It doesn't normally happen often in most games. Either the quest that you took was so paltry that it didn't deserve much more than a curt "Thank you" and a bag of gold to split amongst the party. In other cases, you're preventing the big bad baddie from doing their evil plan before most of the innocent townsfolk get a chance to be able to even know WHAT they were saved from, and rarely believe the heros if they decide to brag about it or ask for a reward.

But in some cases, the town or city know that they were saved! Either from a impending threat, or one that has made itself comfortable terrorizing the innocents of the game. Not only that, but they know that YOU were the ones to save them, and that they owe their lives to you and your group alone. Tell of a story of a time after any quest where you got to bask in the spot light of glory and celebrate a quest well completed.

In all of the groups we're in we've only saved a city in such a way that it actually deserved trowing a party...
And that one time we refused.

One of the player characters had sacrificed himself for the victory, and the whole group decided that it was no time for celebrating, but instead a time of mourning and sadness. It was a great honor, and we had a lot of fun role playing our tears, but we even asked the locals if they would please not party XD

My group almost did this, but one player had pulled the Deck Of Many Things card that makes an enemy, so the leader of the town hated us now. Oops...

My group almost did this, but one player had pulled the Deck Of Many Things card that makes an enemy, so the leader of the town hated us now. Oops...

So when one of my friends was running a PTU game we ended up accomplishing something so everyone had a party. My character decided to run a "Maid the RPG" game... it was silly since we basically just had everyone roll a die to see how well they did for that stretch of the game instead of actually pulling up the rules.

Played a wizard in a campaign where we had a tendency of getting chummy with all the townsfolk, then inevitably saving them from assassins, armies or whatever else threatened them. Usually several threats a town.

Suffice to say, it happened fairly frequently that there would be full-town celebrations in our honor. We usually decided to keep track of drunkenness through fortitude saves, and then keep going until we started failing them.

End result?

DM: "Okay, it's morning, and your wizard is unconscious on the ground."
Me: "No she's not."
DM: "She's not?"
Me: "She's on the roof."
DM: "Ooookay then."

So I'll tell my story, even if I'm not sure it counts.
We had spent three days straight in a lost dwarven hold, fighting Yuggoloth and all sort of horrors. We did save a city doing so, but choose to move out of it after getting paid to investigate a mass disappearance in the nearby country.
In the next city we got to, we found, on the first evening, a hidden tavern for feys and monsters where we had to find contacts. They invited us to drink before work, so the party choose to have our victory celebration there.
The druid insisted that my 16 years old wizard tried alcol for the first time.
The results:
Somehow the warforged barbarian got drunk and lost a drinking game (apparently magical alcol still works on them, since magical poisons do).
I walked straight to a red half-dragon warrior and asked him about the Chamber (secret dragon organization I want to work with, they have a bad rep for laying waste to entire cities if they think their secrets are exposed). He punched me in the face for massive damage and ran away.
The druid started a musical number with five were-rats she just met.
The swashbuckler had a bad trip after meeting a gang of changelings that wanted to pull a prank on us.
After waking from the punch, I crashed a private betting room where a monk and a barbarian where grappling on a ring, bragged a lot about defeating a Yuggoloth army (technically true), got so annoying that the public pushed me on stage, then won a fight since me, the DM, and my character all forgot how dimension door works (i tried to teleport my adversary out of the ring, forgetting that it works only on willing creatures. The DM also forgot and I won, later when we found out I couldn't have done it he ruled that my adversary choose to be willing since, having failed the will saving throw, i would have teleported off with her clothes).
Cue one "The Hangover" waking up moment and "I'll never, ever, ever drink again as long as i live"..
So, not in the spot light but best celebration I ever role-played.

Chug chug chug chug!

...that's all I got to say.

My party overthrew the pirate king of an island nation who owned the world's largest sugar plantation, staffed by Elven slaves. The city he ruled from was somewhat a morally dubious trade hub, consisting largely of people who had chosen to live there for the business opportunities. They weren't huge fans of the kings Scrag flunkies or their protection racket, but they considered it the cost of doing some very good business. A number of the kings trade partners took great care never to discover the full nature of the king's operation, because slavery is bad, but sugar is very very good. If the party had come at the king head-on, they'd have faced substantial opposition from the city,plus potential backlash from several major world governments.

They did not come at the king head on.

Instead, they staged a large-scale supernatural intervention. They enlisted the help of the island's Hadozee natives to plant firebombs at centers of Scrag activity in the city, then detonated them as the party's heavily-enchanted Rogue danced through the city disguised as a powerful demon, leading a hoard of dancing skeleton's conjured up by the party's Necromancer. The Rogue dropped a bunch of fat nasty Bluff and Preform checks to rile the city into a panic, claiming that he had dragged himself up from the depths of hell to claim all the evil souls of the city. With a bit of cartoonish villainy and a few leading questions, the Rogue got the citizens to point him toward the king's castle as the heart of evil in the city.

Some shenanigans later, and the king and all his Scrags are dead or fled. The Rogue puts out a rumor that the demon will be making another appearance at sundown, and hires a band to wait in the city square for the action to start. The party raids the king's massive treasure hoard, gathering up all the copper and silver, along with a couple thousand pieces of gold.

At sundown, the disguised Rogue appears in the city square, presenting the king's severed head on a spear, announcing his death. He cues the band to start playing "La Danse Macabre," as the Necromancer sends her skeleton's dancing through the crowd with baskets full of copper, silver and gold, scattering coins around the square. The Artificer has his hoard of Unseen Servants floating above the crowd, also scattering coins. The Necromancer even throws up a Glitterdust high above the crowd so it looks like it's raining gold. The city's vendors, sensing an easy market, quickly set up festival stalls. More musicians join in with the hired band. A pair of skeletons take up position next to the king's head, charging the townsfolk and children a copper apiece to throw rocks at it, or a silver to beat the head with one of the skeletons' detached arms, then palming off the coins to the Unseen Servants to redistribute back into the crowd.

The freed Elven slaves, seeing the townspeople enthusiastically celebrating the death of the king who enslaved them, decide not to slaughter them all in a vengeful frenzy.

I'm so proud of my players.