"I shoot the escape pod!!!"

[Great Beyond]

The thread title comes from the opening of Star Wars, if the "Hold your fire. There are no life forms aboard, it must have short circuited" guy on the star destroyer went "yeah, go ahead and get some target practice" and suddenly the 6 movie saga ends up being a half hour film.

So last weekend, I was taking Champions out for a spin, doing my postponed Halloween game (on Christmas - very festive) where on a parallel world, a nanite accident sparked off a zombie plague that destroyed the world and the handful of survivors were coming over to the game world as a last resort.

So we do some futzing around character building stuff before the swirly dimensional vortex shows up in downtown and survivors start coming over. As these things tend to do, everything goes wrong and the zombie hordes start tearing up the other side of the portal, and will soon boil over into the game world side of things.

My intent, of course, was for the players to get over to the Zombieworld side of the portal and flip the big Off switch. The rest of the game would be them wandering around zombieworld, trying to find a cure and getting home JUST in time to stop the spread of the zombies on Gameworld.

My plans went off the rails when the Super Genius of the group went "I fire up my EMP Generator and dispel the portal."

"What?"

"The portal's technology based right? My dispel works on technology. I shut down the portal."

"Bu - bu - bu -" I stammer as she rolled, and rolled REALLY well. Something like 85-90 point of Make Technology Go Away. I'm desperately looking at the book, trying to throw in every adder I could think of, but even after all that, I'd still need to add in about 50 points of MacGuffin to keep the portal functioning.

Yeah, I could have just railroaded them with an arbitrary "Nope, it didn’t work", but I hate doing that. If there's no free will, then whats the point of playing, even if it scuppers my game. And so two nights of gaming collapsed out from under me in about half an hour.

Anyway, I was wondering if you guys had any exceptionally juicy "No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy" stories. You know, make me feel better.

[input.jack]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

So, my friends and I are playing in a 1930's Pulp Adventures game. The GM is running the scenario based on a graphic novel, which he is using as a reference. The plot involves a group of air pirates in a sea plane who stop the luxury liner the PCs are on, rob everyone, and then torpedo the ship from their sea plane.

 

However, after the pirates had robbed us, when they were getting into their sea plane to make their escape, one of the PCs noticed that their plane had torpedoes mounted on it, and she didnt think they were going to just fly off and let so many witnesses live.

 

So, the character, who was originally described as a "femme fatale" type, grabs a length of cable from the ship, and tries to lasso the tail of the sea plane to prevent it from taking off.

 

The GM says "Youll have to roll really well to snag the plane. Like, youd need a critical hit to even have a chance."

 

The femme fatale rolls....and crits.

 

"Never tell me the odds."

 

The sea-plane is snagged and cant take off. The GM looks at the -graphic novel- he is running from and cant figure out what would happen next. What should the pirates do? How can he get the plot back on track after this?

 

His solution?

 

He crashed the game.

 

So, even though you had a long term plot fall apart under you, at least you were running your own scenario, and didnt scrap the entire campaign as a result!

[Dust Raven]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

Oh definitely I have such stories. Although in yours, couldn't you have just said the EMP couldn't affect the portal generator because it was on another dimension, and then simply gave some massive to-hit penalties? After all, the generator need not be right next to the portal on the other end...

 

I've had long term scenarios planed out which start with the major villain being seen on site of the first crime but get away a the heroes defeat his henchmen, only to have them ignore the henchmen and capture the villain right off the bat. This are real fun to recover from, and I usually end up doing the kung fu cop out of the "my older brother will avenge me" plot device.

 

 

I've had others where a play that too smart for my own good actually makes a real life deduction roll far too early in the adventure and ends up spoiling much of the surprise and suspense I had planned.

 

What's sometimes worse is when the players completely skip over the obvious clues and plod along oblivious, thinking they are making progress while things are actually getting worse. Two examples of this was a giant monster which adapts to fight its enemies and is effectively unbeatable, accept it doesn't like high pitched noises. They players never caught on when it would suddenly break off from the fight to stomp on parked cars which had their alarms set off, and alternately swatted at or ran from the team's only member with sonic attacks. Another was in my last scenario involving Pulsar in which he further mutated and developed the ability to unconsciously duplicate himself after taking a large amount of physical trauma (basically, taking a point of BODY or more, or getting Stunned). The it took the group to the point where there were literally hundreds of Pulsars running amok in the city before the realized they should stop hitting them...

