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Volmarias posted:That's fair, except that widespread heresy can doom the planet just as surely as collapsing those pylons can destroy the city. Yep. You could very well frame the question as "Do we kill millions of civilians in order to save the planet from Chaos or risk the lives of tens of millions of loyal Guardsmen to take back the planet if it falls?" Of course, the killing of millions of civilians could also be empowering Chaos in some vile ritual to take the planet, so there's that concern as well.
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Sep 16, 2012 20:44
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| # ? May 13, 2024 22:33 |
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I've played around ten games of Fiasco, but never one that made me want to cry. I don't think I'll be able to play Boomtown again, because it was untoppable. We used mostly the default "relationships", so we ended up with: Clyde Bartlett[me], a cowardly bank owner, Ester Ng, his Vietnamese mail order bride, John Face, the gangster determined to recruit her, and his rival Sheriff Rudy Blackstone, who was close as blood with Clyde. The need: To get away from Hard Riding Vengeance. The object: A tear stained love letter. The location: A bandit hideout in Indian Country. I started the first scene; Clyde and Rudy were sitting in Rudy's office, drinking. Clyde was worried about his upcoming bride, Rudy told him to 'talk to her, just talk to her'. Both worried that gangster John Face would be back soon. We then cut to Ester. She described the 5 o'clock train bringing her to town; lovely, run down, low rate, and filled with John Face's thugs. The well shaven JF tried to recruit her to his posse, telling her "there's a way girls like you can earn a lot of money." Ester thought he was recruiting her to be a prostitute and clammed up. The next scene was between John and the Sheriff, so we decided it was time for a flashback. It was a few years ago; John Face's gang (played by me and Ester's character) were more excited than competent. During the robbery, Billy Wilson blew off the back wall of the bank, as well as his hands. Angie, the girl bandit from New York, stuck up the front...but a posse arrived. The explosion kicked up a cloud of dust, and the bearded John left his gang to die. *** Back in the present, Ester and Clyde met. Ester was angry that someone on the train had tried to sell her into prostitution; Clyde tried to determine who it was, but couldn't find John. John watched from the shadows; if he couldn't recruit Ester, he could use her to get to Clyde to get to Rudy. Ester was in no way glad to see him, but they retired to Clyde's apartment over the general store. Clyde promised though America may be odd, he'd show his new bride the best parts of it and take her out riding. A day or so later, Clyde was showing Ester the saloon. The problem was that John Face was there, gambling, with his posse. Ester screamed and ran for the sheriff. Unfortunately, Rudy couldn't fight an entire gang - not in a saloon, anyway. He recognized John's voice, but Ester saw the sheriff as a coward for not gunning John down. Here, we had act 2, and drew the following elements: Somebody Panics and A sudden reversal of loyalty, status, or luck. Ester stole from Clyde's apartment, taking the money and buying a gun. Unfortunately, the gun seller was one of John's thugs. In a harrowing scene in a dark alley, Ester held a gun to John. "You didn't think I'd sell you a loaded weapon, didja?" he asked, before clocking her in the face. She wakes up in his mine-hideout in Indian country. In a hilarious scene, a bunch of bumbling bandits play good cop/bad cop (with the kindest, dumbest gangster being coached by two others from the shadows). They discover what Ester wants; not money, not fame, but a ticket back home. --- Meanwhile, Rudy is talking to his wife, Angie. She was the mole who betrayed John Face and ruined the bank robbery. (She was also portrayed by Ester's player, in an amazing callback). Rudy decides to stash her in the nearby indian village. In the shortest scene ever, Clyde rides through Indian Country and is ambushed. Ester rides off as Clyde curses her; he never could get women. We decide to skip directions, since the next scene would've been Ester, and her story should be deliberately left hanging. Instead, we go to Rudy...who opens his pocket. Inside, there's a tear stained love letter, from Angie. She's pregnant. Rudy's gathered a posse, and they find the mine entrance. What follows was a horrific gun battle. John's forces are entrenched, Rudy's posse uses fire. EVERYONE but John, Clyde and Rudy are injured. Clyde's had the poo poo beaten out of him, one eye swollen shut; John's bleeding from the leg, and Rudy might die of a chest wound. Rudy chases John. He gets close, until he sees a familiar face... Billy Williams. The two-stumped fella sets off TNT, collapsing the mine between John and Rudy. John, ever the escape artist, gets to the mouth of the mine... where he sees Ester, on horseback, with a shotgun. She speaks simply: "I have a loaded gun now." Despite his pleas for mercy, she blows off his beautiful face. Down in the mine, Clyde tends to his best friend Rudy. He loads his friend into a minecart, and