Ok, so what was you single best moment (scene, part of a scene, line) RPGing since B-day 2005.  And I mean single best...if you wanna list more than one start your own damn thread.

Mine was our most recent game of PTA.  I won't go into details except to say it was basically Alice (you know, the Diner with Mel and Flo) set in space ("Last Food for 50,000,000 miles this exit") called "Eat at Joe's"  Every episode started with a space semi pulling into the orbiting truck stop and running over the gumby-esque gas station attendent while the theme from 2001 as played on a kazoo ran in the background.

Embedded in this zany absurd sitcom (destined to be canceled after 1/2 a season) was some poignant moments. 

My character was Deputy Harvey Piccolo...part Barney Fife and Part Enis from The Dukes of Hazzard.  My issue was gaining respect of those around me (being the perrenial bully target) and getting taken seriously as a cop.  The previous episode I had finally stood up to an old bully from school and won the affection of my old flame from said bully. 

THIS episode was my spot light episode.  I would finally face down my nemeses: Officer Johnson and Special Officer Johnson (no relation), a couple of space cycle riding State Troopers that had run rough shod over me for years.  The episode involved protecting one of my friends from their unjust attentions I was ready...I looked 'em in the eye and told them in no uncertain terms they'd better get out of my jurisdiction if they knew what was good for 'em.

...and I failed...sput...poor Harvey...he'd become something of the show's mascott...and his world had just come crashing down.  In the midst of what had been several sessions of some of the funniest roleplaying I'd done since Toon Paranoia (genuinely funny...as in "we'd have laughed if it had been on tv") was a moment of tragedy so pure it left me speechless.

Keith Senkowski and Nathan Paoletta playing Mortal Coil at Dreamation. Keith is playing Mithra, God of Soldiers, and Nathan is playing Coyote, Trickster God. They got into a fistfight earlier in the session, but the final scene ended up with Mithra shooting Coyote in the shoulder, and as he goes down, Keith is holding up his "gun" gangsta-style, shouting "Who's the God of War now, bitch!" at Nathan.

In the midst of what had been several sessions of some of the funniest roleplaying I'd done since Toon Paranoia (genuinely funny...as in "we'd have laughed if it had been on tv") was a moment of tragedy so pure it left me speechless.

When we returned, Na’ir was emerging from the Mistake, bloody and broken but still clutching the hilt of his father’s sword.  Nonetheless, he knew what he had to do.  He staggered to the remnant and entered it.  The city was full of wailing and crying as the Wail exacted its vengeance.  He groped his way to the top of the Starsinger tower, which is the tallest tower in the remnant.  Grasping the hilt of his father’s sword, he plunged it into the floor.  Then he lifted his face to the sky and called out a name.

And the stars began to fall.  And with them, they brought healing and life.

In response, the Mistake belched up a demon horde which poured from its maw, hurtling towards the remnant.  Na’ir drew forth his father’s sword, which was reforged in ice, and personally led the defense of the remnant.  He rallied the defenders, including Heka, and forced the demon horde back from the remnant.  Then, in a scene reminiscent of Return of the King, cavalry from another remnant arrived and charged.  The demon horde was scattered.  A falling star obliterated the Wail.  The remnant was saved.

And then, as Na’ir turned from the battle, a stray arrow pierced his heart.  He fell, and he died.

No one remembered him and his noble leadership.  No songs were ever sung of his sacrifice.  Indeed, he was blamed by the people for raising the Mistake against the remnant.  He was accounted a traitor to the people, and his name was dust on the winds of time, forgotten by all.

Except for us.

So. Our PTA game Kin had its third session this week. It's about  protagonists discovering they shared an upbringing in some kind of sinister 'alternative community' and trying to deal with what this does them as people. The troika who began it all are Anna and Rosie, sisters adopted together, and Toren, an average nebbish who would rather be left alone (issue: Living a normal life). I as the producer had been worried that characters weren't joined up enough, that the past was currently too shadowy, and that the episodes weren't playing to their issues. Meaning I wasn't doing my job right!

This episode was Anna's spotlight (Issue: Control/success). It began  around her hospital bed, with Toren looking pensive. Cutting back, the co-survivor they make clumsy contact with angrily calls Toren an 'Altar Boy', making Anna suspicious. Meanwhile, Rosie (Issue: identity) visits the old disused orphanage they all went to post-'liberation', and finds tiny graves in the back courtyard: someone narrates in a tiny grave marked with the sister's surname - an unknown, infant sister.

