We've talked about our favorite games, favorite characters, and even our favorite systems over the course of this blog. So today I want to talk about our favorite scenes. As a GM what was the absolute best scene you ran, or at least your favorite.
For me it was a scene I ran while GMing on Five Rings Online. The player for the scene was playing a ronin on musha shugyo who had left his daisho at home and instead brought a bokken (wooden) daisho in place of it. In the scene he ended up in a fight against 3 heavily armored warriors in a market. I ruled that his bokken couldn't do any damage against the heavily armored monsters he was fighting, and the player asked for a detailed description of the market.
What followed was one of the most dynamic fights I've ever ran as the player ran around the market, using whatever he could find as a weapon or to buy him time. At one point he bought himself a round away from one guy by throwing a live chicken into the mempo of one of his assailants. It is going to take a lot for me to top the dynamism and excitement that was in that scene.
How about you? What scene you ran was your favorite?
I used to occasionally run a one on one game because other players couldn't make it. When we did that, we would for the fun of it make a character that was a throw away.
ReplyDeleteI haven't done this scene in a while and I was always amazed that I could repeat it. The character would be on a space station when the section they were on was locked down because of decompression between them and the main part of the station. At first the character would be trying to repair the decompressed area but would soon discover that they weren't alone. They would hear ripping and twisting metal coming from one of the bulkheads. In the setting, there were these massive arachnoid aliens that were the big bad of story. One was the size of a Semi truck and about as strong. Nothing a player could carry would pierce their armor.
The first thought was usually to barricade the bulkhead but it was a futile effort that would only buy a few moments. Next they would try hiding as the beast roamed the halls. Since the aliens are so big, a lot of places afforded a hide out but once the creature located them, it would tear through walls to get to them. Next, they might try and blow it out an air lock but the alien could survive for periods of time in space so it could usually get back in.
I think the key was that I gave the player plenty of time to contemplate the situation and a lot of times the alien would play cat and mouse with the PC. Sometimes just inexplicably letting them go when they were sure they would die and then going after them again. The player's really got the sense that this thing was just amusing itself at their expense.
I'm amazed that the players actually really enjoyed those one off games.