 

Then again, I can understand that impulse concerning Pulsar, so I blamed myself and never used him again.

[Kenn]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

I've helped do it to someone else.

 

We had a recently new addition to our gaming group and he was convinced he was the world's greatest. I was going to say "world's greatest Champions player" but he thought he was the greatest at most things. He convinced our GM to let him play the BadGuy, because he thought he could build a character who could beat several other characters. I was playing a captain America pastiche called Sentinel. Another friend was playing a size-and-density changer (think Hank Pym AND the Vision) called Mass Master. There were a few more players, but they aren't a part of the story.

 

Infinity, the BadGuy, had captured the mayor and was holding him hostage on the third floor of City Hall. This was still the GM's plot, so it starts with the conuundrum of how to get to Infinity without getting the mayor killed. To this day I don't know if Doug (GM) or Jeff (Infinity) had any clear idea of how were suppossed to get to "the fight scene".

 

Eric, Mass Master's player had an idea. Sentinel's main ranged power is a thrown concave shield (invariably with the concave part facing down). Mass Master shrinks. What if Mass Master shrunk down and held onto the straps on the inside? I was game. We ran it past Doug (in another room so Jeff couldn't hear). He said go for it.

 

Sentinel got Infinity's attention, and threw the shield through the window at him. Of course, Infinity easily avoided the shield.

 

Infinity missed his perception check to notice Mass Master drop out of the shield.

 

Mass Master got big. Real big. Doug let him have the growth momentum bonuses, on top of his full strength. I don't remember (it was 17 years ago) if Eric/MM haymakered or not. He may have pushed.

 

I remember Infinity did get some shots off (autofire RKA) and through the STUN lotto, Mass Master was knocked out, but not until after he one punched Mr. I-can-beat-anybody.

 

It was beautiful.

 

Thankfully, Doug had part 2 already planned out. So we just kept going. Annoyingly, Infinity apparently escaped police custody and accepted his next assignment in about half an hour.

[Great Beyond]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

Oh definitely I have such stories. Although in yours' date=' couldn't you have just said the EMP couldn't affect the portal generator because it was on another dimension, and then simply gave some massive to-hit penalties? After all, the generator need not be right next to the portal on the other end...[/quote']

 

Yeah, welll after the fact I was able to armchair quarterback a couple of excuses that would have kept things going at the time. Unfortunatly at the moment it happened, I had complete brain lock for some reason or another. Ah well, good rolls and brain farts have undone better men than I. . . .

[lemming]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

I derailed a couple things. One was with a critical hit in the beginning of combat killing the mage that was going to be the big bad for us in a fantasy hero game. The GM killed my character off hand for revenge.

 

The other was a champions game, we all wrote up characters for a dark future game and for our first assignment, my character got the instructions and I mixed up target with who we were supposed to protect...

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

Yeah' date=' welll after the fact I was able to armchair quarterback a couple of excuses that would have kept things going at the time. Unfortunatly at the moment it happened, I had complete brain lock for some reason or another. Ah well, good rolls and brain farts have undone better men than I. . . .[/quote']

 

Difficult to Dispel and/or Unbreakable Focus are your friends when building plot related macguffins. Just don't do it to everything, and if your gadgeteer disapproves you can always point out to him that EMP's are pretty wicked easy to shield against, and a lot of the more "serious" applications of tech these days include EMP hardened electronics.

[Dust Raven]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

Yeah' date=' welll after the fact I was able to armchair quarterback a couple of excuses that would have kept things going at the time. Unfortunatly at the moment it happened, I had complete brain lock for some reason or another. Ah well, good rolls and brain farts have undone better men than I. . . .[/quote']

 

Another thing occurred to me. This is my secret GM weapon, so unless you're a GM, STOP READING THIS POST!! (yeah, that'll stop 'em).

 

Play along. Yep, you knew it was gonna be an easy job to stop the portal thingy. No prob. Congratulate the player's ingenuity and even have some important bystandard cheer them for their success. Essentially, make them think it was too easy and put them on edge. That way, when you come up with an alternate plot device (maybe the portal machine regenerated, or was only temporarily shut down, or there were other survivors who manage to jury rig it back open but are killed in the process). Just the fact it opens again should convince the team they have to go through "just to make sure".

