I’m a player who’s rather new, but I love hearing stories of the best sessions people have had. I love the epic ness or the RP from these sessions! Just wanna hear the top sessions you all have!
As a DM this is particularly satisfying - having playing remember and talk about epic moments is a great feeling. The two that stick out in my mind are both from the same session, so that is probably my best session:
I was doing a gothic horror campaign a la Ravenloft, and the players were coming upon the Big Bad's old 'abandoned' family home to do some reconnaissance. I was really dialing the spookiness up to 11, and made sure to ham it up in every detail I could. Apparently it worked better than I thought, because when my doorbell rang (we ordered pizza) I swear one of my players practically jumped out of his skin. THAT was a great moment, both in pride of scene-setting but also player engagement. We still bring that up and bust his chops over it.
The next time, during the same session, the players had uncovered that a Night Hag was manipulating the Big Bad behind the scenes. They tracked down and confronted her, who offered information about the Big Bad's weakness in exchange for some of their own information. It was a crooked deal from the beginning (the players suspected, but didn't quite know the lengths I was prepared to go - she would have literally *taken* the information from them, effectively giving them amnesia in regards to the main plot). She had set the deal in front of one player, who she was propositioning. That player took their time deciding, before, in a flashy moment, tossed the contract to the side and rolled a d20 to attack the hag. Every single player at the table, myself included, physically stood up and leaned in to watch that dice roll. It was a great moment, and again one that we still talk about. The night Talo denied the hag.
I always strive for moments like that in game. They're so much fun for everybody, but especially satisfying as a DM, knowing you had a hand in setting it up/ pushing the players towards that accomplishment.
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I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
The second and final session in the first ever run of an adventure I'm publishing very soon called the Steepfield Cheese chase. The paladin decided to sacrifice himself to kill the BBEG, jumping off a cliff and falling 300ft onto him whilst smiting. The player rolled a nat 20, and through the combination of excellent rolls, homebrew fall damage rules, and a lot of luck, they managed to oneshot the BBEG, and survive the fall (just!). The other players were extremely happy, as they saw 189 damage rolled in one hit (vs 187hp), and now the town of Steepfield has a fountain made from the huge fondue pot which broke his fall, which has a large dent in the shape of him in it. They had 2hp left, the BBEG had -2. It was an epic moment, and right as we were running out of time for a boss fight, and it's still one of the bests sessions we've had! What's better is that I'm running a sequel now (The Steepfield Cattle Drive) in which the player has brought the paladin back, so there's a lot of tie-ins for it!
As a player, the best session I ever had was Icewind Dale trout fishing. I’ll spoiler in case anyone’s playing that.
We took the two fishing boats out on the ice, and the DM had us roll to see if we could avoid the ice chunks. I’d volunteered to drive one of the boats, since I thought it would be dex. It turned out to be wis. My boat hit every single ice chunk on the way out. I would roll poorly and the DM would narrate: “Bonk! You hit the ice flow.” By the fourth or fifth time, we were all laughing.
After that, we set up to fish. We thought it would be easy, but then we learned that the fish could pull us out of the boat… thankfully no one fell out, but we came close!
Finally, the goal of our fishing, the sea monster who had been sinking the other fishing boats, arrived. Before we could get ready to fight, our ranger decided to throw a goodberry at him. She rolled a 20 and got it right in front of his nose. He ate it and came up to talk. It turned out he was a sea monster who has been given sentience and told to attack the fishing boats. His name was Walt (water animal, loves trout). Our Cleric did some checks and learned that the spell that had given him sentience didn’t require him to do what the caster said. We persuaded Walt that he didn’t need to hurt the boats, and he became a campaign long NPC.
On the way back, my character hit every ice flow but one.
My best session was running the first session of LMoP with my two teenagers as players last July. It was their first TTRPG experience and we all had a blast.
Among the menagerie of epic-ness that is DND, my favorite session has to be the one where we were in a giant cave surrounded by goblins, and when I say surrounded, I mean like thousands upon thousands of goblins, so I, playing a cleric at the time, chose to do what every other player would do, convince the entire cave that I was a God. So, in my infinite wisdom, I cast sanctuary on myself and told them to send there biggest guy up against me. Turns out their biggest guy was a fire giant that could one shot insta-kill me. If you are not already familiar with the spell sanctuary, the attacker has to make a wis save to determine whether ot not they are able to target you, so, our DM rolled the wis save, and, in a moment of epic-ness, he failed by one. That Is probably the best session I have ever been to.
The party had just slain a displacer beast which I embellished with a lot of imagery. The displacer beast had been hunting the lost daughter of an Archfae. The fae offered them a deal as a reward. He knew of ancient magical pathways that wove through the world, and offered to shorten their trip using one of these portals. He warned them to beware leaving the path within this fae reality, and for a while, they did, though they had a strange encounter with a pack of dire wolves off the path. The wolves spoke with Telepathy, but only my dad's fighter could hear. Later, he saw a mystical archway off the path that none of the others could immediately see. The archway was lined with runes telling of a path to heroism that lay within. Though the cleric argued strongly against leaving the path, the fighter made a decision to enter the archway. He and the party followed this path, accompanied by the same pack of dire wolves. He reached the end of the path, which ended in a moonlit glade with smooth stone tiles beneath their feet. In the middle of this glade, there was a statue of a warrior standing on top of a slain dragon, and the warrior held a majestic sword. The fighter experienced a vision telling him to embrace his destiny as a true champion and wield the sword, which was called Kingsfall. He claimed the blade and then was faced with a trial of combat as he and the party engaged two wolves modeled after the hell hound and winter wolf.
