#GOD this got long I'm sorry alkdgsjalksdfa thank you for asking it though!!!

[starshipsandsuperheroes]

Top 5 DnD moments from a campaign you were in?

Ok so this is the most difficult ask to answer because when I sat down to come up with my top 5 I accidentally came up with a list of my Top 46 that I might post later and offer to expand on any story that piques anyone’s interest because lbr all I ever want to do is talk about the incredible stories I feel blessed to be able to tell, because my friends and party members are so fucking talented as actors and as storytellers and are just wonderful people and I -

Anyways

I’l put my top 5 under a cut, and y’all stay tuned if you want more where this came from for the teaser version of what I consider my “best of” list

Ask me my top 5 anything!

This is literally the hardest list in the world but ok in no particular order

1.) The Ship In A Storm

I’ve told this story before on here so I’ll keep it brief, but the moment that truly led me to understand how DND really could be anything was the day wizardsoup had us roll initiative to help handle a ship caught in a storm.  The campaign’s no longer running, but it changed how I play, no word of a lie.  We made skill checks and decided what needed to be done (and the order it needed to be done in), then on the storm’s “turn,” based on what we had done/not done, the action progressed accordingly.  It was creative and flexible and so so cool, and was super formative in my understanding of what you could actually do with DND.

2.) Slightly Damaged Horse Mug

From the Ambiscade campaign, run by my wife of twelve years wizardsoup.  This is a more recent one, and decidedly not a long one, but in raiding a criminal group’s hideaway, ding-dong-diddly-dick’s mullet cowboy bard found the best fucking item ever to come out of an investigation check, the Slightly Damaged Horse Mug.  Does it do anything?  Well it holds liquid.  Is it magic?  No.  Does it have a slightly damaged horse head protruding from it that gives it a certain… je ne sais qui?  Absolutely.

3.) The Eris Arc’s Culmination

The longest campaign I’ve ever played in has run for three years, and we’ll be going into our fourth year come September.  The first arc of the campaign ran for a little over a year with sammygiddings at the helm (where she remains, champion of DM’ing and my heart).  It’s a campaign based and flavored in antiquity, blending Greco-Roman and Egyptian mythological theming primarily with splashes of other mythologies here and there for taste.  I’m so fucking lucky to be a part of it, y’all have no idea.

The arc, for the most part, saw us retrieving items off a list provided to us by an “ally" in an attempt to gain power necessary to locate and rescue the gods from whatever had been slowly taking them and hiding them away.  Eventually, we learned that the angel worked for Eris, the manifestation of chaos older than almost everything in the world, whom we had previously identified as the antagonist of this campaign.  Unfortunately, everything we did in our attempt to stop her played straight into her hands.  We led her to Heh, her counterpart, in an attempt to get his help - which is what she had wanted all along.  Almost like it was nothing had our two demigods get kidnapped alongside the one we had gone to find so we could warn him, since it turned out that list was actually meant to more give the universe a hard reset, and the secret ingredient was three demigods.  

The session where everything broke down, the party (save for my and one other PC) travelled to the Shadowfell to free the gods, while the demigods tried to frenetically figure out how to not get used for Bad Ending Soup.  The party was on top of their fucking game, freeing the gods so they could return to their domains.  We managed not to get made into Soup, but it was primarily because Heh was looking out for us - when Eris moved to strike after a particularly moronic “What are you gonna do, kill me?” on my part, he leapt out and engaged her in battle.

It was a fucking treat to watch.  They fought each other like it was the best thing that had happened to them in hundreds of thousands of years, and sammygiddings played the parts incredibly.  There was a rip open to Tartarus, which would imprison either of them were they to fall.  Eventually, Heh caught her in a hug, whispered to her a moment, and tipped the both of them down the pit.  The utter silence that the room was filled with will never leave me.  I just remember shaking, looking around the rest of the room in disbelief, and the utter silence followed by the quiet murmuring that started up as we processed that it had really worked.

Also, after something like that, reuniting with your party Hits Different.

4.) Snow in Giza

This is a moment from during the Eris arc when the Gods Getting Taken thing started to go in a very serious direction.  Our paladin suddenly lost access to his powers, and, knowing what that might mean, we rushed to Giza (his home city and the location of the temple of Horus, his father) to see what was going on.  He jumped off the boat and sprinted through the city, my character hot on his tail to make sure he didn’t run into trouble alone.  

We made it to the temple and pushed past the perimeter the Temple of Mat (basically the police) had set up to find the ceiling cracked, the statue fallen, and the clerics in disbelief.  What really sticks out in my mind, though, was when we left the temple.  The paladin and I were the only two PCs from Egypt - which made it all the more impactful when we stepped just out the doorway and sammygiddings, in an artful moment of setting a terrifying tone, described the small, white, cold flakes that had begun to fall from the sky.  It was snowing in Giza.

It wasn’t a huge moment, technically?  But for whatever reason, every time I think through that experience, I lose my entire mind because it’s so vibrant.

5.) The Popcorn Fight

I debated for a while which experience from the Lakewood Campaign (a wild west, anti-capitalist, anarchist, and overall delightful campaign) I was gonna put on this list.  I almost put our Astral Plane Adventure, but I could dedicate an entire post to that, so I picked something a little more succinct from literally two sessions ago - the popcorn fight.

The characters in this campaign have taken a long time to get to what most parties fall into easily.  There’s been, for a long time, a lack of trust, a lot of secrets, and conflicting motivations between characters that made it hard to settle into a comfortable rhythm, mostly as a PC but even to some extent as a player.  The story was thrilling, the characters were electric, but the conflict made it difficult for them to connect.  

Recently, that’s started to shift a lot.  Our characters trust each other, even if they won’t say it.  Dare I even speak it, they like each other, and they care for each other.  I could have told you this was the direction everything was going without this moment, but the popcorn fight solidified it.  Having retrieved an NPC party member from a deal gone wrong (long story) with the help of a guest player, the main party returned to where we’ve been staying, and immediately our snack devolved into a full-out food fight.  Said NPC party member was hanging by the door, and had almost decided to go out again, when she realized what was happening inside and came in to join us in battle.

It was lighthearted and fun, something rare to find in this campaign.  More than that, it was a sign and manifestation of something shifting in the party’s dynamic that was really fulfilling.

Ok sorry for the ASS long answer and I’ll probably post the abbreviated list of my favorite moments with the offer to elaborate on any of them for anyone interested in a bit lakjsdfa ty for the amazing question and excuse to ramble about how creative and talented my friends are