Ginger Stampley, at Perverse Access Memory asks, in her 73rd Game WISH column:
What’s the biggest PC-driven shift you’ve ever experienced in a campaign? If you were a player, what made you feel like you could successfully change the GM’s world? If you were a GM, was this planned or something the PCs surprised you with?
Oh, let's go with something light-hearted, this week, as I finally catch up to WISH Present. That this is probably the best example I can think of, doesn't hurt, either.
Once again, fade back to my happy, innocent (comparatively) days of undergrad gaming, sprawling out in someone's dorm room, taking over a rec room, or a student center lounge area from those freaks who actually wanted to, you know, study.
Somewhere toward my junior or senior year, one of our GMs (same guy who ran the space prisoners game from the last entry, actually) took it upon himself to run a vampire-themed game using his favorite (and mine at the time) system, GURPS. In retrospect, he had intended it to be a serious game, hving taken inspiration from some Saberhagen books as I recall, which few if any of us had read.
Thing is, somewhere in character creation, we call got the idea that this was to be a light, silly game. I think it was because we had all had a pretty serious disdain for the overly serious Vampire(tm) games that were just then starting to hit our awareness. The other reason, probably, was because for Chrissakes he decided to set it in the same town we went to school-- Peoria.
Nothing serious happens in Peoria!
So right from the start, in the first session or so, there was a radical shift as we got ourselves into beer and pretzels mode. I remember only a few scenes, but I dearly remember Bartholomew, the ex-Vietnam veteran and all around not-to-bright, beery, boozy biker suddenly thrust into the power and glory and decadence of being a vampire... without understanding why.
Took him a while for him to realize he was a vampire, it did. Bart was the sharpest crayon in the box.
I do also remember the group's hard core atheist (no, that wasn't me, although I suppose by sticking to my moderate convictions I am that groups hard core atheist today...) playing a fundamentalist Christian in the same boat. He realized what was going on a bit quicker, and was a whole lot of fun watching.
Needless to say, it became a comedy game very quickly. Actually, it became a slapstick comedy game very quickly. Not one of our longest-lived efforts, but the GM had the grace to roll with it, watching his nice, serious game torn to shreds by the players.