This might be my favorite session ever. I added a lot of music and sound effects to it, and for the first time, I feel like I perfected the sound quality during editing. When I had finished the most dramatic scene, I brought it to my players. When everyone heard it, they were just silent for a second. The music happened to line up perfectly with the scene, it felt like they were meant to go together. The script I wrote myself for the vision sounded amazing along with the music. And my players were nailing it with their role playing. It might have been the most epic DnD experience I'd ever had, except for an earlier one in a home game.
The only other challenger would be the best fight scene of all time. Facing a blue dragon in a desert ruin, the wizard polymorphed our fighter into a giant ape. What followed was basically Kong vs Godzilla, but way better. At the last moment, the fighter was knocked out of ape shape, but they were still able to vanquish the dragon.
I hope that others share their moments, this is the reason we play.
Most recently I ran a big boss battle as the culmination of an arc in a campaign I'm running – basically the party is working for a mysterious entity called "the Voice in the Dark" which exists in an endless void with an inky surface (that adheres to nothing) with an eclipse burning in the "sky". They return from a particularly difficult quest to retrieve an item called "the Nullifidian Scroll" but failed to identify it, instead just grabbing everything in the wizard's lab where it should be, including the wizard's assistant Scio Lamarl. Upon arriving in the dark they find the eclipse is missing, and something is bubbling in the "centre" – approaching, it turns red and emerges as the Dreamer, a nameless god they've been hearing about throughout.
Cue a boss music mix from Bloodborne (Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower, Ludwig the Holy Blade, The One Reborn, Cleric Beast, Laurence the First Vicar) and a tough fight for a party of six level 5 players against a CR 15 "god" that intentionally splits its attacks (otherwise it would have downed a player every turn), and it has a tricky mechanic where its legendary actions are constantly trying to advance players towards becoming vulnerable to a dominate person like control ability. Also it's impossible to move out of its range (the assistant is trying but can't get any further away), not to mention a start of turn frightened save.
It's a tough fight as expected, but they fare well, and get it down to 0 hit-points, triggering a second stage as the wizard's assistant starts uncontrollably spouting arcane words, and the Dreamer is now more frantic and vicious but has fewer attacks and legendary actions – as something is happening to it. As the party gets it down to 0 hit-points for the second time, I change the music to Sebastian Böhm's Painted Black cover and describe how the assistant is now walking directly towards the dreamer and disintegrating at the edges like burning paper (Scio Lamarl = I am a Scroll) and the Dreamer is fixated on her. Just before the 30 second mark I describe how the players still don't understand what the assistant is saying… but the Dreamer does.
Music kicks up a notch and I describe how the players can feel the Dreamer's fear as it hurls spells ineffectually at the assistant, and how the party redouble their efforts, describing a surge of power as they throw everything they have at it, finally dealing lasting wounds to its increasingly tangible form. When the music kicks in hard again near the end I describe how they are thrown back as the eclipse flares back to life and a pillar of darkness pours down onto the Dreamer, stripping it away layer by layer until no trace of it, or Scio Lamarl, remains. The Dreamer is dead. The purpose of the Nullifidian Scroll revealed as rendering a god mortal so it can be truly destroyed, as the Voice in the Dark/eclipse claims its divine spark.
It all felt very epic and my players all seemed to enjoy it, I made sure everyone had cools moments in the fight, and even ran it an extra round after one player massively whiffed what would have been their last turn (four natural 1's in a single turn, brutal), so it didn't end on a sour note – the party was rough at this point but I knew another round wouldn't finish them. I don't usually like to narrate too much, but with the music and epic events occurring I think everyone enjoyed it, and the surge of power they felt at the end accompanied them gaining two levels, so it all felt like a great way to end the arc on a high not long before Christmas last year. Since then they've been having some downtime in Baldur's Gate while I set up the pieces for the next arc.
Airship Journey
In an earlier session of the same campaign, while chasing down another item, the party found themselves in a slow airship chase (the airships are relatively fast, but the enemy had a significant lead and the players' airship was only closing the distance slowly). To pass the time I stole an idea I saw in Critical Role, which is to have a drinking game, though I change the format a bit; an NPC they were with (who neglects to mention he can't get drunk) suggests going belowdecks to play a drinking game where each player proposes a question, and everyone has to answer – the idea is to encourage general questions for everyone rather than anything directed at one person, as a question too many can't answer, or a bad answer, results in a drink and increasing drunkenness. This works great, as it gives players an opportunity to just roleplay a lot more than we're used to (normally it's more about roleplaying around mechanics), and everyone got a chance to flesh out their characters.
