Greatest Campaigns

>>50282173

I've told the story repeatedly on /tg/, but it's the one where we missed a vital clue that our GM dropped in front of us, and as a result, while our own operation went ahead perfectly, us disrupting an evil liche and by extension knocking out the legion of undead she controlled, (and a former PC turned traitor in a previous campaign, to boot), we missed another line of defense that we needed to remove to hit the ultimate objective, so as a result, we lost the war we thought we were going to win.

I've never felt a blow to the gut like that in an RPG, before or since. We spent roughly a month (real time) in that final dungeon complex, and the entire time, our GM never once gave a hint that it was all for nothing, even though it was too late by that point.

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The campaign we're currently in, it's a WWI campaign using the Only War rulebook

We're currently on the Meuse-Argonne Offensive trying to rescue the 77th Division. Its been a unique experience.

>>50283475
I don't think I've heard that one before, but I've been away from the chans a long while. Is the full story archived anywhere?

>>50283527
Sure sounds like it.

currently, a 3.5 campaign that has been going on a couple months now. DM is switching to 5e though.

best part was when we were about level 3 or so. went to a town called Abyss. turns out there was some weird ritual where the high priest of Abyss needed a live sacrifice into the town pit or else a horrible creature would emerge and destroy everything.

we didn't know if that was true or not, but couldn't stand by and watch innocent people be thrown into this pit. fought some guards, got thrown in jail, escaped jail, met with an sort of elf gang, then finally confronted the high priest himself.

unfortunately, this faggot in our group rolled a character to play, but rerolled his stats like 5 times so he was god-like. he basically 2 shotted the boss. but what made this part memorable was that afterwards, we didn't let him play with us anymore. his character, after killing the priest, ascended to heaven and killed god, where he know remains and protects us from fun boss fights.

>>50283603
>his character, after killing the priest, ascended to heaven and killed god, where he know remains and protects us from fun boss fights.

That sounds less like a hilarious story and more like a series of hilarious stories.

>>50282173
I shit talk the homebrewed system and sometimes the setting a lot (occasionally on tg) but I'd have to say Oonharah.

We were all outcasts of the real world defending a fantasy world from corrupted magical artifacts that were actually just normal things from the real world. Something like a 1911 that almost killed anything you shot, but tried to force you to kill yourself after. Our characters all became famous in our own rights, me for being a paladin of the god of loyalty and battle. It was the longest of all of our campaigns,

>>50283579

Found it:

http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/34162691/#34165424

>>50285394
That's definitely excellent DMing, reminds me of something I tried to do in my last campaign. Wish I had been that good.

>>50285487

What happened?

>>50285512
Well it's a long story, but the short version is the main storyline of the campaign was based around the "Pelor and Zarus are the same god" thing from a few years back - the campaign took place on a continent that had been shattered by a big war that toppled two of the four kingdoms on it and left one of the survivors badly reduced. The church of Pelor had moved in and set up shop, eventually becoming massively dominant across the continent and morphing into something I intentionally made resemble late 1400s Catholicism.

The catch, of course, was that most of the church's high leadership were secretly aware that Pelor and Zarus were two sides of the same god and were devoted to Zarus. Pelor couldn't clue in any of his non-corrupted followers due to some metaphysical stuff I hamfisted in.

I should point out, by the way, that I kind of suck at DMing. Specifically the rules, numbers, etc. - it all just kind of slides off. One of my players had to handle almost all the technical aspects of the game while I just made shit up, mad props to him overall.....

>>50285608
Anyway, the party began the campaign by being hired by a Paladin of Pelor - one who wasn't part of the Zarus cult - to investigate reports of increased banditry and monster activity in the western area of the continent, which had been hit hard by the war. The party investigated, did some sidequests, then eventually got pulled into the plot of investigating a corrupt Pelor priest in a small city that led to them finding out about the cult of Zarus and the truth that Pelor and Zarus were the same god. This almost caused the Paladin to fall, but the party's "Fighter" talked him into keeping his faith.