begins pushing it toward the entrance. It's a slow pan of extreme gore; people have had arms blown off, legs hanging limp, a catalog of human destruction. Rudy, delusional from blood loss, says he'll chase John to the end of the Earth. They finally get to the mouth of the mine, and they see a horse riding off. Rudy aims and shoots. The rider goes down. The horse falls on top. Clyde stumbles over John's corpse. "You may not have to go that far." The last frame of the act is on Rudy's face; who did he just shoot? --- The aftermath, a montage: Ester lies dying, ribs cracked, under a horse. Clyde, a failure, fakes documents that his bride never arrived. John's gang dissolves. Rudy, who got his posse killed, turns in his badge. Ester's family is investigated by the authorities: where'd their daughter go? Why'd they never send her? Clyde tries to repair his bank, but it'll never be the same since it got blown up a few years ago. He buys a train ticket west and sets up a crude grave. Bill Williams, crippled, emerges from the mine with Clyde's stolen money. Maybe he'll even live to spend it. Angie has her child, and she and Clyde leave town. Ester's sister sets out to America to find out what happens to her. Rudy and Ester's sister stand by the small grave by a new set of railroad tracks. The tracks may be the end of Indian Country. Later, on the shittiest train available, Angie opens a small wooden box, containing a tear stained love letter. It's from John, dated four years ago. He promises that if she'll take him back, he'll be an honest man. She strikes a match and sets it on fire. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Mar 12, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2012 21:36
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Jesus. I need to set up a game of Fiasco one of these days...
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Sep 17, 2012 07:31
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Fear not Good, Bad, Catpiss, I'm here to save you from the loneliness of Page 3! Another friend of mine ran an odd NWoD game a while ago. The premise was we were normal people who gained supernatural powers, and there was an option to buy a GM made up Mystery power. It was a lot of fun, two other friends and I played and while I and one other friend originally made our characters with minds to ending up as a Werewolf and Mage, the second friend playing went for a random power. It was one of the more engaging things to the game, so much so that I and my first friend ended up buying the power as well. I was a big bruiser bikie gangster type character, friend one was a uni student and friend two was an impulsive school-kid who worshipped Naruto. Things that happened in the game included: Breaking into the kid's house to try and find out why his entire family had disappeared from reality. We found a different family living there and managed to pull a teddybear with the spirit of the kid's sister from the Spirit-Realm back into reality. Then while we drove away from the house with the cops coming (we'd tripped alarms) mage-friend cast a spell and got us stuck in a perceived time-loop. The crazy thing was my character was still driving, while we thought we were living the same minute over and over. Luckily I snapped out of it quickly and didn't have an accident! My character got some weird astral projection powers and accidentally managed to transfer his consciousness into a bizarre shadow dimension filled with Eldritch monstrosities. He met a dapper British anthropomorphic lion who was the ruler of the dimension and had a non-Euclidean mansion that he lived in. After my character passed his tests to reach him, he offered me a choice of self-sacrifice and justice, balance and neutrality, and finally power and strength of will. Being who he was my character chose the last option and got a rifle that would fire out his negative emotions. Later on after making some deals with spirits we went to some weird academy for Mages, because the spirits had told us we could find the kid's sister there. I was nominally a Werewolf at this point and because I didn't have dedicated clothes and had gone into the Spirit Realm in the normal Werewolf fashion, when I got shunted out by the Mage barrier/entrance spell I lost all of my clothes. We proceeded to complete an entrance exam that only Mages should be able to (when I got to a puzzle my character could not complete his astral-projection upgraded into teleportation) and were greeted by the entire school in the dining hall ala Harry Potter. After a few seconds everything went quiet as everyone in the school noticed my character was stark naked. Mage friend (now mostly a Mage) gained his unique power, which ended up being the ability to see magic. Side effect was that his sight was also a tactile sense for him. This lead to many awkward situations. Ninja-kid gained Earth Ninjutsu and the ability to meld with the earth by winging his Naruto hand-signs (this was how he used his Ninjutsu!) by adapting the Atlantean the Mage had been using while he was still mastering proper Willworking. Unfortunately while he could meld with the earth relatively easily keeping his flesh separate from the ground proved to be somewhat more difficult for him. For the rest of the game he also had bits of earth and