The highlight was the spotlight scene that followed. It was a dream memory of the cult with the children being punished for frivolity by the Altar Boys, the  privileged few who served as the arms of the leader. Anna stood up for herself and  little Rosie, frustrating Toren, assigned to catch her, but being helpless in the face of adult power. The finisher was when Torens player coolly offered: 'they don't just punish the kids. They punish the whole family. That's why the little baby never made it.' Bang. Shivers. Collective punishment - The Fasting - for all, including an unweaned child.

Before this, I had some worries about driving the game. Now  Toren's wish for normalcy acquires a desperate edge as he denies his youthful part in the darkness. Where's it going to take him? For Anna, dealing with the cult is the only way to regain the control she's struggling for. And Rosie, the little one, faced with the knowledge that she shouldn't be that, really, and has her ally in their mission to 'thank' for that. Now everything is wrong. Just like it should be!

For me it'd have to be game III of the Roach at MACE, with an all-star lineup of indie luminaries desperate to out-narrativize each other.  In the first Scene of the first Event, Remi (playing some kind of crazed 1919 rabbi) elects to be Roach-bound, chooses me (A burly Italian chemist) as his target, and draws "MURUB:  Copulate with this person, so let it be"  And it is so on.

I plead with my fellow players to cast their lot with me in the conflict, but I get no love - no love, that is, from anybody but Remi's character, who storms into my guy's office and takes him by force on a lab bench as everybody fucking cheers.  If I recall correctly they all sided against me, eager to get in on a sure thing. 

First scene of the game, and it kinda set the tone. 

There were a few, and most involved Remi, Jason, and a few others. Crap, trying to pick one.

I'll slip this in: Mark Causey is the only white man I've ever seen who can roleplay (speak) Gangsta For Real (Jason L Blair ain't got shit on Mark). And on top of that, he can also do "White Boy Imitating Wannabe Gangsta", too, which is a real feat to do consciously.

It was standing on a chair in front of 30 or so people, who had just been drafted in to play werewolves, and explaining the combat rules to them before they attacked the LARPers. And then watching them attack (roaring and clawing the whole time) and all die. Wonderful.

Graham

Heya,

Ok, so what was you single best moment (scene, part of a scene, line) RPGing since B-day 2005.

Hare and Hound at Dreamation 05. One long favorite moment.

Oh, and beating Thor on an all-grab at Jungle Speed. A feat that will go down in history, methinks.

Tail end of last year, at a Cthulhu LARP

Its a twisted vision of the 1940s, a scenario from the pulp book, I believe. Now, this is originally supposed to have roughly even sides of PC "heroes" and PC "villains". That angle kicked ass. The thing that made it so was the fact that only myself and one other player on the hero side, both cops, showed up. The villains had a full regiment...outmanned, to say the least.

After the first scene where we pick up some clues, we find ourselves travelling to the coroner's office to examine a body. The cult leader has shown up to try and claim, giving us his name and face. Ten minutes later, the Keeper steps into the room and utters the fateful line, "So where, exactly, are you guys?" Cue a beautiful 20 minute fight as a wave of cultist suicide bombers bust in the door. Bullets fly, allies go down, and in the end we escaped being killed horribly in the explosion by but a few steps. At this point, we decided that it was officially "on."

Meanwhile, the villains had been playing an entirely different game than us. Theirs was a bit like Vampire: The Tentacle-ing, with various powerplays had, and favors parlayed back and forth. The cultist attack had been one such piece of fallout. So what do we do? We go McCarthy on them...we get the cult leader hauled in on spurious charges, and I -the dirty cop- get ready to end his life with a needle full of heroin. Moments before we do the deed, the cult's lawyer shows up, springing the bloke. I jab him stealthily, and dose him with the full needle. He just gets up and walks away.

Several scenes later, the Keepers are preparing for the last sequence, and one of them takes me and the other cop PC aside and informs us that he is worried that we don't have enough, or any, information. We then spill everything we had figured out so far. After I got to see the scenario later, I discovered that we really had discovered everything except for one element, and that was attached to a character we had never even met. The look on the Keeper's face was wonderful.

