Hey there crab gang!
This story is long and complicated and by the middle section you will ask yourself whether it belongs here or not. Let me assure you I was thoroughly traumatised by this and I still haven't recovered fully.
No content warning. Just death and sorrow.
I will introduce some characters as we go.
This all happened in the duration of 10 years. We were playing the Hungarian TTRPG M.A.G.U.S. with many hb rules from my cousin and dear friend, hereafter known as DM. It resembles a hybrid system with some elements of dnd 3.5 and call of cthulhu added in but in a D100 system. Over the years rules evolved to accommodate the growing party and our growing ambitions. The world started out as high-fantasy and slowly developed into lovecraftian horror. Progression is slow and different from regular DnD, 1-4 is low level, 5-8 is an accomplished adventurer, 9+ would be the stuff of legends almost as powerful as level 20 in regular dnd. DM is an artist who created countless illustrations, maps and character art that made the game come alive. To me my main PC was a part of my life like a friend or a brother.
I started the campaign as the only player one-on-one with the DM twice a week. My PC, Mordecai, is a human boy of 16 (as I was a human boy of 16). The PC was a self-insert. Mordecai’s father is a depressed and burnt out physicist and his mother a chemist, a loving and deeply emotional woman. At the beginning of the story Mordecai slowly learns the world around him. The family is part of a technocratic cult and my character is training to become a mechanic (I did go into engineering in real life as well), the most desired role in their society (this I found out not to be true in real life). On the day of his acceptance to the University his father is executed on grounds of heresy, a huge scandal after which Mordecai severs connections with his family to save his reputation, a decision he would deeply regret in later life.
One year passes for us but thirty for Mordecai. He is to become the youngest ever Mechanic Initiate (turning level 5) of the cult. He achieved this by completing countless physical trials and exams. The week before his initiation he met his mother in a library by chance, as he was preparing for his lines for the initiation speech, and he learned the truth of his fathers death. Mortimer was sacrificed in a human experiment to uncover ways to turn dead human matter into living machines. His world shattered the same day, just after reconciling with her mother she disappeared never to be seen again. Mordecai was too late to save her. Feeling betrayed and disenchanted he used his initiation ritual to steal the Master Guide a tome of incredible ancient knowledge written in the extinct language of gnomes. From a game mechanic point of view Mordecai can only progress beyond level 5 if he starts translating the book. In theory the book can help him achieve an unheard of 12th level. The Master Guide is the basis of the cult and discovering its secrets was the ultimate purpose of the society.
Around this time my younger cousin joined our games as Aurelios, a middle aged wizard of considerable renown (also lvl 5). Magic works differently in this world than other DnD games. Magic is based on a resource called Mana, with it a wizard can create custom spells. Wizard’s power level is completely dependent on the skill of the player, but a lvl 5 wizard is incredibly rare and powerful, especially if used correctly. Mordecai meets Aurelios and his apprentice Jos (a DMPC) ; they shared adventures while evading Mordecai's cult. Eventually they arrived in a city so far away the cult surely couldn't reach them. They accept a query from a dwarven lord to organise an expedition to a continent far north where the dwarfs are thought to be from. Our mission is to help uncover the truth about the history of the dwarfs. We receive a ludicrous amount of money (4000 gp which converts to around 40k-100k in dnd 5e), way too much for two ambitious and intelligent people like Aurelios and Mordecai. Probably a mistake on the part of the DM.
As the third real life year starts Mordecai and Aurelios started organising the expedition but they quickly lost focus creating a company to invest all these resources to provide an even more solid base for the expedition. Mordecai and Aurelios Shipping and Logistics (MA for short, which also became our party name). They got stupidly rich and the game is derailed into a tycoon simulator. This is when my sister joined the game as Seth, a morally gray mercenary who became the chief of security of MA. Years passed in the game and a rumor was spreading: the cult was on our tail again.
As we were closing in on the end of the third year the main cast was completed with my brother also joining us as Tempy the Bard, an agent of chaos and a revolutionary entertainer. It is important to know that my brother wanted to go full in on the RP and started learning drama and writing to better impersonate Tempy. He wrote ballads and performed Shakespearean theater based on the adventures and lives of our characters once a month. As the rumours got confirmed, the cult reached the city. MA hastly launched the expedition and six ships of war plus an additional six shipping vessels set out to the unknown.
