Trust (Previously posted to a forum somewhere)

One of my favorite gaming moments was in an Amber DRPG campaign. It went as follows:

A PC had spent over a year of game time trying to make up with his estranged NPC mother.
Doing all sorts tasks and quests on mom's behalf...
Learning how to shapeshift into human form so the sight of him wouldn't reminder her of the traumatic events of her youth...
Killing all of mom's enemies...
Keeping all of mom's secrets hidden, despite lots of in-game time spent figuring out the deceptions in the first place...
Fetching the most powerful artifact in the universe, and giving it to mom...

So there they stand at the edge of the Primal Pattern (the magical scribble that defines and sustains the entire universe).

Son apologizes for everything he's done wrong in the past. He enumerates all the things he's done trying to get her love back. The roleplaying was really, really moving.

They embrace. Mom says "I forgive you. Do you forgive me?" He's distracted by the emotion of it all.
She steps back, and the PC sees the bloody knife in her hand. His throat gurgles.
Not only did she kill him, but his "divine" blood flows across and obliterates the Primal Pattern, unraveling the universe so Mom could create a new reality WHERE HE WAS NEVER BORN.

Gotta hand it to Starr, the player of the character that had just been outmaneuvered and murdered. Eyes bulging...

"After all that, she killed me! THAT'S SO COOL! I should of known she'd do that."

I asked Starr to be my co-GM in the next campaign I ran, as we clearly had similar ideas about what makes a good story.