best retro roleplaying experience

[Marcuz]

No restrictions thread, aside for the retro slant that this forum support, for your memories of great roleplaying experiences!

well, let's add a "no erotic role playing" rule, just for the sake of public health...

Let's the G mods please move this thread if it's in a wrong place, i could not find "retrogaming other" forum!

what's your best pen and paper, or computer, or even live game, moment of pure marvel or of realization, maybe overcoming an obstacle with cunning or just enjoyng a weel rendered ambientation?


for me, as i have not played much pen and paper games, maybe just one season, even if i collected some game books, it was probably the approach to the keep of the evil wizard in the very first Dungeon and Dragons game, the adventure that came with the ruleset.

it was a sunny summer afternoon, in the game as well as in the real weather, and the party was facing its very first adventure! all the world seemed to be a sunny place with evil keeps seeded here and there to be dared!

and there the group of adventureers was trying to sneak in a crackle by the walls to avoid the kobold garrison, just to be assaulted by surprise by a giant worm hiding under a fallen gate, in the very first hole on the terrain they were to encounter!

some was paralyzed, an entire platoon of dog faced humanoids jumped at them with short knives and arrows!

it was too cool!

there started my love for rpgs, and almost incidentally, there born and died the love for rpgs of my friends, who passed the rest of the day grabbing kobolds by the tail, setting them on flame and twirling them around, to make light, as nobody thought to bring torches...

[ppill]

I used to play a few RPGs in my teens. The one that really stood out design wise was a fairly obscure one called "The Whispering Vault". I might even have the rulebook somewhere...

[TCD]

Yay, what a cool thread marco

My best pen & paper role playing sessions (had many of them ) was with a Call of Cthulhu adventure called 'Bruderschaft des Tieres' (Brotherhood of the animal). I don't know if there is a english version.

I was the 'dungeon master' and had four players. The adventure was a campaign consisting of about 7-8 chapters that lead to the grand final confrontation the 'the animal' The plot was just great. Each chapter revealed more of the conspiracy of the brotherhood and it drew the players in a dark sinister world. The players really were playing their roles and solved the puzzles with a very few hints. Like in every good Call of Cthulhu session one of them went insane The final 'battle' could only be won by offering a huge amount of mana to ban the animal in a ritual. I added a kind of epilogue to it in which I described how the broken heroes tried to return to their normal lives, but that they couldn't forget the events.

It took about 10 quite long sessions to play through it and I can't remember another adventure where the atmosphere grew so intense. Okay that was my best retro roleplaying expierence

[Dizzy]

mine started with the Fighting Fantasy series, and books like this. Then when getting an amiga I moved on and played mainly the DM like rpgs, never got much into those more rpg true games.
I also loved playing Dungeonquest (well still do, and Sorcerer's Cave, the)

[Retro-Nerd]

We played mostly Midgard or Earthdawn. On the weekends we met us all at a friend house and ordered Pizzas or other "unhealthy" food first, then we played till dawn.

A lot of fun... i miss the pen & paper RPG sessions.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

We played mostly Midgard or Earthdawn. On the weekends we met us by a friend and ordered Pizzas or other "unhealthy" food first, then we played till the morning.

A lot of fun... i miss the pen & paper RPG sessions.

Both Midgard and Earthdawn are great RPG's Our 'food' were crisps and other snacks in huge amounts I also remember the 'let's make coffee' decisions at 3 o' clock in the morning I miss the sessions too

[Marcuz]

i think i passed some weeks reading through and through the Lords of the Rings adventure games, before even knowing what it was, and writing myself some story that sadly was not ever played!
there were many great adventure books for every different RPG!

like The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (DnD) or Moria (LotR) or Cthulhu' investigators stories... Shadow of the Comet, as a pc rendition of Cthulhu adventures was great!

[Charlie]

Ahhh, roleplaying... paper & funny-shaped dice.

One of my favourite memories (among many) was playing AD&D: The Temple of Elemental Evil...
...there were a bunch of us who'd been playing the same group of characters through a few campaigns. My character was a NE High Elven Illusionist (only 4'7"). His 'best friend' a LG Monk - long storey...
...anyway my monk 'friend' got lucky & accidentally got a wish granted for a HUGE amount of money to be left @ his local monastery - sadly for him he didn't realise & I did...
...so I 'accidentally' got myself killed knowing he'd be duty-bound to carry my corpse back home to get me resurrected @ great personal expense while the others continued the hack 'n slash...
...well, once alive again, sure enough there was the cash in a locked chest in his cell. Monks have crappy thief skills & he also had some magic rings I wanted...
...I checked-out said casket & sure-enough the lock was trapped well beyond his skills, so:

Being his good 'friend' I thanked him for saving me, pointed out the box & assured him he'd have no trouble opening it...
...in the process he lost his fingers which I reanimated with a little spell knowing the wiggling fingers would be looked upon by his order as a form of zombie-type blasphemy.
He was locked-up as a heretic post haste so leaving me in peace to grab the cash at no risk from the already sprung traps, grab his magic rings & make off with the lot!