The journey is full of danger; only five warships and two shipping vessels survive but MA suffered an even greater loss. Due to a giant miscalculation on the part of DM, MA got in a TPK situation with a Kraken, years of effort could have sunk to the bottom of a nameless ocean if Aurelios didn't find an incredible solution that let him concentrate all the magically energy built up in him into an incredible burst, one final custom spell that saved the party but tragically he sacrificed his life force in the process (bg3 is years down the line so shut up Gale). We weep and hold a beautiful ceremony, Trev dedicates a twenty minute ballad to him. It's epic, we cry and from this point on Jos becomes the main PC for my younger cousin. Shortly after we make landfall and establish the colony of Aurelion (our new party name dedicated to Aurelios) and we dedicate the town square to all the 567 men, women and children (of all races) who lost their life during the journey.
The latter half of year four brought a change to the game’s dynamic which basically lasted for the rest of the ten year adventure. The game style turned into a town management survival type as Mordecai, Seth, Jos and Trev became the de facto leaders of Aurelion, a colony of 478 people. Over the next few years we introduced a multi-PC system where everyone could start new PCs from amongst the colony NPCs so we wouldn’t have to always play at insanely high levels, lowering the risks but expanding opportunities for side quests. Around the same time the game moved to a three sessions a week schedule as several more people joined in and I became a co-DM. All games were made up of a rotating cast of 7 players with the core group relatively unchanged. Due to the insane game frequency and the new multi-PC rules, no-one joined all sessions but at least fifteen semi-regular players were involved, most of them at around 50% attendance or lower.
For the next five-six years we played out the story of Aurelion, the struggles and the happy times. There was an overarching plot line related to Mordecai and the Master Guide, the story of dwarves and gnomes but it took a backseat to let all other parallel stories play out as most plot lines slowly converged and came to conclusions. Jos became an Archmage (level 10), Simon became a Paladin and personal champion of his God (level 11), and Trev wrote a world famous book of our adventures and became the inventor of magical 4d cinema (level 10). Mordecai achieved his wildest fantasies uncovering the tome’s secrets chapter by chapter becoming the greatest Mechanic on the face of the world (level 12). Finally only one story was left to conclude the original quest for truth for the dwarves and for the Master Guide.
As it turned out these were more closely related than we originally thought the dwarves are actually descendants of the gnome race and this continent was originally the home of gnomes. Ten years of build up as we started the last session and entered the last dungeon where the last piece of the puzzle lay, the BBEG themselves protecting it, the heart of the continent. This was a session where all active players (around 10-11 by that point as we lost some people over the years) were invited as this was supposed to be the session to end all sessions. Everyone grabbed their strongest PCs and we entered the dungeon. Epic fights ensued and we found many puzzles slowing our advance. We arrived in front of the last door behind which was the BBEG. Countless death and unimaginable hardships lead us to this point. We were out of health, mana and generally we felt that we were losing this fight. Mordecai made a final speech and we created a plan. Everyone was supposed to get into an ambush position, our only chance for victory. We would have to make the BBEG leave their protective room to fight on even ground. Mordecai decided to become the bait as he is the only one who speaks gnomish and that was the language of the BBEG. We were ready. We shout "Together for Aurelios!" and Seth opened the door. I taunted the BBEG... nat100... the plan worked and we started the fight in the room.
And then instead of rolling initiatives the DM stood up.and started describing the fight. We could do nothing as he monologued for 20-30 minutes non-stop, I zoned out, I could not believe what was happening, everyone was in shock. DM R-ed the whole final bossfight alone. He described how everyone was trying their best but the BBEG one by one downs all PCs and at last Mordecai remained standing. He describes how Mordecai in his desperation does the exact same thing as Aurelios destroying the BBEG and losing his life in the process.
I was shook... we all were... I couldn't react. I was in shock when we concluded the session. The day after I talked to the DM and asked him why he did it. He said this way the ending was streamlined and in theme with the epic adventure, if we fought the BBEG regularly it wouldn't have been this epic as we were way over leveled and even with all our injuries and low resources it would've ruined the ending for everyone. I begged him to let us play out the final fight instead. He said he is done with TTRPG and wants a break. And that my friends was that.
I was heart broken... I still am. It's like I lost a friend without being able to say goodbye. This was one year ago. I don't know how to move on and I don't know how I could ever play TTRPG again...