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As we are allowed to post second-hand stories, I can tell about the second game session that was banned from being mentioned at the club. Now, the reason why the previous story and the following one were banned wasn't because of what happened in them, but that because whenever they were mentioned,  would start arguing about alignments and how children are always lawful good angel who have done no wrong and would end up giving everyone who didn't agree with him 100% a headache. I have not actually played in the following session, but I verified it with 5 of the people involved, and clarified a few of the points with one of the players again tonite.Always doesn't mean Always! The group in question was 6 players, of varying alignments. They had been travelling when they found a black dragon and its lair in the wilderness, near some villages. As this would be a problem for the villages at some point, they attacked and killed the dragon. After a short fight, they kill the dragon and enter the lair for the dragon's loot, where they find, in amongst the treasure, three newly-hatched black dragons, hatched literally that day. 4 of the party members agreed that the dragons had to die, as they were evil. One disagreed, as his character had dragonblood, and a dragon familiar, and was sympathetic to them. , on the other hand, disagreed for all the wrong reasons.: They were just born! They hadn't done anything evil yet and shouldn't die! : But... they're black dragons. They're always evil. Always. Okay, going OOC for a minute here, but in the monster manual, it even says "ALWAYS evil". Always, 100% of the time. The only thing the monster manual says about how they act is that they're evil assholes.: But, the drow are always evil, and look at Drizzt! He's lawful good! If I could, I would wish the dragons good!This went on for several minutes, until finally the GM said "Okay, fine, there's a ring of three wishes in the loot" : I wish the three black dragons are good! That's only one wish, right? : Yeah, sure, fine. Whatever.: So you're now fully evil, right? I mean, that's what forcibly changing someone's alignment is. : No, I did it in the name of good! It can't be an evil act if I did it in the name of good!: I understand your logic, mein Fuehrer (said in a bad german accent). And if we don't agree with you, will you forcibly change our alignments as well and brainwash us?: If I have to, I will. was dead serious on that last note. honestly did not see what amounted to brainwashing creatures as evil, as long as he could justify it. I have only played in one game with since then, and it was a BESM game based off of Doctor Who, where he played the Doctor, and tried to use "Knowledge: Quantum Mechanics" for everything. Identifying rifts in space, repairing time machines, IDENTIFYING WHAT KIND OF A TREE WAS IN A FOREST. At the end of the session, he threw a hissyfit when he found out that one of the other characters (the class was a beastmaster, if I recall) who got a new level 1 monster at every level, and stated that "That means you get an extra 20 points every level to work with, that's broken!"
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Apr 5, 2012 07:36
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Randalor posted:As we are allowed to post second-hand stories, I can tell about the second game session that was banned from being mentioned at the club. Now, the reason why the previous story and the following one were banned wasn't because of what happened in them, but that because whenever they were mentioned, I don't know, while the D&D alignment system is genuinely awful, I'm not sure that using magic to change someone's mind about something is unarguably worse than killing them outright. At least something gets to survive and thrive otherwise; plus, the exterminate all the inherently evil brutes is pretty definitely an evil point of view to advocate.
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Apr 5, 2012 09:05
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Randalor posted:
You want to murder children based solely on their race, and you're calling him Hitler?
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Apr 5, 2012 09:46
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Dammit Who? posted:You want to murder children based solely on their race, and you're calling him Hitler?  Bravo, bravo. Bards will sing of this  for years to come
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Apr 5, 2012 09:49
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 Beautiful. Simply beautiful.
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Apr 5, 2012 12:05
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Dammit Who? posted:You want to murder children based solely on their race, and you're calling him Hitler? That depends, did someone cast Tensor's floating gas chamber?
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Apr 5, 2012 13:12
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The irony about "children are always innocent" is that many philosophers argued the exact opposite, that children are absolute tyrants and would terrorize everything around them if they had any power. Augustine of Hippo specifically talked about how willful a child was and how demanding they were until adults or civilization taught them better, and used that as evidence of original sin. I always get super annoyed by people trying to game their abilities for extra power, especially for thing their class is supposed to be bad at. Let other players have a chance to shine instead of doing your contrived bullshit. Quantum Mechanics, really?!
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Apr 5, 2012 16:02
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Yeah kids are pretty much born sociopaths who eventually (usually) lose most of their monstrous evil as they age. Also, what's really disgusting is that according to the books, using magic and/or brainwashing to turn someone good actually IS a [Good] act. There's even a spell that imprisons a non-good being for a year and basically beats a Good alignment into them. Death to Alignment.
