Last night, the occasional D&D game I’m in on Thursdays (we’re supposed to be weekly, but we have an average of four sessions every three months) finally became the longest campaign I’ve ever been a part of as a player. At twenty-one sessions I’ve participated in out of a twenty-three total for the campaign, I’ve finally broken the record of twenty sessions I’ve been sitting at since 2016. Now, I’ve run a handful of campaigns that have broken past this number. I’ve routinely broken past fifty and even hit the triple-digits once. Every single campaign I’ve participated in as a player, though has fallen apart fairly quickly. One campaign made it to twenty sessions and naturally concluded (it was a limited run that just happened to hit twenty sessions) and then every single other one of them fell apart in the single digits save two that just faded away in the early teens. Most of them never made it past five. Any other multi-sessions games that ended naturally were all one-shots that ran long. This has been going on since my very first days playing Dungeons and Dragons in 2010 when I went from my third session of Dungeons and Dragons to being the GM because the person running the group didn’t have the time anymore and that has been the story pretty much ever since then. Almost all of my tabletop groups prior to 2020 were groups I joined as a player and then became the GM for since the GM couldn’t keep running and I stepped in as a temporary stopgap so we could keep meeting until, eventually, my role as the group’s GM became permanent.

This group, though, has stayed solid despite our frequent month-long gaps between sessions (usually followed by two or three sessions in a row before we go on another long break). We are playing an Elden Ring themed campaign using a modified ruleset to reflect the fact that we’re basically an encounters group running one combat scenario or boss fight after the next. We do very little exploration, even less roleplaying (though I manage to fit in a decent amount before combat, after combat, and in the trash talking I do during combat), and almost all of our game is full of references to things I don’t get since I never played Elden Ring. Still, it’s a lot of fun. The group is fairly solid and the GM, while strict about the stripped down and slightly altered rules we’re using, is always up for some jokes or letting us run with a bit of rule-of-cool stuff when it comes to the moments when we literally can’t fail whatever it is we’re about to do. He’s fair, even-handed, and focused on keeping the game fun (part of which is using the altered rules since this is, after all, a themed game). I do not know where I’d rate him in terms of great to decent GMs, but that’s mostly because I’ve played only two very specific types of games with him (a one-shot that ran long using 20th level characters and this encounters-styled, Elden Ring themed game). That said, he’s done a great job with each of these much more mechanically-focused styles of play, so I have literally nothing I could voice as a complaint. He’s even good at making sure people don’t spend too much time on their turns.

What makes this past session especially good, on top of being a record-breaking moment for me, is that it was also the most kick-ass session of Dungeons and Dragons I’ve ever been a part of as a player. My rolls weren’t amazing, but they were just one step short of perfect. You see, I’m playing the party’s tank and damage sponge. My barbarian, the Beefy Tabaxi Banana-Suit-Wearing Cat Man who goes by Sir B.F., is one of the best defensive tanks I could have built without making it my sole focus. I’ve invested in getting a good armor class, made sure to keep my HP up as best as I can, and taken a couple class options that allowed me to temporarily boost my defenses. Plus, as a barbarian, most damage that gets through is getting reduced anyway and some of it can even be negated when you get some of the advanced features that allow you to push past blows that should have rendered you unconscious. That, on top of some of the modified rules (specifically the one that lets you do a short rest using only half your total hit dice rounded-up as an action), has meant that my character has only been knocked unconscious in one fight and has never died (which isn’t that big of a deal in this game, since all dead characters just return the next time we gather around our bonfire, aka take a long rest).