 

I love playing along with my players when they do something that screws up my plans. They usually think of something more exciting anyway and all I have to do is smile and pretend I had their idea planned all along.

[Enforcer84]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

I derailed a couple things. One was with a critical hit in the beginning of combat killing the mage that was going to be the big bad for us in a fantasy hero game. The GM killed my character off hand for revenge.

 

The other was a champions game, we all wrote up characters for a dark future game and for our first assignment, my character got the instructions and I mixed up target with who we were supposed to protect...

[Enforcer84]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

This is a brief tale of two parts.

 

"This is why we roll the dice!"

In 2005, I went to GenCon and got to partake in Oddhat's New Circle game where I, as Legend, his Superman pastiche, in the "final battle" did a pushed movethrough and knocked out the master villain on phase 12.

 

 

"GM's learn too."

In 2006, I partook in Oddhat's Second New Circle game. When we got to the "final Battle", I, as Legend, did a pushed movethrough on the Master Villain.

I knocked myself out of the battle.

 

I hope he runs a New Circle game this year, wherein, I as Legend, will not try to push my way through plot and climactic battles with a pushed Movethrough.

 

[NestorDRod]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

Hmmm, I do recall one time in Susano's original Kazei 5 game, where we were supposed to face off against some bad-a$$ rogue boomer.

 

My character unlimbers his autocannon and fires a three-shot burst. I roll to hit and get a three. Max damage, all three hits.

 

The boomer folds faster than Superman doing his laundry, and the GM has his planned combat shut down in a Phase.

 

Then there's the infamous scene in the recent Shadows Angelus campaign where, in the middle of tense negotiations with the City Coordinator, Susano goes over his notes, adds two and two, gets five, and figures out the whole plot we were supposed to spend the rest of the evening uncovering. A priceless "oh s**t" moment.

[NestorDRod]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

This is a brief tale of two parts.

 

"This is why we roll the dice!"

In 2005, I went to GenCon and got to partake in Oddhat's New Circle game where I, as Legend, his Superman pastiche, in the "final battle" did a pushed movethrough and knocked out the master villain on phase 12.

 

 

"GM's learn too."

In 2006, I partook in Oddhat's Second New Circle game. When we got to the "final Battle", I, as Legend, did a pushed movethrough on the Master Villain.

I knocked myself out of the battle.

 

I hope he runs a New Circle game this year, wherein, I as Legend, will not try to push my way through plot and climactic battles with a pushed Movethrough.

 

 

 

By Jove, he can be taught!

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

This happens far too often in the Campaigns I play. So I have adapted. Nothing so crass as Clones or Bad Dreams, but disguised thugs, false flags, and of coarse the unseen hostage. Any Master Villain must have multiple contingency plans, backup plans, and decoys.

 

The Suppress works, but the shielded back up Generators come back online a few seconds later.

 

There is a delay between when the portal collapses and when the equipment fails.

 

Being a GM mean thinking on your feet, improvising, and not falling into the me vs them mentality.

 

 

Your there to have fun with your friends. Remember that and enjoy.

 

QM

[SCUBA Hero]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

The thread title comes from the opening of Star Wars' date=' if the "Hold your fire. There are no life forms aboard, it must have short circuited" guy on the star destroyer went "yeah, go ahead and get some target practice" and suddenly the 6 movie saga ends up being a half hour film.[/size']

On the question of players totally zapping a planned plotline, I can't directly answer, as it hasn't happened to me on that level yet. I think that if it does, my response would be, "Well, that's why we roll dice!" and go on with it. On smaller derails, I generally congratulate the player (if the derail is done by cleverness, rather than lucky dice-rolling) - AFTER the session is over. Scrambling to determine what the villains would do in such an unplanned situation is something I enjoy.

 

******************************

 

On the Star Wars thing, the whole plot is on rails throughout the entire six movies - "It's the only way" et multiple cetera. One example - if on Tatooine needing to fix the hyperdrive, Qui Gon Jinn simply Jedi Mind-Tricked some random person into thinking that Republic credits were good and had that person buy the hyperdrive from Wattoo, there wouldn't have been a need for the "Hold your fire" line!