Suddenly they hear a bell ringing an alarm above decks, and the airship is climbing steeply. They emerge to find the airship enveloped in an unnatural fog that muffles sound, they find the captain at the wheel trying to get the airship above the fog, but she is worried as her husband and son went forward and haven't come back, nor has she seen any other crew. The players investigate, finding signs of crew being torn from the ship, but manage to rescue the captain's son, shortly before the airship is struck hard by… something, knocking out the captain. The players have to seize control of the ship and scramble to put out a fire as well as trying to jump start a failing buoyancy crystal (that reduces the weight of the ship enough for the balloon to carry it effectively). But through a series of unfortunate events (which honestly I nudged towards happening) the airship manages to accidentally catch up to their quarry in the fog in a collision that critically damages both airships, sheering off one buoyancy crystal and fatally damaging another, forcing the ship into a spin.
Cue a custom cut of Iron Fist from the Alice in Borderland soundtrack (I looped the intense sections near the start) and the party has to scramble to both avoid being thrown into the open sky, and to try to find some way – any way – to survive the inevitable crash. They settled on tying themselves the airship's balloon with the thinking that while it's no longer strong enough on its own to keep the airship aloft, it should be strong enough to carry just their weight, and after nearly losing a party member over the side (for which I had a plan) they manage to enact their daring escape, cutting the balloon free with themselves attached and riding it down relatively slowly while the body of the airship is shattered against the ground below. I just really enjoyed this for the fun casual beginning, then sudden intense wind-up to a dramatic escape, and I really do think the intense music made it genuinely scary.
Guest Lecture: Elven History
The first full 5e session I properly DMed, this was a "guest lecture" with me DMing a one-shot within an existing Strixhaven campaign run by my brother, giving him a chance to play within the setting. This was just a lot of fun because it had a bit of everything; being late for class, arriving to a lecture with an extremely sarcastic lecturer picking on them for being late (but actually they got quite a few questions right), and an unsanctioned field trip into the Lorehold Pillar Drop.
Party ended up going into one of several tombs, and being trapped inside. Cue classic (albeit short) linear dungeon crawl to help keep myself from being overwhelmed. Every chamber is a troll chamber, such as an arena with a statue that comes to life trapping one player in a 1v1 duel when all they had to do was go around it to the unlocked exit door, a chamber filling with petrifying gas which turns some of the players into animated statues themselves, a hall of statues that demand to be entertained "or else" but there's actually nothing they can do (a skeleton in the centre could have revealed via speak with dead that they died attempting a back-flip to impress the statues, the statues can't do anything and once again the exit isn't locked). A fun puzzle with a riddle that worked surprisingly well, and they make it to a boss battle against a tragic sort-of-lich who is trying to guard an artefact and ends up being talked down once they are told the campus is now a magical university with many mages who could help secure it – cue the professor arriving with the heavy implication that he knew what was inside all along, but couldn't get in himself due to the lich's protective barrier that blocks certain types of creatures.
It was just a really fun session to run, had a lot to it, puzzles were fun, I had more chambers prepared but was able to drop some to save time and keep it a one-shot. Honestly it was probably the best session I've ever run, as I've struggled with keeping sessions under time ever since. 😂
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I love to play but the best sessions are the ones I've DM'd during my Isle of Dakkar campaign which was a 3.5e campaign on the Isle of Dakkar which was beset by a Lich who created a zombie apocalypse by raising the graveyard. Players got a reflex save against bite attacks but if bitten there was a 50-100% chance depending on the party of them being infected with the zombie virus and turning in 1d4 days into a zombie. Players were unaware of their fate and so it led to some spicy sessions. One session two of the players had to flee a third who transformed in the night during their watch. The players escaped by climbing around the side of a cliff. Then they proceeded to use climbing gear to scale the cliffs. Once far above the horde of zombies their prior companion was now a part of they moved inside a nearby house from the cliffs via a second-floor window. There were two zombies inside, the couple who owned the house, and the Bard held the Ranger's belt lowering him over the edge of the stairs so he could crit both the zombies with their bow. They made camp and they player who died completed their new character. It was fun and the fight between the party was intense.
In another party in the same campaign the party got in a fight with some NPCs hiding from the zombies and lit the warehouse they sought shelter in on fire. They fled to the roof as a horde descended on the burning building and quickly made a grappling hook using an axe, tied it to a rope, and then tossed it over to a building across the way. They tight roped across and just as the last person was coming over the rope broke, and the burning building gave way so from both ends it was falling. The player who already made it across was the Barbarian and full of strength though, so he caught it and hoisted his friend up who was knocked out when they slammed against the wall of the building just above a horde of zombies. The whole session I had a little 15-minute sand timer on the table forcing the players to rush through their turns and feel the intensity of the fire! They loved it and it became one of the sessions they still talk about in that part of the US. I know the way I did it got used by one of the players in the session they DM too.
My best, most entertaining, session happened decades ago, at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) gaming club. I played in a Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) first edition campaign. This campaign was set in a magical version of the high medieval period in the Kingdom of England. In the kingdom, magic is commonplace. While elves, dwarves, and other good species are accepted in the human population, while becoming trusted advisors to the royal family.
In the spring of the year 1044, King Edward the Confessor, along with most of his adventurers and soldiers focused their attention on his eastern coast; due to raids by Scandinavian pirates and plunders that pillage and then burn every settlement they find.
It was then that outside the city walls of the southwestern seaport city of Plymouth; isolated farmsteads and travelling merchant caravans of mixed bipedal species were attacked and the people disappeared with no trace of where they were taken. A small village of elves, and then a copper mine crewed by several families of dwarves also disappeared.
