GM accomplishments!

[Hunterwolf]

As GM's we can screw up and fail but there are those rare times where you complete a session and really like how it turns out. This thread can be considered the other side of the same coin of the GM horror stories thread. Here we can discuss sessions/adventures we hosted that just came out so well that it puts a smile on our face and we think, "Man that was awesome!". For me I have two particular adventures that went this way.

Now one unfortunate thing is that when you have a good session you don't really want to give too much detail away because you may want to run it again! However, I will attempt to be reasonably discrete.

The first one is a one-shot (but lasted two full sessions) and it was called, "Changeling of Heart". I was pretty proud of the name but that's not important. The story itself was inspired by an episode in Star Trek: the Next Generation and even featured an element from Stargate: Atlantis. If the title wasn't obvious enough the session was the first one where I played with changelings and it turned out well! For the most part, the party did what I wanted and there were only a couple things to go wrong throughout the adventure. One mistake that I made though is that I named a character after a popular Star Trek personality and it kinda made the plot obvious. All things considered, it went quite well and introduced a character that was for the most part well received and who knows? My campaign is ongoing so I might just bring the said character back some time!

My second one involved me playing with a type of creature that I love in the fantasy genre...dragons! The idea itself was inspired by a piece of concept art for Friendship is Magic that was drew by Lauren Faust herself. In the picture it played with the idea of, "What if a dragon could look pretty and not so scary?". Obviously Hasbro didn't run with this idea at the time but I did. The session involved me leading the party to find this dragon I was introducing. It went well and I'm satisfied with the results. I especially liked doing this because I fought some "absolutes" that are common within entertainment. Like, I hate it when a show or movie will depict Aliens or Dragons as evil just because they are Aliens or Dragons(by the way yes, Dragonheart is one of my favorite movies). It never made sense to me since even Humans can be good and evil so why isn't it the same way with other intelligent beings? Anyway, I liked adding my own dragon head canon to the campaign and I guess my co-GM did too because they ran with it as well!

So what about you guys? Have any awesome stories to share?

[Toboe LoneWolf]

Apr 25, 2013 19:55:11 GMT -8 Hunterwolf said:

Anyway, I liked adding my own dragon head canon to the campaign and I guess my co-GM did too because they ran with it as well!

If there's one thing I like to do, it's taking an idea and running with it. And then sticking anything and everything on top of it. >D

Expansion of ideas (even the most wild or silly) is something I enjoy, and I have a lot of fun incorporating various references into my arcs. I try to tie in something related to at least one character's skillset or backstory in each arc; some have succeeded better than others. Like the part where I blew my players minds. Twice.

[Hunterwolf]

Apr 26, 2013 19:56:24 GMT -8 Toboe LoneWolf said:

Like the part where I blew my players minds. Twice.

:takealetter:Can you do that?! Can you blow up someones mind twice?

Answer: Yes. (I was there.)

:prognosisnegative:Oh dear...

(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

[Equestrian Wyvern]

Hmm... Well in general my accomplishments tend to be double edged swords.

First off is in my absolute train wreck of a campaign Enigma of Eternity, I managed to create my best NPC to date a Griffin by the name of Vulture. Initially the character was intended to be a short term Guide for the party on a voyage through the desert to the ruins of a temple, who had a minor grudge against the chief antagonist. However at roughly the same time, the players had brought to my attention that my general presentation of the antagonist was not consistent between slightly evil-neutral and unquestionably evil. Seeing the opportunity to very clearly define what sort of character the antagonist was, I severely overhauled Vulture from her basic concept to being the one character who had more reason to hate the antagonist than the players did, having fallen victim to the monster that was the antagonist decades before the campaign only to decide to get revenge by beating the antagonist at his own game (archaeology) and humiliating him in the process. Unfortunately I was not able to keep up with the potential of the character and really dropped the ball with actually using her frequently in action wasting a character that my players had come to love.

Other than that the only real accomplishment I can think of off hand is finally coming up with campaign concept by the name of An Hour of Darkness that I am actually willing to try after the train wreck of EoE, which unfortunately came at the price of a great deal of annoying friends with terrible ideas and attempts to come up with something that I could see potential in.

[Toboe LoneWolf]

ooooh, I forgot to mention the time I presented my players with... A MAP.



This was very early into the campaign, and up to that we had never used a map at all, even in combat. In our group, we don't bother with roll20 or extra stuff with that; just a GoogleDocs character sheet spreadsheet. In prep for the session, which I knew would have combat, I tried to think of a way to incorporate a map since pace was going to be a large factor in this battle. run, run my minions

Then I had the brilliant idea (well, to me), to configure the GoogleDocs spreadsheet to look like a map, changing the height/width of all the spreadsheet cells to be squares. And thus, the first iteration of what is now the "Combat Tracker" was born.

You have no idea how much I was giggling when I made the map. No idea