 

******************************

 

I rather enjoy the players coming up with things I didn't plan for. One example - a mercenary group attacked the PCs; they fought off the attack, and the mercenary sargeant took off running. The stealthy PC took off after him, and managed to pickpocket his sword and dagger, then yelled, "Surrender!"

 

The sargeant turned and reached for his sword - not there. Then reached for his dagger - not there. The PC then displayed both weapons.

 

His morale broken, the sargeant said, "Okay."

 

The party ended up hiring him and the survivors of the unit - and paid the two severely injured members of handsomely. The unit served the PCs with high morale. Totally unexpected, and great roleplaying!

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

I derailed a couple things. One was with a critical hit in the beginning of combat killing the mage that was going to be the big bad for us in a fantasy hero game. The GM killed my character off hand for revenge.

MY FH players did the same thing to me during a big city court intrigue masked mystery man assassin game I was running. First encounter with the masked assassin, noble in disguise, who was the big bad for the story arc, a meeting encounter in the street intended as a brief exchange of blows and insults followed by a hasty retreat. Good thing too because this guy should'a been able to abso-fricken-luetly SLAUGHTER the party in stand up fight, something this encounter was intended to hint at.

First exchange of blows the swashbuckling duelist type manages, by the skin of his teeth, to block the assassin's shot. His riposte is a 3. To the head. Using max damage critical rules. With an Offensive Strike.

 

So I, rather stunned, call for a smoke break.

Now, how to rewrite the plot with kebob boy no longer in charge?

 

This happens far too often in the Campaigns I play. So I have adapted. Nothing so crass as Clones or Bad Dreams, but disguised thugs, false flags, and of coarse the unseen hostage. Any Master Villain must have multiple contingency plans, backup plans, and decoys.

 

The Suppress works, but the shielded back up Generators come back online a few seconds later.

 

There is a delay between when the portal collapses and when the equipment fails.

 

Being a Gm mean thinking on your feet, improvising, and not falling into the me vs them mentality.

 

 

Your there to have fun with your friends. Remember that and enjoy.

 

QM

 

Thinking on ones feet is always the best bet, but it still doesn't prevent the occasional "may we have a moment of silence for this poor stillborn plot" moment

[Drhoz]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

So I, rather stunned, call for a smoke break.

Now, how to rewrite the plot with kebob boy no longer in charge?

 

*clutching his eye, the assassin staggers sideways, and falls into the canal*

 

*tomorrow, one of the town nobles is mysteriously sporting an eyepatch*

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

*clutching his eye, the assassin staggers sideways, and falls into the canal*

 

*tomorrow, one of the town nobles is mysteriously sporting an eyepatch*

 

I toyed with the idea, I did, but the dice had been out in the open, and to steal a turn of phrase, he wasn't only merely dead, but most truly and sincerely dead.

 

 

Didn't stop the cult from bringing him back as a revenant a couple of sessions later, but the game went much darker from that point, as I brought up the deeper plot to fill the gap. It went from Dumas to Poe, so to speak.

[lemming]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

Thinking on ones feet is always the best bet, but it still doesn't prevent the occasional "may we have a moment of silence for this poor stillborn plot" moment

I like that.

 

Most of my problems haven't been so much with those moments, but I tend to throw red herrings out that become more important to the players than the plot.

[Cygnia]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

So, after years of me running 7th Sea for him, our friend Chris wants to GM a game of it. He's doing a great job. We've got a dramatic chase with the baddies' carriage going on when suddenly bandits ambush both the bad guys and us, so we're dealing with the classic temporary Villain-Hero team-up.

 

My fellow party members seem to be handling rather well when Chris asks me what I'm doing.

 

Me: Oh, I'm cutting the horses free from the carriage.

GM: You're WHAT?!

Me: Let's face it...everyone else is all distracted. What's a more ideal time that the bad guy abandoning his mooks and making his getaway?

GM: *grumbles*

 

Fortunately, Chris was a quick learner and did the Brotherhood of Evil GMs proud. True, that was his initial plan, but his main baddy hopped on a free horse and managed to make his getaway. And I, unfortunately, didn't have the Ride skill. So we had our planned climactic showdown in the about to erupt magical volcano after all...