Last night, though, was something else entirely. As we charged into a fortress, Sir B.F. flying over the walls using a bonus rage feature he got for defeating his magically enhanced shadow in a fight, I decided he would do his best to gather all the combatants around him. He has the most HP for one thing, but his defenses are significantly better than everyone elses’. I had hoped, of course, that the spellcasters would use this to focus on the clustered enemies, but we got splintered pretty quickly on the approach and while my rolls were just fine, the rest of the party was not so lucky. As we slowly chipped through the first defenders, backup got summoned and I abandoned the weaklings to my other party members and tried to get all the much stronger defenders to focus on me. And it worked. I was in rare form, calling out taunts, cracking jokes, and filling the battle with enough in-character trash talk that my fellow players were constantly laughing. Unfortunately for me, though, my plan worked so perfectly that I was surrounded and getting attacked over a dozen times each turn and wasn’t putting out enough damage to take down my fairly beefy foes, especially what with them having a healer to help them. I managed to extend my hit points as far as I could, turning my 123 hit points into a meat shield that absorbed over 250 damage before I was preparing for this to be Sir B.F.’s first death. After all, my party was largely scattered and, with me gone, the remaining enemies would make short work of my allies given their lack of defenses and lower hit point totals (doubly-so, considering all their damage got halved when it was dealt to me).

I told one of my allies to just blast the area I was standing in while I was at a measly three HP, knowing I’d go down but knowing that it would also severely damage the enemies surrounding me. As I was making my peace with unsciousness, my GM reminded me of the fairly new Barbarian feature I had. Relentless Rage. If I rolled a saving throw and beat the Difficulty Class, I’d be able to stay conscious with 1hp instead. The first roll was 10 and it would have been ridiculous for me to fail that, given that it was a Constitution Saving throw and I had a +5 to +12 to that (we use a proficiency dice system rather than a flat numerical bonus, so I would roll a d8 to add to my save rather than just add +4). I rolled exactly a 10. We all had a great laugh about that and cheered my success, especially since it meant I could keep absorbing attacks for at least a little bit. My enemies had to roll well to hit me and they had not had much luck with that so far. Unfortunately, I got hit twice. To stay conscious through these blow, I had to get beat a DC15 and then DC20 check. Reader, I rolled exactly a 15 and a 20. I got to have one final turn! I used my ultimate ability, unleashing five attacks at the cost of my character’s vision for the next 10 minutes (which is easily the rest of the fight), and managed to take down two and a half enemies. Then, knowing I was doing to die, I decided to make a break for the rooftops so that, just maybe, one of my allies could see me and cast a healing spell. One attack of three, made as I dashed away from the cluster of enemies around me, struck true and I expected this to be the end. I had to make a DC25 check, after all. I rolled my dice, making peace as I did with this end to Sir B.F.’s deathless run, and got a 26.

The table erupted and I had my character scream from atop the wall that not a one of these puny foes could kill him, daring them to try as he drew every enemy eye towards him. Thankfully, one of the party’s spellcasters healed me and the fight carried on. At which point, directed by my allies and the foolish shouts of my enemy, I immediately leapt off the 50-foot tower, down onto the enemy’s leader and healer, cleaving them in two as the combined force of my fall and axe strike ended them. Still blind, attacking with reckless abandon to counteract the penalty that imposed, I killed two more enemies before my allies mopped up the rest. It was amazing. I rolled exactly what I needed so many times last night, dodging attacks to drag me down by meeting so many challenges and checks exactly. I was a truly incredible bit of luck that I was able to spin into a glorious combat using my jokes and trash talking. It was so much fun. So, so much fun. As was ending the battle by dropping the mage that we’d banished at the start of the fight 300 feet to their death rather than allow them another turn to cast a spell because we just couldn’t put out enough damage in a single turn to end them since our main source of DPS, (a druid transformed into a T-Rex) couldn’t climb the stairs to where we were. Truly, truly wonderful.

I don’t think I could have enjoyed last night’s game any more than I did. I got everything I wanted out of it and more. I made my friends laugh, I broke a 7-year-old record, I was incredibly lucky, and I got to do it all at the end of an incredibly busy but very fulfilling day of work. Just absolutely stupendous. Games are good but playing them with friends is even better. I can’t wait to meet up with this group again in another week or a month or two and carry on playing this game with them.