rock in his skin. The Mage found an ancient Atlantean sword and underwent a trial that nearly killed him to prove he was worthy of it. Later he used the sword to augment his magic to create a separate pocket dimension, cut through any object and magical spell, and even travel through time. My character discovered that he could accidentally teleport to alternate realities by creating a flawed or inaccurate image of his intended destination in his mind. This introduced him to his alternate selves, a number of which had lives paralleling his closely enough to have similar powers. One of them had picked the neutrality and balance option and wanted to kill my version before he could ruin the world. The other version of him running around had also chosen the power option, but ended up merging with his gun to become some kind of shadow creature. He wanted to eat the Ninja-kid for his powers, as well as eat my character in a scenario reminiscent to The One. We travelled through time and witnessed: The fall of Atlantis and the Death of Father Wolf, Father Wolf ascend to the Supernal Realm with the Archmage of Atlantis, A Ninja society in the future, The apocalypse that happened after with roaming bands of Ninja hit squads, The 1900's where Hunters had a strangelhold on the world. (Here we discovered my character had become so practiced at teleporting he could do it without thinking while Death-Raging. This was very bad for everyone) And then finally we managed to break reality so much that all the various worlds managed to start being forced apart. The Mage ended up using my character, the Ninja kid and himself to tie all the various realms together in an epic spell that...accidentally compressed time and space into a singularity, rebooted time itself and caused us to be present at the beginning of time. The Ninja-kid was revealed to be the Spirit of the Tree of Life (there'd been hints through the game that he wasn't actually human at all, and he could do lots of stuff in the Spirit Realm easily and spirits loved him) and my character became Father Wolf. So between us, the Ninja-Kid created life, I created the Spirit-Realm and the Mage created the Soul and Magic. It was like a bizarro Holy Trinity. ...and then in the final session the GM made us wake up in an insane asylum. We ran to a point where it was really ambiguous as to whether something had happened to us as we slept after creating the world, or whether we were all just completely insane. I was really angry at the time. I really loved the game and while I knew the GM wanted to wrap it up, I had expected an ending. Instead I got a lot of unanswered questions and one of the worst plot devices in literature. I'm still kind of a bit bitter about the end to be honest, and hope that the GM will continue it again one day. He said he might and I'm hopeful, but realistically I don't actually expect it to have a proper ending ever. Which is a shame because it was the most fun and engaging game I've played in.
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Sep 20, 2012 08:14
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An old, old friend I haven't seen in forever was brought up in conversation. Then I saw this thread title, and was reminded of something. Our next door neighbor back in whee childhood to early teenage years was the Best Friend of my brother and I, back then I knew him as 'my awesome friend, who has that TV bigger than I am and a lot of video games and RPG stuff and Magic the gathering cards and-'. Later in life, I learned some  things like "Where did his First Mom go?" Answer: She killed herself. Along with the passed along knowledge that the mothersday after that, during the night he had accidentally stepped on and killed his kitten that was sitting on the stairs. Etc.I knew him a long time, so the exact time period this exact story was is hazy. I think I was around maybe 12? My brother is about 2 years younger than I am, and Good Friend was a few years older than me in turn. So, Ninja Turtles. He had all those RPG books. The one in particular in this case? Mutants in the Yucatan. I saw a Snake with a safari jacket and a shotgun in the book, and was all like "Yeah, that's what I want." My brother went for a Lion, and Good Friend was GM. A Small PreGen from the back of the book went by with little incident, us stumbling through with no real knowledge of the rules but getting things done by virtue of "We are mutants with guns" and my brilliant strategy of "An invisible soldier is grappling my brother? I'm a snake! I'll squeeze them both! Lions are tougher than invisible wusses  "Then... Something all Good Friend was run after that. The Scenario: We are kidnapped. We wake up in a lab. We are among other victims, and there is something about the scenery that ties into our situation. A) There are jars of genitalia on the shelves everywhere (I had to ask Good Friend what "genitalia" meant )B) Me, my brother, and all the others are missing our genitalia. I can't remember who asked, but somebody asked, with childlike innocence and not quite grasping the horror "Then how do we go to the bathroom?" The answer? We are suddenly struck by the need to take a whizz. But we have no package anymore. So, we barf up a fountain of piss  We didn't do RPG stuff with Good Friend after that anymore.