[Captain Obvious]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

The thread title comes from the opening of Star Wars' date=' if the "Hold your fire. There are no life forms aboard, it must have short circuited" guy on the star destroyer went "yeah, go ahead and get some target practice" and suddenly the 6 movie saga ends up being a half hour film.[/size']

So last weekend, I was taking Champions out for a spin, doing my postponed Halloween game (on Christmas - very festive) where on a parallel world, a nanite accident sparked off a zombie plague that destroyed the world and the handful of survivors were coming over to the game world as a last resort.

So we do some futzing around character building stuff before the swirly dimensional vortex shows up in downtown and survivors start coming over. As these things tend to do, everything goes wrong and the zombie hordes start tearing up the other side of the portal, and will soon boil over into the game world side of things.

My intent, of course, was for the players to get over to the Zombieworld side of the portal and flip the big Off switch. The rest of the game would be them wandering around zombieworld, trying to find a cure and getting home JUST in time to stop the spread of the zombies on Gameworld.

My plans went off the rails when the Super Genius of the group went "I fire up my EMP Generator and dispel the portal."

"What?"

"The portal's technology based right? My dispel works on technology. I shut down the portal."

"Bu - bu - bu -" I stammer as she rolled, and rolled REALLY well. Something like 85-90 point of Make Technology Go Away. I'm desperately looking at the book, trying to throw in every adder I could think of, but even after all that, I'd still need to add in about 50 points of MacGuffin to keep the portal functioning.

Yeah, I could have just railroaded them with an arbitrary "Nope, it didn’t work", but I hate doing that. If there's no free will, then whats the point of playing, even if it scuppers my game. And so two nights of gaming collapsed out from under me in about half an hour.

Anyway, I was wondering if you guys had any exceptionally juicy "No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy" stories. You know, make me feel better.

 

Not a "no battle plan" story, but a way for this plan to survive.

 

So some zombies got through and somehow evaded the characters' immediate attention. They spread their plague throughout the homeless and severely drug-addicted members of society, where it wasn't immediately apparent what was going on, especially with the incubation phase. Now a real plague is set up to go off in the game world, and super-gadgeteer is now going to have to trace the source world, open a portal, and follow your original adventure to put a stop to it.

 

Now, to be fair to the player for his quick thinking, the government is in a better position to take steps against this plague, and the population getting hit worst in the first phases of this epidemic aren't exactly jet-setters, so the spread is largely contained for now. But the possibly uninfected residents of the inner city are now being quarantined with the zombies (for safety's sake) and police and National Guardsmen enforcing the quarantine are slowly losing their numbers to the plague, and recruiting is way down because of it. There's no time to waste.

 

EDIT: And ease back into this plotline. Let them hear some weird rumors at first. Then have one of them on routine patrol stop a crack-head who turns out to be a zombie. Let a couple of them break up a riot later with several undead participants, and several formerly living rioters getting back up for another go-round. And when they figure out that the source was that portal they shut down, let the super-genius realize what a vicious hell she averted by her quick thinking, even as she realizes she'll have to find that dimension again.

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

This happened early in my GM-ing career, so that's my only excuse for not thinking faster on my feet.

 

Years ago I was starting a new Champions campaign, but wanted the PCs to start as UNTIL agents that get their powers a few sessions in. The players were all aware of this, as well as the fact that their characters weren't mutants, so powers weren't going to just pop up during play.

 

Their first assignment was as nursemaids for some diplomats at a high-society function held at a millionaire's mansion/estate. The PCs had pistols but no major weapons or body armor.

 

The millionaire planned to kidnap everybody, gassing them and dumping them on a disabled ship at sea (slowly sinking, naturally) while he and his minions went forward with his true plan. The PCs would of course figure out a way to keep the ship from sinking, get everybody to shore, figure out the plot, and stop the bad guy. At least, that's what I thought would happen.

 

So when the millionaire's security guards came into the ballroom with SMGs drawn (but not firing), blocked all exits, and told everybody to put hands up, I figured the PCs would initially play along, at least until the odds were *slightly* better.

 

Nonetheless, one player insisted on fighting it out immediately. I pointed out he was surrounded, vastly outnumbered, and horribly outgunned, but he didn't care. I also pointed out that there were a *lot* of innocents around, including the diplomats he was charged with protecting, and that bullets that miss him don't just disappear into thin air. Didn't matter. "I won't surrender. No way. I dive through the nearest window." And the other players decided to back him up, so they all drew weapons and opened fire.

