Exploding Dolls, Underwater Bar Fights and Flying Castles

"Remember that battle when we were like in the middle of a factory, and all the dolls that were created there exploded?"

"Remember when we fought a bar fight under the water like in that movie, Top Secret?"

There are always this fights that are kept forever, that we look for again and again. Some of them involved great Roleplaying, or a critical at the right time, but most of them were in really cool places. At least in my games that's the situation.

When I GMed action games, I always reminded to myself one simple thing: "Every action movie has a cool, very cool, set-piece for the final confrontation of the movie". In TV series it's right also. Think about the end of season 4 of Buffy, with the fight in the dream, or one episode earlier when they fought Adam in the Initiative Basement. Think about the end of Matrix, where Neo and Smith fought in the train station. That's the kind of battles, of fights, that we remember because it's cool, because it's special and unique, because we didn't see that before.

So, after I have reminded to myself this thing all through the session, saying it to myself again and again like a mantra, I started to use it, and it paid off. I had a fight in a flying castle, where suddenly it fell and they used magic to keep it afloat while still fighting the villains. I had a battle between ships, with PCs and NPCs going from side to side and trying not to fall. I had fights in total darkness, and multi-planar battles. And after the fifth battle that I ran and was this cool and special, they started to look for it, to wait for it, to try to guess where it will be, and some of them even suggested places by themselves.

It's not a lot of work, making something like this, but it pays off, and it makes the games so much better, and the battles so much special.