The latest attack by the unknown enemies was discovered when a wagon caravan carrying tax payments for the royal family was attacked. All the tax money, the tax collectors, the mules that pulled the wagons, along with the guards, three armored knights, and their horses disappeared. This time, King Edward lost more than people, he lost his money.
While enraged by this report about the robbery of his tax collection caravan, King Edward hired our party. One day earlier our party had stopped a dockyard fight between a gang of drunken sailors and a gang of drunken teamsters. King Edward gave us a letter of introduction, two wagons full of supplies such as food, camping gear, and expendable items such as arrows. The wagons were pulled by two mules each and each driven by an experienced (non-player character) teamster who knows how to drive and care for the mules.
Our party’s adventure started the moment we arrived at Plymouth’s eastern gate. We didn’t spend our actual time or our game time travelling on the road between London and Plymouth.
We had a short talk about the abductions with the local lord - Prince David, a younger brother to King Edward. Then, we walked to the city’s market hall where the farmers were selling their produce. We gathered the heads of the farming families to talk about the disappearances of those missing people, what we could do to stop these mysterious abductions, and then return their missing family members.
It was then that our smart aleck bard asked the elderly farmers this question: “My good sirs and ladies, have you seen the giant rats that eat people?”
The elder farmers told our bard that they hadn’t and then asked our bard to describe these rats.
Our bard replied, “These rats stand about three feet tall at the shoulder, wear hard leather helmets and what look like soft leather horse blankets. By the way, these rats speak English with French accents.”
Our bard was so persuasive that most of the famers were panicked, with several farming families packing up their goods and then leaving their farms for cities in the east.
After three days, Prince David’s city guards found us and then brought us to see him. Prince David was furious with our player characters.
“Quit frightening my peasants!” he growled, keeping his attention on us, most of all on our bard. The bard’s player never stopped smiling, loving all the attention that he was getting from the game master, his fellow players, and a few people who were watching us play our campaign.
Then, a week later our game master graduated from UMD. He moved back to Minneapolis soon after that. So, we didn’t get to conclude that D&D adventure. If I were to restart this adventure, I would have the villains who are kidnapping these people be Minotaur adventurers who are infected by lycanthropy and could turn into werewolves.
And now you know the raison d'être or justification why some D&D players look down on bards and the players who play them.
There was one session where the party was investigating the disappearance of a lighthouse from the harbor. During the session several things happened: The tiefling and tabaxi decided to make a hot air balloon using the fire genasi as the fuel source and the tabaxi bought a lot of catnip- you can guess what happened there. Finally, they found that the kua-toa living in the bay had worshipped the lighthouse into being a God (yes, I used that. It was hilarious) and they decided to fight it. The rogue didn't want to fight it so instead rolled 2 nat 20s while trying to convince the lighthouse god to back down.... and ended up getting married to the lighthouse. It was a good laugh and we all congratulated them on their nuptials.
Best Session I've ever had, eh? Well, word of warning ****'s about to get REAL stupid... and long.
First, some context. Angus (as we will call him) and I were Co-DMing (as it was my first time). We created a fairly normal, grounded, medieval style gameworld. And so it stayed until about the end. About 2 months before the final boss fight, I explain to Angus my idea for a book I was planning on writing. Essentially it took place in the OMNIVERSE (group of Ultraverses (group of Multiverses)) and the thing that peaked Angus' interest the most was The Defender of the Omniverse. We then decided to do a one shot revolving around this Defender later that month (no, this isn't my favorite one but is noteworthy). In that time, the players in the main campaign ended up in the Feywild for 48 hours... and every hour is equal to a year. Seeing that the big Bad literally was supposed to be Galactus from the Comics level threat by the end of one in game year, this was bad. And so, we used the previously mentioned One-Shot to flesh out what happened in that time. Angus (his character) ends up going to the big final battle against the Defender's Evil Twin. After the battle, somehow Monkey D. Luffy ends up getting teleported back to the world with Angus. Years of war go by and eventually the players make it back. Dross (the BBEG) Had grown to the size of the 20 D&D Ultraverses (Really big) and breaks through to try and take over the rest.
Now here is my favorite session. Everybody's favorite fictional characters come out and an Omniverse wide crossover battle happens with Good Guys and Bad Guys, Weak Sauce people and Memes all work under the party's command. It lasted about 5 hours. Dross by the end had seemingly won. How I was hoping it'd happen was the Defender would blip Dross out of existence, but instead the players severly weakened him and then Speedrunner Link from the YouTube Channel Terminalmontage shows up and incinerates Dross. The Ddefender shows up just after and is panicked because the Twin Brother that was killed almost came through a rift in time that Dross had made by exsisting. Mi-no-spel-gud so that's where I'll leave you. Confused and kinda hungry.
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Hello There. I am a worldbuilder and proud DM that is creating a huge world called Eldredom. I'm pouring many hours into it and I may make some things later...
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I’m a player who’s rather new, but I love hearing stories of the best sessions people have had. I love the epic ness or the RP from these sessions! Just wanna hear the top sessions you all have!