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Sep 20, 2012 13:26
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That was a pretty  story, but what was "Then... Something all Good Friend was run after that." supposed to be?
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Sep 21, 2012 00:33
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Tollymain posted:That was a pretty
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Sep 21, 2012 01:54
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I just played Fiasco for the first time. It was awesome. We've played Baron Munchausen and Everyone Is John a fair bit, but Fiasco's extra structure worked really well for us. I can't really type up a summary of the plot that's as entertaining as the game, but London Gangsters in the 1980s bungle a robbery, steal 10,000 Jesus Pamphlets (Jesus is misspelled though), and get beaten up by a local bigwig gang type guy before being arrested. The owner of the Jesus Pamphlets is one of the gangsters' probation officer, and is killed in the robbery. One robber gets beaten so badly he's paralysed, and one gets stabbed in jail during the aftermath. Glorious chaos.
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Sep 24, 2012 14:15
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So, um. Remember back in June I had told you about our last Star Wars game, and then the gaming store we played at shut down and we've been casting about for a new place to play? We found (a temporary) one today. Finally, finally, I get to finish the story. (it's a doozy.) To recap, briefly: Battle of Endor. Our group gets dispatched to attack Coruscant as a delaying/distracting tactic. We succeeded beyond anyone's expectations and conquered Coruscant. Go us! We learned, however, that the Death Star did not get destroyed at Endor, and that it was on its way here. It arrived today. Before it did, though - what remained of our fleet was sitting in a defensive position out near Coruscant's lunar orbit (it has four moons; we controlled the volume of space out to the outer lunar orbit). A whole shitload of Imperial ships kept on arriving at a rally point further out in the system, preparing to - we suspect - move on us once they get the whole 'who's in command' issue sorted out. We expect the Death Star to arrive tomorrow. We were sadly wrong. See, you may remember from the films... the second Death Star wasn't finished construction at the Battle of Endor. Which means that when it fired up its hyperdrive to come to Coruscant, it was pushing less mass than it was designed for. So it actually got there quicker than we expected. But before it did (see how I build up the tension there?), a badly damaged Mon Calamari Cruiser arrives, venting atmosphere and generally in terrible shape. Here's what we learn from them: A) the shield generator protecting the Death Star was still active at the battle's start because Han Solo's ground forces were delayed in their attack; the troops stationed on Endor actually knew their poo poo and didn't get destroyed by Muppets this time around. B) the planetside shield generator, if you recall, was depicted as a parabolic dish - a movable dish. Meaning that, with some coordination, the Death Star could move around during the fighting. Not quickly, but it could. C) As the battle began, the Rebels decided to close in with the Star Destroyers; this way if the Death Star started taking potshots, it would damage the enemy's capital ships as well as ours, which would limit their ability to stop the Rebel fighters - which could, theoretically, swoop in once the shield generator was finally destroyed and make their attack run. D) The Death Star, mid-battle, maneuvered around behind Rebel lines and opened up a can of whoop-rear end with turbolasers... only, see, further examination of the Mon Cal's sensor data indicated that that wasn't what actually happened at all. The Death Star wasn't in range for an attack like that. The turbolasers appeared to be coming from 'invisible ships' of some sort or another. ...so that was ominous. Then they arrived, finally - out of position from where we expected them - and dislodged a number of vessels. Captured vessels, apparently - the Millenium Falcon (containing Lando Calrissian and crew), an A-Wing fighter (containing Wedge Antilles), and a Tyderian Shuttlecraft. The Death Star sends a message saying, in effect, "The Emperor recognizes your success. Rather than simply crushing you with the full weight of the Imperial Military, he has decided to