Your best surprise to players

[Aaryq]

Howdy, folks.
As a GM what was your best surprise that your players received?
Mine was in a PFRPG2E campaign. They had sidestepped my pre-concieved my scenario and just felt like doing some dungeon crawling. I always have 2 or 3 dungeons on hand in case of these things and had some old sage (Potion-Maker/Scholar homebrew OCC) have them retrieve a component for a potion he was working on. These guys have proven over years of gaming that they LOVE head shots. In my games, the head and neck have a seperate SDC/HP (and of course more difficult to hit). This particular batch of characters had, as a whole, had a high PP and weapons with a decent bonus to strike (no cheating involved, trust me). Having recently received Land of the Damned 2, Eternal Torment, I found the Lassacre...if you don't know, look up Page 86 and you'll see them. They have no brain and are therefore exempt from my head shot rule. For a house rule to challenge the players, if they are decapitated or lose the ability to see, I instantly have them go into a full-blown rage (+10 damage to their blind swinging for x melee). Since they also have a natural AR, that means they have tough skin. As a part of my house rule on head shots, decapitation is a lot more dificult if you have a natural AR. This means that these bad mo-fo's can hear and smell their every move.

You should've seen them trying to stop these guys. They kept attempting to fully decapitate them. Then they tried to remove curse, turn dead, and other spells. After one of the Paladins in the party went into a coma, one of them tried logic and made a successful lore check (I think he used Demon/Monster Lore) of 01% (critical success in my book) to remember an old man telling him about it at a party long ago.

What's your best surprise on PC's?

[Mouser13]

Not forsure if my best but only one I can remember right now. In PFRPG the groups long bow men got disarmed from his bow and the fighter in the jump for it and jump off the waterfall for the bow.

[The Beast]

I told my players I lost the antidote.

[CCollison]

I had a group "help" a metally challenged Mega Hero (I.Q. 5, P.S. 65, P.E. 35, HP 58, SDC 155/220, AR 16, Powers: Living Iron Juggernaut "Mutant Underground", Supernatural PS, Bio-Armor, Extraordianry PE and Healing Factor) by handing him over to a group that aids mistreated mutants and experiments.

The bad news is that the players didn't do any real research and found out that they just gave this easliy controlled wrecking machine to a already powerful bad guy. They where not very happen with themselves or me after they discovered the mistake.

[Killer Cyborg]

Howdy, folks.
As a GM what was your best surprise that your players received?

Mechanical straps popping out of their chairs to keep them at the gaming table as long as I want.

What's your best surprise on PC's?

They ran into a Master Vampire down in Mexico who was seemingly unkillable. Wood and silver seemed to annoy him, but couldn't drop him. Same with running water.
Crosses kept him at bay, but not very well.

Eventually they launched every missile they had at him and seemingly atomized him.

Eventually, I let them in on the secret:
He was just a HU-style mutant who thought he was a vampire, and who used his powers to mimic vampire abilities.
They really DID atomize him, although the fact they never found a body caused them some concern.

[Vrykolas2k]

After two months of gaming, it was time to stop for awhile, so... I had them all wake up in padded cells, all of their adventures were delusions.

[Syndicate]

One of my players literally stuffed a nuke down the throat of a baddie and killed himself in the process to save the group. Moments later, the creature emerged from the crater quickly regenerating and really ticked off.

[The Beast]

Howdy, folks.
As a GM what was your best surprise that your players received?
Mine was in a PFRPG2E campaign. They had sidestepped my pre-concieved my scenario and just felt like doing some dungeon crawling. I always have 2 or 3 dungeons on hand in case of these things and had some old sage (Potion-Maker/Scholar homebrew OCC) have them retrieve a component for a potion he was working on. These guys have proven over years of gaming that they LOVE head shots. In my games, the head and neck have a seperate SDC/HP (and of course more difficult to hit). This particular batch of characters had, as a whole, had a high PP and weapons with a decent bonus to strike (no cheating involved, trust me). Having recently received Land of the Damned 2, Eternal Torment, I found the Lassacre...if you don't know, look up Page 86 and you'll see them. They have no brain and are therefore exempt from my head shot rule. For a house rule to challenge the players, if they are decapitated or lose the ability to see, I instantly have them go into a full-blown rage (+10 damage to their blind swinging for x melee). Since they also have a natural AR, that means they have tough skin. As a part of my house rule on head shots, decapitation is a lot more dificult if you have a natural AR. This means that these bad mo-fo's can hear and smell their every move.