As a DM this is particularly satisfying - having playing remember and talk about epic moments is a great feeling. The two that stick out in my mind are both from the same session, so that is probably my best session:
I was doing a gothic horror campaign a la Ravenloft, and the players were coming upon the Big Bad's old 'abandoned' family home to do some reconnaissance. I was really dialing the spookiness up to 11, and made sure to ham it up in every detail I could. Apparently it worked better than I thought, because when my doorbell rang (we ordered pizza) I swear one of my players practically jumped out of his skin. THAT was a great moment, both in pride of scene-setting but also player engagement. We still bring that up and bust his chops over it.
The next time, during the same session, the players had uncovered that a Night Hag was manipulating the Big Bad behind the scenes. They tracked down and confronted her, who offered information about the Big Bad's weakness in exchange for some of their own information. It was a crooked deal from the beginning (the players suspected, but didn't quite know the lengths I was prepared to go - she would have literally *taken* the information from them, effectively giving them amnesia in regards to the main plot). She had set the deal in front of one player, who she was propositioning. That player took their time deciding, before, in a flashy moment, tossed the contract to the side and rolled a d20 to attack the hag. Every single player at the table, myself included, physically stood up and leaned in to watch that dice roll. It was a great moment, and again one that we still talk about. The night Talo denied the hag.
I always strive for moments like that in game. They're so much fun for everybody, but especially satisfying as a DM, knowing you had a hand in setting it up/ pushing the players towards that accomplishment.
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
The second and final session in the first ever run of an adventure I'm publishing very soon called the Steepfield Cheese chase. The paladin decided to sacrifice himself to kill the BBEG, jumping off a cliff and falling 300ft onto him whilst smiting. The player rolled a nat 20, and through the combination of excellent rolls, homebrew fall damage rules, and a lot of luck, they managed to oneshot the BBEG, and survive the fall (just!). The other players were extremely happy, as they saw 189 damage rolled in one hit (vs 187hp), and now the town of Steepfield has a fountain made from the huge fondue pot which broke his fall, which has a large dent in the shape of him in it. They had 2hp left, the BBEG had -2. It was an epic moment, and right as we were running out of time for a boss fight, and it's still one of the bests sessions we've had! What's better is that I'm running a sequel now (The Steepfield Cattle Drive) in which the player has brought the paladin back, so there's a lot of tie-ins for it!
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As a player, the best session I ever had was Icewind Dale trout fishing. I’ll spoiler in case anyone’s playing that.
We took the two fishing boats out on the ice, and the DM had us roll to see if we could avoid the ice chunks. I’d volunteered to drive one of the boats, since I thought it would be dex. It turned out to be wis. My boat hit every single ice chunk on the way out. I would roll poorly and the DM would narrate: “Bonk! You hit the ice flow.” By the fourth or fifth time, we were all laughing.
After that, we set up to fish. We thought it would be easy, but then we learned that the fish could pull us out of the boat… thankfully no one fell out, but we came close!
Finally, the goal of our fishing, the sea monster who had been sinking the other fishing boats, arrived. Before we could get ready to fight, our ranger decided to throw a goodberry at him. She rolled a 20 and got it right in front of his nose. He ate it and came up to talk. It turned out he was a sea monster who has been given sentience and told to attack the fishing boats. His name was Walt (water animal, loves trout). Our Cleric did some checks and learned that the spell that had given him sentience didn’t require him to do what the caster said. We persuaded Walt that he didn’t need to hurt the boats, and he became a campaign long NPC.
On the way back, my character hit every ice flow but one.
Only spilt the party if you see something shiny.
Ariendela Sneakerson, Half-elf Rogue (8); Harmony Wolfsbane, Tiefling Bard (10); Agnomally, Gnomish Sorcerer (3); Breeze, Tabaxi Monk (8); Grace, Dragonborn Barbarian (7); DM, Homebrew- The Sequestered Lands/Underwater Explorers; Candlekeep
My best session was running the first session of LMoP with my two teenagers as players last July. It was their first TTRPG experience and we all had a blast.
Among the menagerie of epic-ness that is DND, my favorite session has to be the one where we were in a giant cave surrounded by goblins, and when I say surrounded, I mean like thousands upon thousands of goblins, so I, playing a cleric at the time, chose to do what every other player would do, convince the entire cave that I was a God. So, in my infinite wisdom, I cast sanctuary on myself and told them to send there biggest guy up against me. Turns out their biggest guy was a fire giant that could one shot insta-kill me. If you are not already familiar with the spell sanctuary, the attacker has to make a wis save to determine whether ot not they are able to target you, so, our DM rolled the wis save, and, in a moment of epic-ness, he failed by one. That Is probably the best session I have ever been to.
I uses to be dndlover_2.
I have two favorites. The first was recorded in the 17th episode of my podcast. I'm going to put it in spoilers, but I hope that some of you will listen to the actual episode, this might be the most epic DnD moment I've ever played. https://open.spotify.com/episode/148TyXwxSSmAcTZUAKpJjj?si=pEOALVzvRV68GCXa8XwTow
The party had just slain a displacer beast which I embellished with a lot of imagery. The displacer beast had been hunting the lost daughter of an Archfae. The fae offered them a deal as a reward. He knew of ancient magical pathways that wove through the world, and offered to shorten their trip using one of these portals. He warned them to beware leaving the path within this fae reality, and for a while, they did, though they had a strange encounter with a pack of dire wolves off the path. The wolves spoke with Telepathy, but only my dad's fighter could hear. Later, he saw a mystical archway off the path that none of the others could immediately see. The archway was lined with runes telling of a path to heroism that lay within. Though the cleric argued strongly against leaving the path, the fighter made a decision to enter the archway. He and the party followed this path, accompanied by the same pack of dire wolves. He reached the end of the path, which ended in a moonlit glade with smooth stone tiles beneath their feet. In the middle of this glade, there was a statue of a warrior standing on top of a slain dragon, and the warrior held a majestic sword. The fighter experienced a vision telling him to embrace his destiny as a true champion and wield the sword, which was called Kingsfall. He claimed the blade and then was faced with a trial of combat as he and the party engaged two wolves modeled after the hell hound and winter wolf.