 

What I *should* have done is said, "your funeral" and have the guards open fire on the PCs and innocents alike. What I *did* was run a battle where the bad guys made every mistake under the sun, just so the PCs wouldn't get killed in the first #!*#$! session. I needn't have bothered; that was the only session for that game.

[The Monster]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

I'm pretty flexible with my plotlines, so there's rarely a major crash. However, something like that happens to me fairly regularly:

-- At a convention game, I had a time-traveling villain recruiting the warriors of the prehistorical dinosaur culture (of *course* there were intelligent, civilized dinosaurs. Why do you ask?) to invade their future earth and destroy the humans who were going to supplant them. Anyway, the heros had a good fight with him and the dinos, figured out that he had duped the dinos, and stopped his plot. They were having a hard time taking him down, however, until one of them used his big Drain PRE. Now, I'd designed the guy to be pretty tough. But I searched the character sheet and realized I had built absolutely no Power Defense. So, his PRE went to subzero, and the subsequent PRE Attack caused him, literally, to pass out from terror.

 

--In another con game, I had drawn up in loving detail a bunch of mechs for the heroes to fight. One of the heroes had machine-control powers, which I figured would be a problem, but not a session-killer. After a few rounds of action, the player asked, "do they have ejection seats?" My heart stopped as I realized that, in fact, they did - I had designed the things in loving detail, down to exactly how much STR the ejection seats had. And, just to make matters worse, they were fighting in a cave, where the pilots - who ejected straight up - would also be slammed into the ceiling. The look on my face must have been precious. The fight didn't last too long after that.

[AlHazred]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

I like it when my players come up with plans that weren't anticipated. It makes for an interesting story. I also don't like modules which straight-jacket me into running a linear set of encounters, for precisely that reason.

 

Anyway, I had a couple of players and no game, so I ran a short RuneQuest III campaign. It started with the two players generating basic 15-year-old characters. They got no previous experience, just native talent. I then had their village invaded by a group of raiders; my intention was to get them sold into slavery, then do the rest of Previous Experience with them as gladiators in the arena.

 

That was the plan.

 

What ended up happening was, the kids snuck to the raiders' camp. One of the two kids distracted the guards, the other one set free some of the villagers. The main force of villagers then proceeded to subvert the raiders' plans, take over one of the ships, and chase the raiders away. In the course of the battle, each of the kids killed one or two raiders, criticalled two significant skill rolls (IIRC, a combat roll and Stealth roll for each), and otherwise caught a ride on a most extreme lucky streak.

 

I ran that for about eight or ten sessions total, before we all decided they would go on with their boring, normal lives. It was still a powerful lesson to me not to get too attached to any plot.

[Sundog]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

In a D&D game I was in recently, something similar occurred.

 

I was playing a Cleric. For those who don't know, Clerics, being holy men, have certain power against the undead. I had boosted this by taking the Domain of Sun - which meant that if the undead creature wasn't too powerful, I could call on the power of the Sun once per day to destroy the undead I faced rather than merely forcing them to flee.

 

Our GM was using a premade adventure, where our job was to retrieve a nasty evil sword that a Vampire had stolen from the Royal Armoury. Because we were a little underpowered for the adventure as written, the GM decided he'd ALSO stolen a holy weapon - the idea being we could grab this away from him and use it against him in the climactic battle.

 

The problem was, until that happened this Holy weapon was a drain on the Vampire's abilities.

 

Our group caught up with the Vampire's carriagejust before nightfall. There was a running battle, which we were barely winning, and the Vampire chose to make his getaway - he summoned up a swarm of thousands of bats, assumed Bat form himself, and flew away - one of thousands, and we didn't have any area affect spells.

 

So, annoyed, I summon up the powers of the Sovereign Host (my character's gods), draw upon the power of the Sun, and max my turning roll.

 

If it wasn't for the Holy item, I couldn't have affected him, he was too powerful. But with it -

 

POOF. A moment later the Evil Sword is falling to the earth yelling "BASTARDS!" in a cloud of Vamp dust.

 

Our GM played it straight. End of adventure, in chapter two of a seven chapter module.

[Nevenall]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

As a player I once prematurely ended a campaign by not investigating why the sun was rising in the west and setting in the east.