You should've seen them trying to stop these guys. They kept attempting to fully decapitate them. Then they tried to remove curse, turn dead, and other spells. After one of the Paladins in the party went into a coma, one of them tried logic and made a successful lore check (I think he used Demon/Monster Lore) of 01% (critical success in my book) to remember an old man telling him about it at a party long ago.

What's your best surprise on PC's?

Wait a sec... Did you want us to answer the blue question or the green one? (My answer was to the blue one)

[Iczer]

After Chasing 'Gorgon' A female villain (HU2) responsible for the hijacking of a school bus, the PC's infiltrate her lair, to find dozens of glass statues looking like little kids.

The PC's spent the entire fight trying to avoid her 'Glass vision' and trying not to smash any of the kids.

Fun Fact: 'Gorgon' Can animate and mold glass. Her Abberant alignment meant that the kids were unharmed (though were being 're-educated') but the PC's lived in fear of carelessly smashing little jimmy. Especially when the glass statues fought back.


In an unrelated HU2 Game, a PC group discover that not only that their benefactor is a woman, but is from the future, and that the young girl the PC's have adopted is her younger self.

In a hybrid robotech/splicers/after the bomb/ systems failure game, the PC;'s find out that the evil forces plotting the downfall of their hive....is their own bio-combat armour.

In another HU2 game, a discarded and retired PC ends up being a master villain (that will teach them for retiring the guy)

The PC's...in a completely different game, meet their evil duplicates. Not such a stretch in HU I understand, but one of the PC's was actively and secretly working against them, hile plotting with a local crime lord. The PC in question went through inordinate lengths to keep his copy from spilling the Beans. (For the record..the PC directed all efforts at his double, even to the point of carrying him out of the fight. after defeating his evil twin he Unloaded his service pistol into his face, sawed his head off and threw it into a nearby A/C Duct and then set the body on fire. He then waited over a minute to make sure he wasn't regenerating before returning to the fight.)

An extended fantasy game wrapped up after 2 years, whereupon the characters were informed that the whole world was just a computer system. Thier killing goblins, orcs and dragons equated to them being an antivirus system within that system. I had hinted to this effect throughout the game, naming nasty monsters and even the major enemy, after viruses and spyware on my own computer (they did spend a lot of time fighting the 'Trojan' army)
The next game was in a different system altogether, but the PC's were their software identities transfererd into robot shells.

In a one shot over the christmas break a few years back, PC's awoke as clone soldiers in an elaborate prison. after a daring prison break they emerged outside, to find that the prison complex was only about 75 feet on a side....and they were to scale, a full 6 inches tall. (After all...if you are going to test clones, you may be able to save resources if you build them on a micro scale.) The game resumed next year over break, when the PC's insisted that they keep going...trying to find some sort of peace.

Batts

[Iczer]

After Chasing 'Gorgon' A female villain (HU2) responsible for the hijacking of a school bus, the PC's infiltrate her lair, to find dozens of glass statues looking like little kids.

The PC's spent the entire fight trying to avoid her 'Glass vision' and trying not to smash any of the kids.

Fun Fact: 'Gorgon' Can animate and mold glass. Her Abberant alignment meant that the kids were unharmed (though were being 're-educated') but the PC's lived in fear of carelessly smashing little jimmy. Especially when the glass statues fought back.


In an unrelated HU2 Game, a PC group discover that not only that their benefactor is a woman, but is from the future, and that the young girl the PC's have adopted is her younger self.

In a hybrid robotech/splicers/after the bomb/ systems failure game, the PC;'s find out that the evil forces plotting the downfall of their hive....is their own bio-combat armour.

In another HU2 game, a discarded and retired PC ends up being a master villain (that will teach them for retiring the guy)

The PC's...in a completely different game, meet their evil duplicates. Not such a stretch in HU I understand, but one of the PC's was actively and secretly working against them, hile plotting with a local crime lord. The PC in question went through inordinate lengths to keep his copy from spilling the Beans. (For the record..the PC directed all efforts at his double, even to the point of carrying him out of the fight. after defeating his evil twin he Unloaded his service pistol into his face, sawed his head off and threw it into a nearby A/C Duct and then set the body on fire. He then waited over a minute to make sure he wasn't regenerating before returning to the fight.)