This might be my favorite session ever. I added a lot of music and sound effects to it, and for the first time, I feel like I perfected the sound quality during editing. When I had finished the most dramatic scene, I brought it to my players. When everyone heard it, they were just silent for a second. The music happened to line up perfectly with the scene, it felt like they were meant to go together. The script I wrote myself for the vision sounded amazing along with the music. And my players were nailing it with their role playing. It might have been the most epic DnD experience I'd ever had, except for an earlier one in a home game.
The only other challenger would be the best fight scene of all time. Facing a blue dragon in a desert ruin, the wizard polymorphed our fighter into a giant ape. What followed was basically Kong vs Godzilla, but way better. At the last moment, the fighter was knocked out of ape shape, but they were still able to vanquish the dragon.
I hope that others share their moments, this is the reason we play.
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I have a few favourites:
The Dreamer
Most recently I ran a big boss battle as the culmination of an arc in a campaign I'm running – basically the party is working for a mysterious entity called "the Voice in the Dark" which exists in an endless void with an inky surface (that adheres to nothing) with an eclipse burning in the "sky". They return from a particularly difficult quest to retrieve an item called "the Nullifidian Scroll" but failed to identify it, instead just grabbing everything in the wizard's lab where it should be, including the wizard's assistant Scio Lamarl. Upon arriving in the dark they find the eclipse is missing, and something is bubbling in the "centre" – approaching, it turns red and emerges as the Dreamer, a nameless god they've been hearing about throughout.
Cue a boss music mix from Bloodborne (Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower, Ludwig the Holy Blade, The One Reborn, Cleric Beast, Laurence the First Vicar) and a tough fight for a party of six level 5 players against a CR 15 "god" that intentionally splits its attacks (otherwise it would have downed a player every turn), and it has a tricky mechanic where its legendary actions are constantly trying to advance players towards becoming vulnerable to a dominate person like control ability. Also it's impossible to move out of its range (the assistant is trying but can't get any further away), not to mention a start of turn frightened save.
It's a tough fight as expected, but they fare well, and get it down to 0 hit-points, triggering a second stage as the wizard's assistant starts uncontrollably spouting arcane words, and the Dreamer is now more frantic and vicious but has fewer attacks and legendary actions – as something is happening to it. As the party gets it down to 0 hit-points for the second time, I change the music to Sebastian Böhm's Painted Black cover and describe how the assistant is now walking directly towards the dreamer and disintegrating at the edges like burning paper (Scio Lamarl = I am a Scroll) and the Dreamer is fixated on her. Just before the 30 second mark I describe how the players still don't understand what the assistant is saying… but the Dreamer does.
Music kicks up a notch and I describe how the players can feel the Dreamer's fear as it hurls spells ineffectually at the assistant, and how the party redouble their efforts, describing a surge of power as they throw everything they have at it, finally dealing lasting wounds to its increasingly tangible form. When the music kicks in hard again near the end I describe how they are thrown back as the eclipse flares back to life and a pillar of darkness pours down onto the Dreamer, stripping it away layer by layer until no trace of it, or Scio Lamarl, remains. The Dreamer is dead. The purpose of the Nullifidian Scroll revealed as rendering a god mortal so it can be truly destroyed, as the Voice in the Dark/eclipse claims its divine spark.
It all felt very epic and my players all seemed to enjoy it, I made sure everyone had cools moments in the fight, and even ran it an extra round after one player massively whiffed what would have been their last turn (four natural 1's in a single turn, brutal), so it didn't end on a sour note – the party was rough at this point but I knew another round wouldn't finish them. I don't usually like to narrate too much, but with the music and epic events occurring I think everyone enjoyed it, and the surge of power they felt at the end accompanied them gaining two levels, so it all felt like a great way to end the arc on a high not long before Christmas last year. Since then they've been having some downtime in Baldur's Gate while I set up the pieces for the next arc.
Airship Journey
In an earlier session of the same campaign, while chasing down another item, the party found themselves in a slow airship chase (the airships are relatively fast, but the enemy had a significant lead and the players' airship was only closing the distance slowly). To pass the time I stole an idea I saw in Critical Role, which is to have a drinking game, though I change the format a bit; an NPC they were with (who neglects to mention he can't get drunk) suggests going belowdecks to play a drinking game where each player proposes a question, and everyone has to answer – the idea is to encourage general questions for everyone rather than anything directed at one person, as a question too many can't answer, or a bad answer, results in a drink and increasing drunkenness. This works great, as it gives players an opportunity to just roleplay a lot more than we're used to (normally it's more about roleplaying around mechanics), and everyone got a chance to flesh out their characters.
