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Treasure Tables is dedicated to game masters, offering GMing advice and ideas since 2005. I'm Martin Ralya, and I've been GMing since 1989 and writing for the RPG industry since 2004.
Treasure Tables is on hiatus as of December 13th, 2007 -- after two years of daily posts, I needed a break. If you're looking for GMing material, I have two recommendations: the hundreds of posts in TT's archives, and my new project, the multi-author GMing blog Gnome Stew. Happy GMing! -- Martin
What Was Your Strangest GMing Experience?
Sat. April 21, 2007
Positive, negative or just plain weird, what was your strangest, most unusual experience as a GM?
What made it so odd, and what happened afterwards?
TT is in moving mode from 4/19 to 4/25. There’ll be a new post every day (as always), but I won’t be able to respond to comments or email until we’re settled in at the new place. See you in a few days!
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5 Responses to “What Was Your Strangest GMing Experience?”
It would have to be while DMing the D&D 2nd Edition Mark of Amber adventure for Mystara. I was much younger and running the adventure off the cuff without having read it and while also playing in it. My brother was the only other PC. The funny part was when some of our havoc around the mansion came to fruition right in front of our eyes. The Werewolf rampaging about in one particular encounter busts out into the hallway. We’re far too many levels too low for this beast and about to role for initiative. Reading the description as I go, I notice the werewolf’s rampage is triggered by a potion of madness slipped into its food. “Huh…” says I. “The same potion of maddness we coincidently mixed with the adjacent vial while in the man’s secret chambers without knowing the contents of either?” Well, that other potion was poison. Shocked as we were, yet another encounter went under out belts overcome by sheer dumb luck as the werewolf dropped dead in front of us.
If you know of it, the additional ending to the adventure with the beam of sunlight coming down on the real hero was just perfect given that our characters escapaded through the whole quest in the above fashion, starting at level 1 and masquerading as wealthy noblemen the entire time.
My strangest GM experience was running the danish free-form scenario “Arken”. Players start out playing different gods in a very psychadelic setting. The players are struggling with another power called “Stralen”. They are forced to retreat from their realm and suddenly end up in a long hallway that ends in a big round window. Through the window the players are looking at a parlor in a mental hopsital, soon realizing that they are not gods, but all part of a person with multiple personalities.
From now on the players (who of course are very different personalities) will have to get the body of “Thomas” moving around the mental hospital. They then realize that they still have to fight against “Stralen” who in fact is the shrink of our patient and the shrink is trying to destroy the personalities of the players, beside one who is the “old” Thomas, before his mental issues.
There are numerous sub-plots in this game and extremely much humour as well. The write rof the scenario was in a mental hospital himself at the time he wrote the game and the NPC´s are exremely well done (based on real personas).
We played the game where the players are sitting on a round carpet, not allowed to move outside. The GM is walking around the carpet in circles to simulate the multiple personalities trapped inside a sich brain and everything else is outside.
This game was strange - very strange and fun.
Its found here for those who speak danish:
http://rlyeh.trc.dk/pub/scenarier/scenarie.php3?id=11
I’ve posted about it before, but a “fight club” tournament with a barbarian I ran (Fergon), and a Red Wizard (his hated enemies). It was like the dice were in character - Fergon shook off a Hideous Laughter spell, charged, full power-attacked, and then critted!
Same die, a bit later on… One of the players’ wife talked in her sleep the night before, saying “beware the blue dice”. My dice were blue, and I rolled an amazing series of 1s (three 2-in-a-rows, one 3-in-a-row), and nothing above a 17 all night, ending up in a near-TPK.
…”law of averages”, my ass…
My strangest GMing experience happened a long time ago. Another GM and I regularly swapped GMing duties for our little group, and we had a group of superheroes that we’d play as PCs or NPCs, depending on which side of the screen we sat on. We also played a lot of one-on-one gaming, as we lived around the block from each other in our teenage, pre-driver’s license days.
One session, I was running a one-on-one adventure with him. I had an NPC trying to sneak past his PC. Without realizing it, we’d switched places. I was describing my actions like I was a player, and he was determining chances of success. This went on for a few minutes until we both burst out laughing that we’d switched sides without skipping a beat.
Walt
This makes me wish I’d had more odd GMing experiences.
Heck, I might have to say any odd ones — I’ve been wracking my brain for oddball war stories, and I just can’t think of any. Ah well — at least I get to read yours!