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Apr 5, 2012 17:09
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I remember reading "Villains by Necessity" by Eve Forward when I was in high school. Its basically an Evil Campaign dnd story where the protagonists are some of the last "evil" beings in the world and the last of the druids trying to help them restore balance to the world. Essentially, the Forces of Good finally got the upper hand in the battle between darkness and light and forced the retreating forces of evil back through a sort of mystical gate and sealed. The books starts up years later as the days are getting longer, people are uncommonly healthy, flowers are blooming out of season, etc. The interesting bit was how the book depicts some the "good" aligned characters. An Elven master wizard is essentially an benevolent dictator of his own city state and regularly conducts magical brainwashing to make criminals good upstanding citizens. Later, the party is being hunted by a Robin Hood like son of one of the original great heroes. He comes off as a bored adventure seeker using the excuse of capturing the group of villains to take his huge private army of rangers and wizards on a great hunt, stopping to root out half dead monsters and boogie men along the way. Also, he intends to "rescue" the beautiful druid.
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Apr 5, 2012 17:56
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Dammit Who? posted:You want to murder children based solely on their race, and you're calling him Hitler? In this case he was calling him Hitler because of his "it can't be evil because i'm doing it in the name of good" mindset combined with forcing his solution. The party was willing to discuss it with the dragonborn PC. And remember that this is D&D alignment where dragons are colored-coded for your convenience, and alignments are dumb.
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Apr 5, 2012 19:47
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I do like the idea of all children being evil. To the point where you cannot reliably detect evil in a heavily populated area due to massive levels of background evil.
Ignite Memories fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Apr 5, 2012 |
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Apr 5, 2012 20:10
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pw pw pw posted:I do like the idea of all children being evil. To the point where you cannot reliably detect evil in a heavily populated area due to massive levels of background evil. When you try to detect evil, you just get really dizzy and your nose starts bleeding.
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Apr 5, 2012 20:27
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Mechafunkzilla posted:When you try to detect evil, you just get really dizzy and your nose starts bleeding. The first image to me that came to mind was from some other goon's WH40K game where a psyker tried to read a (many thousands of times mindwiped) guy's mind, freaks out, and eats his lasgun. I forget whose game it was, though.
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Apr 5, 2012 22:36
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Malachite_Dragon posted:The first image to me that came to mind was from some other goon's WH40K game where a psyker tried to read a (many thousands of times mindwiped) guy's mind, freaks out, and eats his lasgun. I forget whose game it was, though. Heard of it before. Think it was pasted on /tg/ as well. It might have been RT or DH. Great read. pw pw pw posted:I do like the idea of all children being evil. To the point where you cannot reliably detect evil in a heavily populated area due to massive levels of background evil. It's completely true. Any creature acting on instinct (which is what a child basically is doing most of the time) given any sort of advantage or power will utilize it to the maximum for the sole purpose of self-gratification. Do not use if you are a paladin under oath, effects in such circumstances will cause loss of blood, loss of bone and bone marrow integrity, loss of brain matter, brusing and eventual death, these effects may manifest not only in the paladin but also in any surrounding child. Rigged Death Trap fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Apr 6, 2012 |
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Apr 6, 2012 03:15
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Malachite_Dragon posted:freaks out, and eats his lasgun. ...I thought the comments about those things being made out of cardboard and tissue paper were just exaggerations.
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Apr 6, 2012 03:19
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Randalor posted:
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Apr 6, 2012 03:24
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MadScientistWorking posted:Technically babies are completely blank slates when first born though. Except for all of the, you know, instincts we all have. No one is ever a blank slate, except in terms of experiences.
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Apr 6, 2012 03:45
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Eh, they have proto-personalities. Horribly selfish and solipsistic ones, but still... Man, I want to post a story about what I did to my Monsters group but the game isn't over yet and one of them might be lurking on here...
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Apr 6, 2012 03:47
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Tollymain posted:Eh, they have proto-personalities. Horribly selfish and solipsistic ones, but still...
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Apr 6, 2012 10:40
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Everything is Chaotic Neutral by birth.
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Apr 6, 2012 11:49
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Malachite_Dragon posted:The first image to me that came to mind was from some other goon's WH40K game where a psyker tried to read a (many thousands of times mindwiped) guy's mind, freaks out, and eats his lasgun. I forget whose game it was, though. I just reread this story the other day, looking for something different in the best experiences thread. It's worth reposting. This is the pretty cool story where it's offhandedly mentioned: Squidster posted:My character at the time, Tabula, was a Mindwiped Arbitrator, who had been wiped endless times. He had learned that he had a wife and son, and that she had been killed in front of him by his Inquisitor. Though he looked young, he was apparently hundreds of years old, and had served several Inquisitors in time. And this is the post with the details: Squidster posted:A Mindwiped character is one who learnt too much, but is for some reason too valuable to just kill. Every fragment of their memory and personality is pushed down and overwritten with a more 'convenient' personality.