How did it end? Well, our vendetta against the leader ended with him taking a .357 round to the chest and a boot to the head, while my fellow PC perished at my hands when I was driven mad by the appearance of a byakhee. I ate him. I recovered my senses but moments before Hastur the Unspeakable descended on Earth.

TPK. Total Planet Kill.

It was a great night...

Looking forward to Cthulhu LARP once more,
Eric

Running the second and third games (ever) of Badass Space Marines at a convention, and everyone having a great time.

The best gaming moment of this last year is really hard to pick out.  The one that stands out in my mind right now is during the Bliss Stage playtest in Oakland.

It's an interlude scene for my friend Ion's sulky, introverted kid pilot.  Chris's older, kinder anchor shows up to talk with him.

"It doesn't matter," he says, "we're all going to die."

Chris makes this amazing speech that I really can't replicate here, about how it does matter, because we matter to each other, and if you'll help us we can pull through.

I look across the table to see my friend Kate, who's burnt out on gaming for like 5 years, holding her hands over her heart and *grinning*

yrs--
--Ben

Nathan wrote:
Hare and Hound at Dreamation 05. One long favorite moment.

H A R D  to pick just one. But if I have to, it'd be this one:

We're at my house, it's HolmCon. I plop down in a chair at the same table with my good friends Ole Peder and Magnus, and a girl I've just got to know called Barb. Ole Peder goes: "Does anyone want to try my impressionistic game inspired by this Bob Dylan album?" And I'm thinking, oh God, someone's heard an album, fucking Dylan and stuff. But okay.

And it's just this great thing where we try out a lot of tiny techniques in a flowing, non-narrative way. There's some plot along the way, but that's beside the point; it's an experience of being there. At one point, I - an old man - am lying in a hammock. Different scents are drifting in from the beach. With each scent there's an association. Strangely, now I can't remember who said what: who came up with the scents, who defined the association, what I said - or whether I said anything.

It's also great to play with people you don't really know - just testing out the waters, where are the other person's limits? what does he/she seem to like, what's going to come out of their heads?

As a role-player, one of several experiences that have re-opened my eyes to role-playing as a "being there" experience, not only a "telling cool stories" experience.

For me it was the Cthulhu final at Origins which started tabletop and turned into a LARP. It was so chock full of good moments it hard to pick out one so I'll go for three:
- another inmate trying to prove that a door existed and running full tilt into a solid wall;
- three GMs standing on a single chair waving their arms about and being a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath;
- at the end of the game I read an invocation backwards to unsummon Yog-sothoth. Someone had to die to save the world and given I was suicidal at that point, I decided it should be me. At the culmination of the ritual I passed the knife to the woman on my left and asked her to hold it firmly in front of her. I then threw myself on it. The look on her face was priceless.

For me it was during our first try of The Pool. In the middle of a dull session we started a discussion about why the game was not working for us. There was like a bright light-flash in my mind. Then, we begun to realize how to really exploit The Pool mechanics, and the revelation was also linked to many other games and situations. After that we had one of the best collaborative roleplaying sessions I remember.

Arturo

I'd have to say (off the top of my head) that the best moment was at GenCon 2005 at the Capes game run after hours at the Embassy Suites.  We had been playing for several rounds and there was this young lady there with her father that was having a really hard time coming out of her shell.  Tony was his normally exhuberant self and encouraging her but she was really struggling with the complete freedom of narration, afraid she was going to "get it wrong."  Whatever that means in Capes. 

Then about the 3rd Page, she (playing the villain, The Iron Brain) fights for and wins the Conflict, Goal: Who is the best hero?  Now you have to understand that I was playing Major Victory and Tony was playing Hyperion (I think) and there were others playing heroes that really wanted to outdo each other.  We were fighting pretty hard to win that Conflict but she snagged it away from us while we were distracted by something else.  I was surprised.  The girl looked around nervously for a second and then narrated, "After considering the problem from a multitude of angles and applying complex mathematical formulas and algorithms, The Iron Brain determines that the best hero... is a dead hero."  We all just died laughing and then it just seemed to *click* for her.  It was like a switch had been flipped in her brain.  She suddenly had no problems at all narrating and gone was the shy kid who was constantly second guessing herself.  She fought hard for Conflicts and narrated the hell out of them from that point on. 