An extended fantasy game wrapped up after 2 years, whereupon the characters were informed that the whole world was just a computer system. Thier killing goblins, orcs and dragons equated to them being an antivirus system within that system. I had hinted to this effect throughout the game, naming nasty monsters and even the major enemy, after viruses and spyware on my own computer (they did spend a lot of time fighting the 'Trojan' army)
The next game was in a different system altogether, but the PC's were their software identities transfererd into robot shells.

In a one shot over the christmas break a few years back, PC's awoke as clone soldiers in an elaborate prison. after a daring prison break they emerged outside, to find that the prison complex was only about 75 feet on a side....and they were to scale, a full 6 inches tall. (After all...if you are going to test clones, you may be able to save resources if you build them on a micro scale.) The game resumed next year over break, when the PC's insisted that they keep going...trying to find some sort of peace.

Batts

[tobefrnk]

Back in the original Robotech RPG, I was running the players through a Macross era campaign (all playing Veritech pilots). I had put them through a number of chapters and one day I told them that we were going to take a little break and play as the enemy for a day. I had them create Zentraedi characters and true to form (like we all want to do) they tried to enhance their new characters as best they could. The game was simple. They were to guard and then defend a small Zentraedi storage station from an RDF boarding party. They fought well but eventually the station was taken by the RDF. During this whole time, I am taking very detailed notes. They didn't seem to notice. Everyone had fun taking a break from their normal characters but all were anxious to meet again in a month to return to the original campaign.

The month passes and the players are eager to start the new session, back to using their RDF pilots. They learn that their mission is to infiltrate and capture a small Zentraedi storage station. At this point, some of them have a look on their face that just starts to give me a little joy. Eventually they all figure it out. This is the same station that they (as Zentraedi) tried to defend last month and that the Zentraedi and situations they were now facing as RDF pilots were the very same ones that they helped to create last game session. Some of them regretting now making the Zentraedi so tough and taking out a number of RDF Mecha.

It was a blast for everyone and while the two sessions didn't match perfectly, it was fun to really test the limits of "Player Knowledge vs. Character Knowledge". I'm a big fan of the seeing more than one perspective of a single story and this really was cool. Shame it's the kind of thing you can only do once with any surprise.

[Balabanto]

I run a number of different systems, including a very long running Forgotten Realms game.

In one of the gaming groups in that world, the characters are slaves in the nation of Thay. So their evil wizard master tells them that they have to go find out what happened to this group of slavers that disappeared while enslaving people.

They headed into the jungle, only to be attacked by a group of headhunters. The headhunters turned out to be fake, and were slavers themselves. Suddenly, the players realized what had happened. The slavers had run into another group of slavers from another land halfway across the world, and they now must rescue some of the very people who hold them prisoner!

To make matters worse, one of the players suggested "Hey! We could take these guys alive, take them back to Thay, and trade our freedom for these guys!"

[Warwolf]

There have been several, as the many curses my players have thrown my direction make evident. One of the best involved a player creating a S.C.R.E.T. superbeing for a character and then being tasked to infiltrate the player group (an unsanctioned vigilante group) and assess their intentions and possible threat level. When group members started being blamed for various crimes, the S.C.R.E.T. infiltrator was tasked with bringing them in. The looks on their faces when the ambush sprang and she put a sword to one of their backs was priceless.

[Damian Magecraft]

Mine occurred during Character Generation...
I had a Group of 9 players (who managed to cover all the player stereotypes) I gave them Carte Blanche for Character creation (told them I would say yes to any thing with in reason and that I considered an adult dragon with in reason). They went wild (within their stereotypes that is).
The Reall Role player made his idea of the perfect character, the Rules Lawyer made a book legal powerhouse, the munchkin made his "almost-a-god-every-class-is-my-OCC" character, etc...
then when all characters were complete...
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.
.
.
.
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.
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I made them trade Character Sheets...
the look on their faces was priceless...