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Apr 6, 2012 13:07
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A few days ago I had my first taste of 3.5 with a few guys from my college that my roommate introduced me to. The GM was running a quick campaign to try out these decks of cards he had, one for critical failures, one for critical successes and one for plot card. Each party member was given one of the plot cards. This wasn't the first session he had run for this campaign. A couple of the guys had been in the village already and had dealt with the goblin siege. By "dealt with" I mean they smashed the first goblin they came to outside the goblin cave, then found themselves faced with 40+ angry goblins. What did they do? Well, one of them had the plot card "Warm Fuzzies" which he figured he could use to defuse the situation. So he peeled the dead goblin off his mace and offered it back in a gesture of good will. By the end of that session, they had allied with the goblins, fast talked their way onto the village council, and fortified the goblin cave with ballistae and the like. So in the second session, some new people came including me playing a human ranger. A messenger, jaundiced and worn out from traveling from another village, collapses in the middle of town, begs for help, then dies. As the funeral pyre is being prepared and the only doctor in the village is leaving to go see what's up, the corpse rises and begins eating a commoner. I get the first turn in combat and try to shoot it. First dice roll in the game and I roll a 1. DM pulls out a card from the deck, and I end up shooting myself in the leg. I think the best part of that session though was when we were attacked while investigating a farmhouse by four more undead things and a dwarf. Halfway through the fight, our fighter decides to go all Kool aid man and bust through a window, run over to the dwarf and beat the poo poo out of him. He misses, but the dwarf is suitably scared and pissing himself. Towards the end of the fight, our spellcaster plays his plot card, which is "phobia", making the dwarf afraid of badgers. Then he casts Summon Monster I to make a badger jump on the dwarf. The dwarf by this point has run out of urine and is now passing blood. I, thinking quickly, decide we could use him alive and interrogate him for info on the plague that's causing the undead things. So I play my card "Broken" and declare the dwarf's will to fight to be shattered. He promptly collapses into a pile of tears, urine, blood, and angry badger. Not a bad end to my first time playing D&D.
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Apr 6, 2012 14:12
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Genocide and racial profiling are the cornerstones of D&D. All Dwarves are surly bearded types with a fondness for gold, all Elves are beautiful mystical beings that excel at archery, all Orcs are dumb bloodthirsty savages that must be exterminated, all Drow are cruel and manipulative spider-jockeys that will slit your throat as soon as you turn your back. Except for Drizzt he's one of the good ones.
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Apr 8, 2012 05:41
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SO I do have a good story to tell about my SAGA edition group: Specifically, we've been sent to a space system. In that system are a space station, a planetary base, two half-formed super-stardestroyers, and the legendary Star Forge in the middle, forming the second from the first. For reference, I am playing K3-PX, a liberated protocol droid working for the alliance. His highest goal is to see non-biological lifeforms receive galactic recognition and equal rights. SO first we infiltrate the most complete super-stardestroyer. The rest of the group flubs their Stealth and Deception checks, so we get stuck up in enginerring, where I can access the systems I need but the rest of the jokers need to keep the endless waves of stormtroopers at bay. After six rounds, I've got the engines set to crash into the other super star destroyer -and- the power reactor to blow at just the same time -and- the systems sabotagued such that they can't hope to repair them in the 20 seconds to impact. I tell everyone else to bug out. And we do bug out, right into the spacestation loading docks, and splitting up, some of us cause lots of distracting mayhem, while others move towards the bridge. Now, while I can see on view screens that the two superstardestroyers are gone, the mysterious starforge still remains. So, I use my abilities to fit it as Just Another Droid, totally unnoticed, to get to the Inquisitor's chamber, where I can hack into almost any system, including station weapons. Unfortunately, the part Jedi and the chief Sith come into the chamber, the latter intending to have the former kill his captive Jedi master. They end up squabbling their force-user-type fight, a really epic battle, with Force Chokes and Force Rebuk flying, just this epic battle of Force power going on while I am hacking into station systems to bring all guns on line and to bear against the Star Forge. I roll a nat 20 on my attack roll. The Star Forge disintegrates under turbolaser fre. I crow, to the Jedi and the Sith alike "This is what true power is! Not your barbaric reliance on feelings and motivations...true power is technology and progress!" Let me tell you, K3-PX was the happiest droid that day, no matter how ridiculous. J. Alfred Prufrock fucked around with this message at 13:48 on Apr 8, 2012 |
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Apr 8, 2012 13:37
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The power of the force is as nothing compared to the power to destroy something that has the power to destroy a planet.