It was awesome.

A Shadowrun game I run had this little scene. 

The architect behind a bid to overthrow the Danish Monarchy and have his son take over as the new regent, Olaf Mortag, watches his son be foiled, lose his mind, threaten two of the royal family's children, and be cut down.  He's watching this in the Parliament Chamber with a full Cabinet witnessing the same event. 

He reaches into his wheelchair pocket, an old man who's lost his son, and tries to pull out a cyanide capsule.  The Shadowrunner player stops him. 

"You've won.  You've killed my son.  Give an old man some dignity."

"No.  You're going to live, Olaf."

An awesome moment of player cruelty. 

We were playing our D&D3.5 Dragon's Talons campaign.  We're 7th or 8th level as a white dragon descends-- it's the advance scout for the enemy.  We had been fleeing the invading army, short handed... but there was no way to flee once it spotted us.  So we drew up and prepared to fight, expecting to die.

My lightly armed & HPed fighter/rogue was attempting to flank the dragon with our tank fighter.  The dragon got in a few blows that sent Kogor reeling and stunned him.  Our sorceror got a lucky spell penetration roll and a summoned beast distracted the dragon for a moment.  We went through a few mobility rounds, until Kogor finally took his life in his hands, stepped up and dealt all the damage he could... and it wasn't quite enough.  Finally, our priest, who's spent six levels just summoning and curing steps up and deals the last points of damage, killing the thing... barely averting several deaths.  The commaraderie from that victory was very sweet.

Oh man, these past six months have been like one, extended 'Single Best Gaming Moment' for me. It's super-gratifying to see that my play has been entertaining for others as well as myself. I gotta give huge props to Eric Provost for running an excellent round of The Mountain Witch at MACE in High Point, NC. It was my first Forge-style game, and it blew away every other gaming experience I'd had up to that point, and, under Eric's guiding hand, got me comfortable enough with stakes and scene setting that it set me up for an entire weekend of fantastic gaming. That Mountain Witch game was the turning point, and I'll have to wait another year until I can distill a great gaming moment beyond just saying, "The last six months."

You know, that's fabulous.

We can have a great moment like Scotts side by side with a great moment like Remi's and even though they're in completely opposite directions, its all good.

Ralph

Despite all the indie gaming I did over the course of last year, most of it quite decent, I find myself thinking that the single best moment was probably a game of almost-freeform Unknown Armies at NordCon last year. The PCs were set up for a closed-room blood-opera scenario, and the other players were just brilliant. We were driving the conflicts hard, none of us with any illusions as to the tragic ending, but still inclined to screw each other up as badly as we could. And boy did we screw each other up. It was tremendous.

- Frank

I've had a lot of good gaming this last year, and a fair amount of mediocre gaming -- and very little sucky gaming. Heck, within this last year, I played Overtime, and bounced off the walls for an hour or so after. At GenCon, Allan taught me that I could play a high school socialite bitch with a hidden passion and love it, and Todd Furler ran a kick-ass game of the Angel RPG. I wrapped my main Cthulhupunk campaign, and started a Sorcerer campaign, which has had some lovely moments. But, I think the prize has to go to a moment in the 10 hour larp Across a Sea of Stars.

This game did what I would have thought impossible -- 23 or 24 players, 4 or 5 gms, I think, and a setting of sf pulp and wonder. And the gms did it by staying out of the way and by a lot of serious set up work, from handpainted scenery to almost too much background. (The casting questionnaire had friggin' essay questions!)

I was nervous about committing 10 hours to an unknown larp. Then, I found out that Stephen Tihor had signed up for it. See, first I taught me everything I knew about larping. Then, Josh taught me everything I knew about larping (Pay attention -- you will find an in-character reason to do whatever you want. You the player want to let out all the secrets the PC wants to keep hidden. If you're a villain, choose going down in flames over the subtle win, every time. Vortex mechanics. Give everyone at least 3 major and 2 minor plots.) Michael McAfee added invaluable advice. (Try writing a short larp before going for a full weekend larp. Figure out which characters are the minimum you need for plots to be viable. Everyone should have some unique thing, some reason other PCs will deal with them.)