The great thing was that Mark (who played the monk) was well aware of what I was up to but non-the-less played it straight as his character didn't...
...with every twist of the above plot as I explained to our DM what I was up to; Mark would squirm & exclaim 'You B*stard!' & the DM along with the rest of the players would dissolve yet again into fits of laughter while Mark mourned his lost money, lost rings, lost levels for blaspheming in font of his fellow monks, and lost but wriggly fingers...
...Mark wanted to regain his fingers but he didn't have much left to pick them up with & as they were wriggling about the DM insisted he roll for each attempt, to our collective amusement.

[Marcuz]

what a great story!

[TCD]

@Charlie
Nice one Poor monk btw
I as your DM would have written small notes, so Mark wouldn't know what's going on until a certain point. Will never forget the face when someone found out what all the notes were about

[blade002]

I was never a pen and paper guy for this sort of thing, but the 1st "true" RPG experience i had was Secret Of The Silver Blades on the C64 ( well i used to read the chose your own adventure books before that, but..... ) by SSI, and then i had a love affair with Computer based RPG's after that! Oh and i also made an RPG of sorts, or maybe it was more of an adventure game on the Apple IIe.. It was a North South East West based Text adventure and i called it Medieval Mansion, but i lost the disk years ago

[Charlie]

@TCD:
Ah, yes - notes...
...Our little party had some intersting dynamics. Among the players was our party leader (a CG Cavalier) and our female cleric - a 'girl' in the real world too!
She swapped real-life boyfriends between said Cavalier & the DM while while continuing a stream of dirty notes to her ex...
...all as a bit of a wind-up but once the DM twigged (her new boyfriend) he insisted that all messages were public & we'd 'damn well have to get used to it...'

[TCD]

@Charlie
That's what I call serious problems Now I see why that wasn't used in your group It's great role play when the players don't use the info for their characters. I tried that sometimes, but most of the time it ended in a big mess and I decided that even if the notes system slowed the pace down it was better than to deal with the 'your character doesn't know that' situations

[MazinKaesar]

[WARNING, BAD ENGLISH INSIDE!!!]

Wow... I want to tell you about my pen & paper D&D sessions!!
We usually play D&D 2/3 times per year, as we have very few time, and usually we are just 3: me, the Dungeon Master (as I'm the only one who reads the manuals ) and two friends of mine. We play at high levels, so in the party I have a Lawful Evil vampire fighter/priest of Set/Necromancer and a Neutral elven thief/mage, and my alter-ego is a powerful NPC, a 15000 years old Neutral Lich noble/priest of Math fab Mathonwy/mage (he was Neutral Evil in life, but as he becomes an undead he founds that wars like "good vs evil" and "law vs chaos" are useless, so becomes a crusader of Neutrality).

The main goals of my campaigns usually focus on preserve the balance between god and evil, so characters sometimes have to help an Oder of Paladins to defeat a powerful Demon Lord, and sometimes have to assassinate a "too good & powerful" king.

Very nice adventures we played were...

* the characters are sent to investigate about a strange "magic storm" invisible to mankind, located in a lost island in a far tropical sea. The island is inhabited by a (somehow) friendly tribe of Thri-Kreen, which leads the party to an old ruins complex on a hill. At night, the ruins are infested by specters and appears a passage to another plane, the Dimension of Nightmare. Characters discover the island were once part of a big continent, where humans and Thri-Kreen lived and prospered together in peace. But the human high priest secretly was a follower of Chtulhu and he planned to destroy civilization. So, he sacrificed a young girl after drugged her to kill her during a nightmare, in order to collect enough spiritual energy to become a powerful undead and destroy civilization shattering the continent. He is the source of the magic storm, as he gathering all magic force he can as he want to destroy civilization in all the world. So, the party and some brave Thri-Kreen NPCs have to cross the Dimension of Nightmare, found the captured ghost of the young girl and free her, as she is the source of the power of the evil cleric, then defeat the evil cleric himself.

* the characters discover that and ancient unborn God, Marcus the Atropal, wants to conquer their world so their guild (the Brotherhood of Shadows, composed by thieves, assassins and priests of Set) is forced to make a desperate alliance with a Lawful Good church and the Chaotic Evil cultists of Orcus and find the followers of Marcus, the Seven Witches. Every witch has the power to command undead unbord children and ghost kids, so many battles were really creepy. After the war against Marcus, the cultists of Orcus turned against their weakened allies...
Notes: an Atropal is a powerful undead monster, the fetus of an unborn god.