I've been DMing the same D&D campaign for a little over 2 years now, and this Sunday was our penultimate session. It really has been something else, and I'm nervous about finishing it next week, but I think my favorite moment just happened out-of-game at the end of Sunday's session:
After we were winding down for the day, beginning to talk about next week's big game, one of my friends announced she had something to present. She half-nervously, half-confidently positioned herself behind the couch as if it were a stage. She held up a notebook, placed her phone on the edge of the couch, pressed "play", and began singing. She had, no shit, written an entire tribute song about the campaign to the tune of American Pie. This was not a half-assed affair, either: it was straight up 8 minutes of plot summery and in-jokes that rhymed and were sang, by her, to Don McLean's accompaniment. It was the Weird Al Phantom Menace song for
way bigger nerds. I'm going to post the lyrics, and they'll make no sense to any of you, but it was one of the most weirdly gratifying moments of my life and the scope is pretty fucking impressive regardless so I'm sharing it here.
A Song for my Friends
By Fang Yevelda
A long, long time ago
Sildar got his hand cut off
I don't know much about that
You could ask Moraelia
'Cause she's the only one of us
Who's been here since the very first attack
The Lord's Alliance brought us together
They gave us quests, but we knew better
We played around in Phandolin
Our party size was more than ten
We chased some goblins, one way gay
We made it to wave echo cave
The black spider might be okay
And he gave us this quest
Chorus:
Oh bye, bye, kiss those nodes goodbye
We've been playing this for years so fucking nobody die
And we'll save Faerun from this Therisdune guy
Singing can we long rest after this fight?
Can we long rest after this fight?
Did you know the Triboar tour
Was the best part of our game so far?
But we're just getting started
Oh Rurik says we should find Amon
But the rest of the party kind of wants
To see where the delegation could have gone
Well we know they came from Mirabar
And Amon couldn't have gotten far
There's an adventuring party too
We took a song statue
We came upon Helvenblade House
Amon seemed nice, but we had doubts
We met Peepers, or Umsheroth
We hoped he'd join our quest
I started singing,
Chorus
Then we met Elfy McElferson
And who'd have thought he'd be our friend
Probably till the next campaign
We went to the Rite of the Wickerman
On the way I got a new javelin
And I'm getting fed up with this orgasm
We'll Vannifer gave us a job
We blew it off to fight a mob
Of orcs who knew my dad
Our choice may have been bad
And at the spire we met Thural
We eventually killed half his animals
At least we got a folding boat
And then continued our quest
We were singing
Chorus
Handshakes, pirates, cooked potato
Deep into the water temple we go
Obsidian stairs and falling fast
In Shadowfell we crashed
We met Caesar and he was trashed
We got around to smashing nodes at last
Well we had some pirates in the mirror
They'd been in there for about a year
We put them on our boat
It didn't work out as hoped
We faced our first god Ogremach
We took care of that giant rock
Peepers helped with Klogmorach
Maybe now he'll join our quest
We were singing
Chorus
Oh and there we were all in the Fey
And Fang Yevelda won the race
'Cause who has time for all this mist?
So come on, grab your frog and grab your stick
And we'll turn into clouds real quick
'Cause clouds can move really fast
Oh we found some acid, oil, and bees
We wondered what to do with these
We put the bees to sleep
We didn't learn anything
And when we claimed we had to poop
Evil Kristal attacked the group
But it's ok, we fixed the room
Is this part of our quest?
We were singing
Chorus
Over the years we've had some fun
And soon enough we will have won
And I'll remember everyone
There's Popo and his freakish bird
Moraelia, of whom no one's heard
And what the hell's in Felix's wing of the mansion?
And I'll always fall off of things
Caesar will have lots of trees
Boris loves potatoes
We killed off that guy Taenil
And the house that I admire most
I can't afford as I had hoped
So let's go smash the fire node
It's time to finish our quest
Chorus