After three years of sessions the campaign finally came to a head with the Paladin having restored one of the kingdoms that fell during the war - which was revealed to have been orchestrated by the cult of Zarus specifically so they could spread the influence of "Pelor" there - and along with the rest of the party managed to draw the cult's followers and forces into a climactic final battle. Before the cult could be defeated though they managed to enact a ritual that summoned Zarus/Pelor into the world and threatened to destroy the Pelor half of the deity, which would depower all of Pelor's loyal clerics and paladins across the world and make Zarus the dominant god of mankind.

The players were able to disrupt the ritual and prevent Pelor's destruction, but they lacked the means to turn the ritual around and destroy Zarus without destroying Pelor as well. The dilemma was supposed to be whether or not the players should allow the status quo to continue - Pelor empowering the loyal parts of his faith and Zarus seeking to corrupt them - or to destroy both at the same time and end Zarus' threat once and for all. (I kind of played up his power level a little, so the possibility of Zarus taking over was a very Bad Thing overall.)

>>50285764
In the end though the "Fighter" (secretly a Blackguard, and one that had been hiding in plain sight and playing bash brothers alongside the Paladin who considered him a close friend and moral compass for the entire campaign) managed to completely derail my plot by using random stuff he'd been stockpiling for the entire campaign to sever the bond between Pelor and Zarus and "heroically sacrifice" himself to destroy Zarus once in for all... by killing him and taking his place.

None of the party ever figured out what happened, so the Blackguard became honored as a martyr and local saint throughout the continent after his Paladin friend wound up being crowned a king. All while having secretly become a god, knocked up a black dragon, arranged for societies of orcish and kobold worshipers to survive in the wilds, set up a cult of his own in charge of the largest surviving kingdom on the continent and half a dozen other evil things he'd done in plain sight of the party without getting caught.

TL;DR all my plotting was outplayed masterfully, and I can't help thinking it'd have gone even better if I actually knew how to DM without being handheld.

>>50285884

Did you tell the rest of the mob about it post-campaign, or are they still in the dark?

>>50285940
No, they knew the Fighter was secretly a Blackguard from the first session onwards, they just never caught him out in-character. Came close twice, though.

>>50285940
>>50285968

That reply of mine is a little hazy, let me clarify: the party knew, out of character, that one of our players was playing a Chaotic Evil Blackguard who was pretending to be a Fighter. In character their characters fell for it and (one character who was a former NPC replacement PC aside) never figured it out.

>>50282173
SuperEarth. If not the best, it was at least the single most snowflakey thing I ever got the honor to GM.

The gist of it was that I went to a handful of players with a half-baked take on the GURPS system (sue me), a cliché Marvel-ripping-off universe, no plot, and a very quaint premise : "Anything goes." So far, so good.

Except I had 20 fucking players. And every single one of them helped define some aspect of the plot and the setting.

I could tell stories upon stories about what exactly went down in this glorious mess, of clowns that became gods, of tragic guardians of time, of pirate dutchmen who mentored themselves, of that one gamer dude who just wanted to fucking settle down with his wife, and of how this dysfuctional, plotting, self-backstabbing chaotic neutral bunch still managed to not entirely drop the ball after a whole season of dicking around and definitely not uniting against a stronger villain - and of the harsh lessons that GMing this hell of a campaign taught me, but y'know. It'd be looooong, and I have a SuperEarth scenario to write.

>>50286484
That sounds fucking awesome.

>>50286508
Man, one day I'll have to actually tell the stories. Though I did get major insecurity as a GM running this beast.

Side note: the most interesting effect they unbeknownstingly had on the setting was making the BBEG... Well, BBEG-er. They were _just_ supposed to be pragmatic mad scientists, hellbent on discovering why there were powers and how to put them in check, even if it meant looking for people who were willing to sacrifice themselves for science; and when I saw the players' actions - which included robbing banks, forcefully resurrecting people and hanging out with serial killers -, I had to make them way darker and evil-er.

>>50283475
You make it sound like some pretty poor DMing