Suddenly they hear a bell ringing an alarm above decks, and the airship is climbing steeply. They emerge to find the airship enveloped in an unnatural fog that muffles sound, they find the captain at the wheel trying to get the airship above the fog, but she is worried as her husband and son went forward and haven't come back, nor has she seen any other crew. The players investigate, finding signs of crew being torn from the ship, but manage to rescue the captain's son, shortly before the airship is struck hard by… something, knocking out the captain. The players have to seize control of the ship and scramble to put out a fire as well as trying to jump start a failing buoyancy crystal (that reduces the weight of the ship enough for the balloon to carry it effectively). But through a series of unfortunate events (which honestly I nudged towards happening) the airship manages to accidentally catch up to their quarry in the fog in a collision that critically damages both airships, sheering off one buoyancy crystal and fatally damaging another, forcing the ship into a spin.
Cue a custom cut of Iron Fist from the Alice in Borderland soundtrack (I looped the intense sections near the start) and the party has to scramble to both avoid being thrown into the open sky, and to try to find some way – any way – to survive the inevitable crash. They settled on tying themselves the airship's balloon with the thinking that while it's no longer strong enough on its own to keep the airship aloft, it should be strong enough to carry just their weight, and after nearly losing a party member over the side (for which I had a plan) they manage to enact their daring escape, cutting the balloon free with themselves attached and riding it down relatively slowly while the body of the airship is shattered against the ground below. I just really enjoyed this for the fun casual beginning, then sudden intense wind-up to a dramatic escape, and I really do think the intense music made it genuinely scary.
Guest Lecture: Elven History
The first full 5e session I properly DMed, this was a "guest lecture" with me DMing a one-shot within an existing Strixhaven campaign run by my brother, giving him a chance to play within the setting. This was just a lot of fun because it had a bit of everything; being late for class, arriving to a lecture with an extremely sarcastic lecturer picking on them for being late (but actually they got quite a few questions right), and an unsanctioned field trip into the Lorehold Pillar Drop.
Party ended up going into one of several tombs, and being trapped inside. Cue classic (albeit short) linear dungeon crawl to help keep myself from being overwhelmed. Every chamber is a troll chamber, such as an arena with a statue that comes to life trapping one player in a 1v1 duel when all they had to do was go around it to the unlocked exit door, a chamber filling with petrifying gas which turns some of the players into animated statues themselves, a hall of statues that demand to be entertained "or else" but there's actually nothing they can do (a skeleton in the centre could have revealed via speak with dead that they died attempting a back-flip to impress the statues, the statues can't do anything and once again the exit isn't locked). A fun puzzle with a riddle that worked surprisingly well, and they make it to a boss battle against a tragic sort-of-lich who is trying to guard an artefact and ends up being talked down once they are told the campus is now a magical university with many mages who could help secure it – cue the professor arriving with the heavy implication that he knew what was inside all along, but couldn't get in himself due to the lich's protective barrier that blocks certain types of creatures.
It was just a really fun session to run, had a lot to it, puzzles were fun, I had more chambers prepared but was able to drop some to save time and keep it a one-shot. Honestly it was probably the best session I've ever run, as I've struggled with keeping sessions under time ever since. 😂
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I love to play but the best sessions are the ones I've DM'd during my Isle of Dakkar campaign which was a 3.5e campaign on the Isle of Dakkar which was beset by a Lich who created a zombie apocalypse by raising the graveyard. Players got a reflex save against bite attacks but if bitten there was a 50-100% chance depending on the party of them being infected with the zombie virus and turning in 1d4 days into a zombie. Players were unaware of their fate and so it led to some spicy sessions. One session two of the players had to flee a third who transformed in the night during their watch. The players escaped by climbing around the side of a cliff. Then they proceeded to use climbing gear to scale the cliffs. Once far above the horde of zombies their prior companion was now a part of they moved inside a nearby house from the cliffs via a second-floor window. There were two zombies inside, the couple who owned the house, and the Bard held the Ranger's belt lowering him over the edge of the stairs so he could crit both the zombies with their bow. They made camp and they player who died completed their new character. It was fun and the fight between the party was intense.
In another party in the same campaign the party got in a fight with some NPCs hiding from the zombies and lit the warehouse they sought shelter in on fire. They fled to the roof as a horde descended on the burning building and quickly made a grappling hook using an axe, tied it to a rope, and then tossed it over to a building across the way. They tight roped across and just as the last person was coming over the rope broke, and the burning building gave way so from both ends it was falling. The player who already made it across was the Barbarian and full of strength though, so he caught it and hoisted his friend up who was knocked out when they slammed against the wall of the building just above a horde of zombies. The whole session I had a little 15-minute sand timer on the table forcing the players to rush through their turns and feel the intensity of the fire! They loved it and it became one of the sessions they still talk about in that part of the US. I know the way I did it got used by one of the players in the session they DM too.
"Life is Cast by Random Dice"
Burn my candle twice.
I have done my life justice
Against random dice.
My best, most entertaining, session happened decades ago, at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) gaming club. I played in a Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) first edition campaign. This campaign was set in a magical version of the high medieval period in the Kingdom of England. In the kingdom, magic is commonplace. While elves, dwarves, and other good species are accepted in the human population, while becoming trusted advisors to the royal family.