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Apr 8, 2012 16:54
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K3-PX is awesome and I like the cut of his jib.
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Apr 8, 2012 20:13
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Volmarias posted:35. Ring of Spider Summoning (summons 1d6 non-magical, non-poisonous, average sized spiders) This is from like two pages ago but... Wish Sandwhich. You get two slices of bread you and wish you had some meat. Also DCB, your Star Wars stories have... inspired myself and a friend in our own campaign. You too J. Alfred Prufrock. Droids own.
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Apr 9, 2012 07:04
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Yeah, I don't even like Starwars that much but those stories own bones. I'm eager to hear more. Heck, I'd even try playing a game.
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Apr 9, 2012 08:41
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A Frosty Beverage posted:Heck, I'd even try playing a game. What I'm trying to say here is that I would be up for it, too, but I'm not holding my breath on finding a decent, reliable GM.
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Apr 9, 2012 08:58
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Hopefully I will have more stories (even potentially The Conclusion depending on whether the GM wants to keep going) soon; RL issues keep pushing our gaming sessions back. Also I hope I'll be able to live up to the expectations. 
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Apr 9, 2012 09:06
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I think for a good Star Wars game you have to have a DM who's a combination of knowledgeable about the time period and willing to let you be big drat heroes doing ridiculous things. One of the few times I played, I was a hacker working for the alliance in a Rebellion era game. The DM knew a lot about the universe, but hated when people tried to do things outside the box. We were escaping from a Star Destroyer and had gotten pinned down in one of the docking bays, so I hacked in to a console and accessed the TIE fighter launch controls. I used the claws that maneuver the TIEs to drop one right on top of the door that the stormtroopers were flooding in through, causing it to collapse in on itself and block the doorway. We started getting ready to steal a shuttle when another door opened and the same troops poured in. It was just so deflating that we never really played again after that. Later I asked the GM about it and he said that he didn't expect us to do that and that we were supposed to get captured, so he had to reboot the encounter. I have not played with him again.
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Apr 9, 2012 15:02
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thiswayliesmadness posted:Something I was wondering. Has anyone really had a long term evil game work out well? I found them fun as one shots or small games, but long games always devolve into full on party conflict. Of course it didn't help my gaming group back in the day wasn't the best. I should have realized how much of a pain one player would be when he insisted he his druids name be "Lord DukeKing Numbnuts". The last D&D campaign I was in worked fairly well. We were a group of Drow hunting down the people that almost wiped out our city (thankfully my character was ignored when she pointed out that "But... the houses began attacking each other en mass"). Only time there was party conflict was when the sorcerer spent an entire fight running away from the fight, returned, cast two spells and then bragged for the rest of the session that it was all because of him the fight was won. I summoned an earth elemental out of the party's sight, and commanded it to attack the males, starting with the weakest. It attacked the sorcerer, and the two other males in the group watched for a few seconds, then continued walking back, while the sorcerer was knocked down to 1hp. I blamed it on deep gnomes, and when the female inquisitor asked the sorcerer if there was loot, he made the mistake of lying to her. He didn't die, at least.
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Apr 9, 2012 20:40
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This situation hasn't quite reached worst experience levels yet, but the potential is definitely there. But first some background: I recently started an RPG group with some friends, most of whom have never played before. We start off with 4e because I haven't run a game in a while that's what I'm most comfortable with running on short notice. Things have been going pretty well. We made it through the Slaying Stone without incident and everyone's been having a good time. But of course, it couldn't last. Turns out my girlfriend and I are going to be moving across the country this summer for at least 15 months, so the group was going to need a new DM. It's decided that the only other guy in the group with any DMing experience (mostly with 3e/Pathfinder) is going to take over now since we just finished the module. Great, right? I get to be a player for a few sessions for a change and he gets to learn how to run 4e with someone who's played it a whole bunch. So I go about making a character and a few others make new characters to try out something new. He asks us for some backstory/motivations since he wants the game to be a little more player driven. Awesome! I have a level 3 brawler fighter who I decide is a former guard captain who was sentenced to death after he refused to execute a poor peasant who was caught poaching on the lands of his corrupt lord. He fought his way out of the castle and has been on the road since. Simple enough. And then I get this in my email last night: quote:For our first session: After a rash of raids on local hammlets, the city of Bedlam that resides very close to the King's Wall, hired you on along with several other able body fighters to provide extra protection for the city's citizens. Unlike the other hamlets, Bedlam boasts a 10 foot wall that surrounds the city. The wall is kept in good shape and it is clear to you that the city needs no extra protection. One night as you walk the wall