And then, Stephen taught me everything I know about larping. Simple Good. Avoid pre-game idiot plotting. Anticipate failure modes. Use the spreadsheet. Yes, you can through a larp together in a month. Yes, you can expand infinitely outward from the core cast. Okay, we are writing these roles -- think about these players we've handled. How would they break these roles? Re-write accordingly.

So, he was playing this game, and he explained that this was the team behind an Arabian Nights game I still hear about.

Like that game, Sea of Stars used a tales-within-the-tale structure. I played a bunch of different characters in 15-30 minute bursts. And the tales had no GM intervention. None. If you didn't know something, make shit up. It's a tale. Josh tells me I was playing Pure Nar.

So, my main character was an android avatar of a sentient spaceship, in love with a human, and I played everything from the evilest villain to a cowering superstitious peasant. Many, many good moments, including one lovely bit I observed, rather than participated directly in.

Yet, the moment I pick isn't Nar. I think it's almost pure geeky Gamist, despite the fact that I was avoiding much of that aspect of the larp. The following is from http://community.livejournal.com/interconlarp/97475.html

=========

The bulk of Saturday, I was in Across a Sea of Stars. I was a bit nervous about commiting 10 hours to that, but it was well worth it. My home character was Vortex of Chaos, and I played a range of other roles in the tales. I was much happier when I decided to hand off the technology to the rest of the Human team. The system seemed to work, but I just couldn't grok it. The economic resources didn't work as well, but that was only a minor nuisance.

One of my fondest memories is when I pulled Ushar Netra over to the table where the Humans and Wirtan were working things out. I handed Mannheim a pile of technological advances and told him to talk with Ushar. Mannheim saw what I had put on top, and made a logical assumption, given my utter lack of context.

Mannheim: Orion, this is what we want. Give him whatever it takes to get that, then get whatever else you can --

Vortex: Nonononono! This is what -we- have.

Incredulous pause as Mannheim and Orion look at the not insignificant pile.

Mannheim: This is what we -have-??

Vortex: The Vim say that our scientists have been busy. Talk with Ushar about anything he has that we don't or vice versa.

=========

Some context:

Vortex = Vortex of Chaos, my PC.

Mannheim = the man she loves

Orion = our official Team Earth Diplomat

Mannheim and Orion were successfully negotiating with Team Earth's enemies, all peaceful and happy like.

The technology meant that, well, basically Mannheim and Vortext could have it all, and give up nothing -- live forever, swap between fleshy, physical, and spaceship bodies, without needing to worry about mental degredation, and fly to the Great Attractor, a millenia-long journey, to try to fix the flaw at the center of the universe.

It's kind of like the thrill I imagine one gets if the slot machine rains quarters down upon one.

-Lisa

I had a couple stand-out experiences this year.  I'd be hard pressed to pick one.  As a GM, the end of my 3 year sci-fi campaign was a blast and immensely satisfying.  The players and I got to destroy the human race for the very best of reasons and usher in something... different.  It was cruel and futuristic and, in a way, almost worthy of a Hallmark commercial.  And it was only possible by learning some indie-gaming techniques.

I haven't played much--ever.  But my best experience as a player came about a year ago, in a Shadow of Yesterday game run by Vaxalon.  My character, a charlatan-wizard, figured out that he simply wasn't good enough to accomplish an epic task to which he'd devoted his entire life--that no matter how much you sacrifice and struggle, sometimes you come up short and it's all for nothing.  It was sort of a preview of having a mid-life crisis.  It was a very moving experience.

Hi!
  We have been playtesting my game on Fridays in IRC. Been pretty fun.
  So, I setup a mystery. And there was only one single point of failure. What if they kill the antagonist?
  So, I came up with a complete system, of intervening chapters with antagonists replacing each other as things happen. And ideas to get them clues as they left a trail of rotting corpses behind them.
  The story had been steadily converging. The players were getting clues and mostly guessing right. Then, the moment of truth came. The players were to encounter one of the conspirators. And they didn't kill them. Even later after he asked to be killed. And they even went so far as to show the prisoner compassion.
  For some, this would be a tragedy. Somewhere between 1/3rd and 1/2 of the story was bypassed. But I was proud of the players for using their heads and not necesarily their swords!
  It was at least 3 kinds of good, woot for my group!