In the spring of the year 1044, King Edward the Confessor, along with most of his adventurers and soldiers focused their attention on his eastern coast; due to raids by Scandinavian pirates and plunders that pillage and then burn every settlement they find.
It was then that outside the city walls of the southwestern seaport city of Plymouth; isolated farmsteads and travelling merchant caravans of mixed bipedal species were attacked and the people disappeared with no trace of where they were taken. A small village of elves, and then a copper mine crewed by several families of dwarves also disappeared.
The latest attack by the unknown enemies was discovered when a wagon caravan carrying tax payments for the royal family was attacked. All the tax money, the tax collectors, the mules that pulled the wagons, along with the guards, three armored knights, and their horses disappeared. This time, King Edward lost more than people, he lost his money.
While enraged by this report about the robbery of his tax collection caravan, King Edward hired our party. One day earlier our party had stopped a dockyard fight between a gang of drunken sailors and a gang of drunken teamsters. King Edward gave us a letter of introduction, two wagons full of supplies such as food, camping gear, and expendable items such as arrows. The wagons were pulled by two mules each and each driven by an experienced (non-player character) teamster who knows how to drive and care for the mules.
Our party’s adventure started the moment we arrived at Plymouth’s eastern gate. We didn’t spend our actual time or our game time travelling on the road between London and Plymouth.
We had a short talk about the abductions with the local lord - Prince David, a younger brother to King Edward. Then, we walked to the city’s market hall where the farmers were selling their produce. We gathered the heads of the farming families to talk about the disappearances of those missing people, what we could do to stop these mysterious abductions, and then return their missing family members.
It was then that our smart aleck bard asked the elderly farmers this question: “My good sirs and ladies, have you seen the giant rats that eat people?”
The elder farmers told our bard that they hadn’t and then asked our bard to describe these rats.
Our bard replied, “These rats stand about three feet tall at the shoulder, wear hard leather helmets and what look like soft leather horse blankets. By the way, these rats speak English with French accents.”
Our bard was so persuasive that most of the famers were panicked, with several farming families packing up their goods and then leaving their farms for cities in the east.
After three days, Prince David’s city guards found us and then brought us to see him. Prince David was furious with our player characters.
“Quit frightening my peasants!” he growled, keeping his attention on us, most of all on our bard. The bard’s player never stopped smiling, loving all the attention that he was getting from the game master, his fellow players, and a few people who were watching us play our campaign.
Then, a week later our game master graduated from UMD. He moved back to Minneapolis soon after that. So, we didn’t get to conclude that D&D adventure. If I were to restart this adventure, I would have the villains who are kidnapping these people be Minotaur adventurers who are infected by lycanthropy and could turn into werewolves.
And now you know the raison d'être or justification why some D&D players look down on bards and the players who play them.
There was one session where the party was investigating the disappearance of a lighthouse from the harbor. During the session several things happened: The tiefling and tabaxi decided to make a hot air balloon using the fire genasi as the fuel source and the tabaxi bought a lot of catnip- you can guess what happened there. Finally, they found that the kua-toa living in the bay had worshipped the lighthouse into being a God (yes, I used that. It was hilarious) and they decided to fight it. The rogue didn't want to fight it so instead rolled 2 nat 20s while trying to convince the lighthouse god to back down.... and ended up getting married to the lighthouse. It was a good laugh and we all congratulated them on their nuptials.
Best Session I've ever had, eh? Well, word of warning ****'s about to get REAL stupid... and long.
First, some context. Angus (as we will call him) and I were Co-DMing (as it was my first time). We created a fairly normal, grounded, medieval style gameworld. And so it stayed until about the end. About 2 months before the final boss fight, I explain to Angus my idea for a book I was planning on writing. Essentially it took place in the OMNIVERSE (group of Ultraverses (group of Multiverses)) and the thing that peaked Angus' interest the most was The Defender of the Omniverse. We then decided to do a one shot revolving around this Defender later that month (no, this isn't my favorite one but is noteworthy). In that time, the players in the main campaign ended up in the Feywild for 48 hours... and every hour is equal to a year. Seeing that the big Bad literally was supposed to be Galactus from the Comics level threat by the end of one in game year, this was bad. And so, we used the previously mentioned One-Shot to flesh out what happened in that time. Angus (his character) ends up going to the big final battle against the Defender's Evil Twin. After the battle, somehow Monkey D. Luffy ends up getting teleported back to the world with Angus. Years of war go by and eventually the players make it back. Dross (the BBEG) Had grown to the size of the 20 D&D Ultraverses (Really big) and breaks through to try and take over the rest.
Now here is my favorite session. Everybody's favorite fictional characters come out and an Omniverse wide crossover battle happens with Good Guys and Bad Guys, Weak Sauce people and Memes all work under the party's command. It lasted about 5 hours. Dross by the end had seemingly won. How I was hoping it'd happen was the Defender would blip Dross out of existence, but instead the players severly weakened him and then Speedrunner Link from the YouTube Channel Terminalmontage shows up and incinerates Dross. The Ddefender shows up just after and is panicked because the Twin Brother that was killed almost came through a rift in time that Dross had made by exsisting. Mi-no-spel-gud so that's where I'll leave you. Confused and kinda hungry.
Hello There. I am a worldbuilder and proud DM that is creating a huge world called Eldredom. I'm pouring many hours into it and I may make some things later...