RPGaDay2024 Day 19 - Sensational Session

 

I'm not even going to try to limit my answer to one example. There are just too many things that make a session great, and so at least a few examples deserve to be called out:

Dungeon Crawls

I have to start with a special callout to dungeon crawls in general. Each one, if designed well, sticks with the group in the mental archives of what you did. They are filled with challenges and loot at much higher rates than you get through exploration and RP, they involve epic wins and failures, and some of the funniest stories come out of them.

There was a dungeon I had only half-finished when the session started. It was okay, they always started by going left, so I was prepped enough. They went right, so I turned the map over, and proceeded as if I'd meant to have them to right the whole time.

There was a dungeon that was only there because the party chose to explore something I hadn't prepped. I basically ad-libbed the dungeon, and it included one party member exploring ahead, and being told "your feet hurt", "your feet are burning" "your feet really hurt" on successive turns before finding out that he'd waited too long to react to my messages and was becoming whatever ooze he'd stepped in. The party had to blow a limited wish or full wish to get him back.

There was a "dungeon" that was the former cave home of a lich who used to rule the area. It was bizarrely designed, and the dangers came from the paranoid madness of a long-dead creature who had lost its sense of life. The most memorable moment was the party finding a sword with his name on it in Dwarven runes, piercing his skeletal body. The rogue started to remove the blade, and hand to be tackled by other members of the party.

 A favorite I've run

My favorite session I've run was set in a bar, 2-3 dimension hops from the party's reality. To move forward, they had to gather a certain number of coin tokens to activate the magical hobby horse that would carry them to the next place. They earned those tokens by performing tasks, or solving puzzles.

What I did, though, was set up absolutely typical tests and gave them weird out-of-the-box solutions. The puzzles seemed impossible, at first, but once the players figured out the "trick", it became easy. One example was that they had to out-drink the bar's champion. It was impossible; nobody could drink more whiskey than the champion did. After several failed attempts, one player finally asked, "Could I just get water, instead of whiskey?" The server said "Sure."...and so the player managed to drink more glasses than the champion. (Another task was cleaning rats out of the basement...which transformed them into 1st level versions of themselves, and they each had to kill one rat on their own, to qualify.)

As the players got the weird logic of the place, they got faster at solving the puzzles. It was a one-session adventure, but one of my favorites.

A favorite I've played

Probably the assault on a castle held by the ancient leader/suit of armor we needed for our mission. It was well-fortified with several units of "fodder" troops, some lieutenants, and the big-bad. What made it especially memorable was that it was exceptionally challenging, requiring us to bring our A-game to the session, Double-teaming the lieutenants, separating the troops so they weren't as effective, and holding some defenders at bay while we dealt with the scarier ones. It was big, complex, and very efficiently run. I just remember how fulfilling it was, and how everybody got the spotlight at different points. The only thing I remember personally doing was using my brain-fireball spell (mass whelm) which did 14d6 non-lethal damage to everybody in a zone. I cast that with the invocation "Do your mothers know you're working for the bad guy?", and the whole unit collapsed in anguished shame.

A favorite one-shot

Probably "Best Leave Them Ghosts Alone" for the Old Gods of Appalachia game. It's a great story, with a lot of flexibility. I've run it 8 times, yet I've never seen players take the same path to the outcome. It allows a lot of freedom on the part of the players. It's also powerful emotionally. It sets up strong connections between the players and the story, and encourages the GM to explore those aspects more fully during the game.

The ending can go any of several ways, though normally the same choices get made, but the way they get there, and how it plays to the end varies from session-to-session, to better fit the group that's playing.

It's my favorite module, and I've gotten the best feedback from players, and the most engagement from the whole table.

Most amusingly tortuous for the players

In my first campaign, which ran 7 years, the players were at the beck and call of the Duke of the area. One day, as a "torture the players" one shot, the Duke asked them to support his son with whatever was needed to help with the wedding. They were assigned to collect several matched bolts of sage green material from the capital for the bridesmaid's dresses. Specific abuse included:

• Having to find the right type of material. She was quite specific about what she wanted. They knew nothing about sewing or materials, and had to rely on "knowing a guy."
• Bringing back exactly what she wanted, only to be told "That's not sage!" (The higher level ranger who was very good with nature had to bite his tongue hard about this, and managed to ask for a sample of the color she was after. It involved words like "dusty", "misty" and "gray-green, but not too gray."
• The cloth supplier not having enough bolts, and them having to match them from two different sellers.
• They had to burn through all kinds of money porting back and forth to the capital, only hoping they'd be compensated for the expenses.

As I said, it was a one shot, everybody had a great time--but the players did made me promise that there would be no rehearsal dinner assignments.