 5', 150lb stalagmite from 25ft in the air, you're crazy. You win."

 

Great one Jonlevir, reminds me of that time my Goblin character (a pyromaniac/engineer of some kind) was fighting alongside is friends against an entanglind monster of some time... after 3 or 4 rounds of trying to force himself out of the vines I got bored, took 2 dice and said "I'll just roll 2 dice and take the better one" - result: 20 on both dice, as my goblin burst out of the vines looking all muscular

 

One ill-advised comment led to months of rpg madness. During character creation the half-orc fighter said to the halfing rogue "your so small you could ride me into battle" and Elona the exotic riding master was born. Armed with her spurs (dual wielded daggers) her battle cry of "geddyup" was feared throughout the land ie she would sneak around the edge of a fight attempting to jump/climb on somethings back and then yell "geddyup" at which point the mount had better start running or it would meet her spurs. And if you think orcs are naturally grumpy wait until you their reaction when the charm spell wears off and they suddenly realize a very small person has saddled them is now attempting to ride them into battle. That halfing and the mage became the best damn friends and anything that could be charmed, sleep, summoned, held or otherwise stopped for a minute was saddled up and taken for a spin. Perhaps not the most effective adventuring party but they certainly had interesting times.