Nothing to put here, just curious

Once that comes to mind...

My very first campaign playing Deadlands (Deluxe Edition). I was playing a Shaolin Monk on the run from a cult from China, looking for my sister who had been abducted and brought over the seas to San Shan (San Francisco)...

I followed only to find one of the local Tongs was in fact part of the same cult that was hunting me down (of course!) and after many sessions with the party, they (the Tong) were on the run with my sister and had her on this train. I'm like *awesome* I get to do a train heist!!

Well unfortunately, over the course of the adventure, a tribe of Indians led by particularly gruesome badass with magical tomahawks, who were allied with the Tongs, because of the shenanigans the party pulled during the course of several sessions, the Indians decided to turn on everybody - and they too were going to raid the train and kill everyone.

Okay - so the big session lands, and it's epic, we end up getting on board the train, having this pretty badass fight. I became enthralled with the combat system, it "felt" great. My character was dodging bullets, closing distance and putting some epic moves on Tong, gunslinging mercs and anyone else in our way to find my sister and think... "yeah!! FINALLY! WOO!"...

Then the Indians attacked... and of course we knew this Indian brave with the tomahawks was a total badass. The train almost gets derailed and I tell the party to take my sister and GTFO... I'm going to slow the warchief down, one of my fellow players, a badass gunslinger joined me (taking out ranged enemies as a I closed distance.) Another player, our doctor decided to "help" by using a long rifle and taking potshots from the train despite the fact I told him to leave with the others...

I close with the warchief after several rounds of asswhipping and proceed to have this **epic** one-on-one fight... the guy had magic chicken-bone armor, magic tomahawks, vs. my Wu-Tang style, and it was an *extremely close* fight. I was surviving on the fact one of my abilities (Deflect) was keeping me alive but soon about to run out, and I had no more Chi points to keep it up. My plan was to finish him the round before it ended and frankly it was 50/50. Well my fellow player (the doctor) on the Sharps long-rifle wins initiative and decides to shoot the Warchief while he's engaged in melee with me... and the guy has no real skill with the rifle, he's just plunking shots. I tell him "Dude... don't do that. I got this."

He chuckles at me and says "I take the shot!" He rolls and its snake-eyes. The GM makes a check and sure enough he ends up potentially hitting me. He makes Doc roll again... the dice *explode* he's rolling a d4 and that die rolls "4" SEVEN times in a row. So he hits me, with a 28, and the hit location is in my head. Then the GM tells him to roll damage... and Doc starts rolling and the dice keep exploding. On a 2d6 roll, he ends up doing like 38-damage, and I was out of bennies... and he basically blows my head clean off.

The Warchief ends up killing the whole party and that was the end of the campaign.

Yeah...

But! It was the campaign that sold me on Savage Worlds and I never looked back. So it's a net win in my book.

Well Rolemaster Standard System.

The PCs were around eighth level and the dungeon full of "troglodytes", more like morlocks in RM really.  And they've awakened the god of the trolls who is bound there because subtlety and stealth seem to be utterly beyond most PC groups.  So they're fleeing, knowing he can't pass the invisible barrier around the mountain.  And as they pass it the mentalist casts "Jolts" that causes 1 round of stun for every 10 points by which the resistance roll fails.  And they open end the attack roll and the god of the trolls fails their resistance roll and then their moving maneuver roll, causing them to careen down the side of the mountain right into the barrier where he hangs suffering the wrath of the other gods while the PCs take free shots at his face until he falls off the barrier.

Another good RM one involved chaos warriors on riding chickens and a chasm bridged by logs.  Falling damage bad 'mkay?

A four-years-in-the-making headshot that, thanks to the vagaries of Rolemaster, ended the life of Black Bardigan, an annoying character, whose player (Rob, a dear friend of mine) had a previous character who'd killed my first character in a Rolemaster game...well, four years prior.  It's a long, silly story, but getting that "Arrow pierces foe's cheeks, foe dies after 12 agonizing rounds of inaction" roll after all those years was delicious.

In Star Wars Miniatures, my wife, on her first move, shot at my high-ranking Jedi Knight.  It was a critical hit, instantly killing him.  This tilted balance of the Force completely to her side, and she won without almost any resistance.

There are many, so I'll probably make a couple more posts as I remember them, but two that stick out immediately:

1) High-level AD&D game, party average is in the teens, lots of multiclassed elves and stuff, but the most powerful character was a 12th level UA Paladin. And run by a player who would give Machiavelli a run for the money as far as scheming goes. The dude gamed the system to such an egregious degree he seemed nigh invincible most of them time. Final combat in some tomb, lots of undead which might as well have not even existed due to having a 15th level cleric and said Paladin, big boss is a sorcerer cleric/lich guy. Essentially the lich solos the entire party whole the Paladin is distracted with some death knights, so it's just those two left facing off. I figured this would be a badass conclusion to the game, but I was also tired of the overpowered nonsense at this point and was ready for a new campaign. The Paladin starts fucking the lich up beyond belief and everyone is cheering, almost seems like he's going to take it out in only a couple rounds. The lich has one final round to basically win or die, so he does a last ditch effort and  casts finger of death or something like that. Due to all his bonuses and magic items, thePaladin needs to roll anything but a 1 to save; he literally cannot fail except on the "1s always fail" rule. His real save was in the negatives. So of course he fails. Dramatically. In a ridiculous fashion. He player rolls the save and just says yeah yeah let's finish this. The 1 comes up and the Paladin is dead. The entire table was stunned, including me. I took a quick 5 then gave them an epilogue wherein they all ascended to the outer planes of their gods, with the Paladin being made to spend 1000 years in direct service of his deity for being so fucking Cavalier (LOL) about the whole affair. All the players though that was appropriate, including the guy running the Paladin. Ultimate ending to an epic three year game.

