After playing for so long singling one memorable moment for RPG a Day 2024 is impossible. Moment to moment there were so many that I am sad to know how many I forgot about. But I’ll restrict myself to stuff that has an easy and short setup.
Band of Blades
Our Band of Blades campaign started just before the COVID-19 hit. We tried to transition to online, but it didn’t work for the group. Then good two years later we picked it up again, and these are some of the memorable moments from the campaign.
Burn Villages, Start Rumors
The first primary mission I ran was set in a small no-name village. At one point a fire starts, and thanks to mediocre rolls it escalates and the whole village is engulfed in flames. Somewhere during the exfiltration a pair of legionaries are stuck behind some cover – an Orite viscountess Aurora and another one I forgot. Only she made it out. And from that encounter, by accident, we would see most of the villages burn, and to the end of the campaign everyone suspected viscountess Aurora selling out her companion to survive.
War Stories
Our spymaster couldn’t fit our scheduling after we resumed the face to face sessions. We agreed to bring in a new player and an in fiction new spymaster. As we sat down we tried remembering what happened before. Notes we took sounded like random actual plays someone else played. And then someone said “Remember when we blamed viscountess Aurora for the death of that other guy? When we burned the village?”. Then you could hear someone asking “Which village? We burned a lot of villages.”. Laughter ensued and then we opened up. In one of the most glorious and interesting moments of gaming – for the next two hours tales were recounted like we were in a veteran’s reunion. And the new spymaster just sat there like a fresh, knows nothing, innocent recruit.
The Deserter
Out Bartan sniper was with us from the setup mission. A true veteran, often played in the primary missions, he made it to Skydagger keep. He got assigned to stop the main force Skydagger mission. And during the recon they are in turn intercepted by a small force led by a off the box lieutenant that has been haunting them for a while now – a Zemyati with dressed all in red. The situation resolves and she goes her own way. The sniper breaks off his team, follows her, and a tense tracking scene later has her in his sights. A bullet goes off, he sees red mist and a dead body, and walks away from this war.
White Noise
White Noise is a (GURPS) investigation scenario made by a local GM. Below will contain spoilers.
The year is 1985. Series of inexplicable suicides have disturbed the carefree and easygoing everyday life of the town of Dana, Massachusetts. What at first seemed to be a mere coincidence has now brought a hefty amount of attention to Dana Town Police Department, who have even gone far enough to hire out additional specialists to help the police crack this mysterious case. If this is merely coincidental, the public has nothing to worry about. However, the captain of the Police Department has a hunch the police is dealing with something far more serious than a suicide wave.
All of us play bespoke pregen characters, and my guy is the old tough guy detective. His wife is one of the victims, he has a daughter, and a nasty reputation in the criminal milieu. The finale we chase the monster into its hideout in non-Euclidean space. We run around and finally we are face to face with it. Now, of all the characters my guy has the highest stakes – his daughter is going to be the next victim. We are sitting at the dimly lit table, GM waiting for someone to speak up. We look at each other, I have no idea what to do but I know, I know, I can’t just beat it up. The silence is deafening. I remember the helpless feeling that my detective would surely have, and I decide this is it, this is the moment that breaks down his armor because there is literally nothing else he can do. Words start coming out of my mouth, telling the thing how humanity is more than what it experienced, the good the bad, the human. At the middle I bleed pushing my daughter on a swing, a few other moments fall in, and I choke up and swell up. I stop and the table is silent.
The GM says “You almost made me cry.“.