debating whether to give up on your easy paying job in pursuit of somethign more exciting, you here a commotion further on down the wall. Expecting to startle one of the other newly hired guards from a drunken slumber, you quickly move down the wall resisting the urge to light a torch for the sake of scaring the crap out of the moron who has fallen asleep. To your surprise and horror, you find at least 10 goblins coming your way. As you begin to wonder how the hell all these goblins scaled the wall without notice and pull your weapon, something out of the dark hits with some force. You quickly realize you are immobilized by some type of sticky substance. Unable to pull the your weapon and fight, it dawns on you that this may be your last moments. The goblins quickly converge on your location and begin to hammer your head with blows. Fending them off as best as you can, the goblins suddenly back away and part for a rather mean looking goblin. The goblin wickedly smiles at you and says in broken common"Who dare try to stop Urgog the Mangler. After you watch the city you swore to protect burn, I will use you as warning for all those foolish enough to stand against me." Now speaking to the goblins around him "see this mighty warrior that the humans hired to protect them, see how he trembles before Urgog, begging for the mercy he knows that he will not receive. Now for my trophy!!" The goblins hoot and holler as Urgog pulls a knife and proceeds the cut off one of your ears. And has blood pours down your face, he turns your head towards the city to see the first flames arise. Getting so close to your face that drops of spittle hit your face as he hisses..."now you fear Urgog..." and begins to laugh as you feel a tremendous blow to your head and your vision fades to black......  Seriously dude? I haven't seen this much railroady bullshit since high school. We're all adults now who can come up with our own reasons to be interested in whatever plot you've got going. You don't have to go cutting pieces off our characters.At this point mostly I'm just hoping I was an outlier and he didn't deprotagonize the rest of the group too much since they're all still pretty new to the hobby.
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Apr 10, 2012 16:00
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ImpactVector posted:And then I get this in my email last night:  " kind of DMs. It's a habit that is breakable.
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Apr 10, 2012 16:42
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Yawgmoth posted:Tell him this. Some people just don't know any better than to railroad, even when they've been in better games. Help him figure out how to make interesting plot hooks without forcing people into them. Dude sounds like he's one of those "but what if they do something I don't plan for?! Truth be told, I don't actually know the guy that well since he was a friend of a friend. We've had a few Facebook discussion threads about game style before (after I was called the "nicest DM ever" for helping one guy find a few +hit modifiers he'd forgotten about after he missed by 1) and he's definitely got an old-school mindset. I just didn't think he was THAT old-school. E: Also it's going to be really awkward because I'm pretty sure he's been roleplaying quite a bit longer than I have and he's about 10 years older than me. But I'm just bitching at this point. ImpactVector fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Apr 10, 2012 |
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Apr 10, 2012 16:54
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ImpactVector posted:And then I get this in my email last night: There is nothing wrong with the DM telling you the events of the last day or so in your backstory. It maybe isn't the best way to go but I wouldn't go in there being all huffy about it, it doesn't guarantee anything other than that you have a quest and a named enemy right away. That said, your DM is a lovely writer, and could end up railroading you just because he loves his own bad writing.
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Apr 10, 2012 17:11
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Liesmith posted:There is nothing wrong with the DM telling you the events of the last day or so in your backstory. It maybe isn't the best way to go but I wouldn't go in there being all huffy about it, it doesn't guarantee anything other than that you have a quest and a named enemy right away. That said, your DM is a lovely writer, and could end up railroading you just because he loves his own bad writing. But maiming a character before play even starts? That's a bit over the line in my book.
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Apr 10, 2012 17:18
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It's almost like a kicker, except those are a sentence long, written by the player, and invite a variety of responses. Something like "The drugs are gone!" or "Your father's dismembered corpse is in the bathtub!" or the like.
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Apr 10, 2012 17:28
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ImpactVector posted:Mostly I just object to the ear taking. That's kind of a dick move in my mind. Until that point I was totally cool with just following along. That really doesn't sound too bad at all, and it seems to have had the intended effect considering how worked up you are about your character's ear being lopped off. Just try to take that indignation and use it in-character instead of worrying about what should or shouldn't have been done from a metagaming standpoint. From a GM's perspective, players who get upset when they're character gets uglied up instead of finding it amusing are annoying, as they tend to be the types who get more pleasure from living vicariously through their Mary Sue avatar than from actual roleplaying. Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Apr 10, 2012 |
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Apr 10, 2012 17:37
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And remember to take 2 off your listen checks.
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Apr 10, 2012 17:39
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