2) How about the time during a Star Wars d6 game where someone one-shoted the emperor with a blaster? That was the most hilarious thing I have ever seen and some of the worst die rolling in the history of time.

So, for the Rolemaster 1e savvy, you'll know that high level characters are both very rare and very powerful.  Over the course of a very long campaign, everyone had several characters killed except my friend Doug.  He had a 7th level character, while we were all basically sidekicks at level 2 or 3.  He had also amassed enough wealth to buy himself a war elephant (which he so creatively named "Rambuttbashknockdownslug" after the combat table).  So, we had just defeated the big bad guy and rifled through his pockets when we found the dead guy had a platinum piece (worth 100gp, and a ton of money in that game!).  Well, Doug decided that he was going to keep the platinum piece, and he said there was nothing we could do about.  My friend Dave (who passed away last year... RIP, bud!) objected and demanded his share.  Doug scoffed and ordered his war elephant to attack.  Dave's 3rd level character fired his hand crossbow once, and several exploding d100s later, dropped the elephant with a single shot to the brain.  The look on Doug's face was priceless!  Of course, he then slaughtered Dave's character easily, but the loss of that elephant pretty much destroyed the profit of keeping the pp. We've revisited that story for 30+ years now, and it always makes us all grin.  The best crit I've ever witnessed live for sure.

Most notable to me came during testing my system. I was exploring the difference between static conditional modifiers and using something like advantage/disadvantage.

For further clarity, I much prefer static modifers as they're easier to fine tune, but I wanted to give due diligence to alternatives.

Anyway, during the test with advantage/disadvantage the party was in dire straits against an ogre warlord. It's next turn was likely to drop at least one PC (it had multiple attacks). The PC just before the ogre's next turn absolutely whiffed their attack roll; not even a fun whiff like a natural 1... but a 3 on the die when he needed a 12+.

Then someone remembered the player had advantage for the roll. Natural 20. The crit drops the ogre warlord and I knew my use of static bonuses was just as dead. Even a +9 circumstance bonus couldn't compete with what had just happened.

It was all anyone at the table could talk about the rest of the night. "Saving Throw vs. Failure" is how one player described it.

The crit that killed static circumstance bonuses* for my system is definitely my more memorable crit.

*unlike 5e the cumulative result of positive and negative circumstances matters instead of one positive canceling all the negatives. It also has grades... 2 positives also mean the success is automatically a critical hit (+50% damage on average) while 2 negatives means even a success deals only half damage, but the roll twice take better/worse mechanic just engaged players so much more I couldn't not use it.

Memorable successes?

1 - Camp of the three giants. The players blundered unwittingly into a midnight encounter with three giants  The beasts were crossing the wilderness trying not to attract human attention. Honestly, the players were helpless witnesses to a drama as the giants quickly and aggressively decided what to do when the Men Things came into view, utterly suprised by the situation. Order restored, the lead giant imparted advice and the players made a careful attempt at getting along having found out what an argument between five ton leviathans was really like.

2 - What happened to Darrian Corlac? A sort of murder mystery during a quest. Darrian Corlac was an NPC of significance, a former kingmaker who had fallen on hard times, disgruntled and an alcoholic. Trell was a different NPC, more reserved, secretive even, but clearly able to wield some kind of power. Trell came back to the party when the players were making a short cut through a cave system, Corlac did not. Finding out who Trell really was and what had happened to Corlac lasted many sessions.

3 - Secret mission to the Drow City. Oh boy. The players were so out of their depth, pretending to be Drow minions and not having a clue how these sophisticated but utterly ruthless beings ordered their society. It all got very personal too, dark passions, dangerous rituals, and a desperate escape to freedom.

4 - The Battle of Galkin Gol. The players took part in a crusade into Ork infested territory seeking to bring down an evil city state. They had gotten involved in Templar politics, and dabbled in military strategy for the first time. The crusade chased an Ork army not realising they were being drawn into an ambush with another army behind them. The ensuing battle was played out as a proper wargame over two sessions and it was a terrible defeat. Funnily enough, the players enjoyed the change of pace and a different activity.

5 - What the...? Taking an idea from the wonderful; world of Marvel Comics, on one occaision the players were approached to join a secret mission and thinking this was going to be a conventional quest innocently wandering into the meeting only to find their co-conspirators were all the major villains they had battled against previously. Even sat down, the players visibly shrank back. Some serious accusations and bargaining ensued. And yes, the players were betrayed. They knew it would happen. They knew it would....