cause such pain, anguish, and heartache to any and all who have sworn to the cause of the 'New Galactic Republic' that the very people themselves will pull you down and beg for the return of his just rule. We are returning several captives to you. They will not help you." Now, this whole time the Imperial Fleet facing our own ships is getting bigger and bigger; literally everything on the Imperial Order of Battle except Star Destroyers are there. Cruisers, patrol vessels, every kind of 'small ship' you can imagine. Hell, troop transports and bulk freighters. We're getting real nervous about this. They are advancing, slowly, but have not yet raised their shields; they are using one of Coruscant's moons as cover of a sort, and keeping it between themselves and our fleet. Then the Death Star's superlaser fires. On the moon. The resulting explosion of Giant Chunks of Lunar Shrapnel devastates both fleets. I mean fuckin' annihilates them. Our ships fare better - at least we still had shields up. But the losses are just simply brutal. Then the Death Star - which has just neatly eliminated every ship in the area whose crews and captains are of potentially dubious loyalty, leaving only the Star Destroyers whose captains are hand-picked for such qualities as the only spaceworthy 'heavy platforms' in this region of space - loving leaves. Oh, around now is when the Tyderian Shuttle is landing. It disgorges Commander Luke Skywalker... and (and this is a quote from Luke) "my father, Anakin Skywalker, the redeemed." This is the part where everyone at the table shat the proverbial brick. Though he was missing a hand, Darth Fuckin' Vader is still a pretty loving ominous-lookin' fellow... and he claims to be here in service to the Rebellion, looking for a chance to restore the Republic and atone for twenty years of sin. Turns out, see, that the fight went down the way it did in the films... Vader turned on Palpatine, chucked him down a power conduit, the whole works. Only, see, the Death Star wasn't in the process of getting shot to hell at this point, so instead of having to flee for his life, Luke could save Vader's life and then get captured. (around this time the Death Star arrived at Kuat Drive Yards, where it promptly sliced the shipyards in half and then left again, to God knows where, taking the Lusyanka and the Executor with it...) Turns out the Imperials have been receiving... 'visions' over the past few days. Visions of Palpatine, who is giving them orders (My hunch is that he is busy being a Force Ghost while he waits for a clone to decant...). And Palpatine's Ghost is not interested in simply beating the Rebellion - he is interested in crushing it, and crushing the people, so that suddenly embracing the Empire again starts to look like a good idea. He has purged officers of doubtful loyalty with his moon-destruction act while also denying us the chance to steal and/or suborn the ships they commanded. He is basically saying 'you guys can have all the planets you want, and that are dumb enough to join you; meanwhile I control the most powerful fleet in the galaxy, and you will never know where I intend to strike next.' We turned Palpatine into Osama bin Laden, basically... only if bin Laden had the most powerful military force in the world. So... that's kind of dispiriting. On the other hand, Vader's a good guy now (not that any of us trust him worth a drat...). It was suggested that we could end the campaign here. The response was a resounding no. We all wanna see what happens next.  Oh, and as promised, we got to find out how we caused the divergence point from the canon timeline. See, our Rebel cell - before we were all admirals and generals and sky marshals and whatever - were originally sent out to one particular sector to investigate something. Namely, the financials of this sector didn't seem to add up. They were doing too well, basically. Eventually, after a very convoluted trail, we discovered that they were building Super Star Destroyers in a secret ship construction facility, which (I believe) we blew up, but not before they'd built two SSDs. We never stopped to ask why they were being so secretive about it. Turns out those SSDs were designed with some improvements in mind... one of which was a cloaking device. Remember how I mentioned "invisible ships?" Yep. The fire coming from the Death Star was actually coming from a pair of cloaked SSDs which were receiving fire control orders from the Death Star. It was expected that we would say 'Hey, what's the deal with these super-secret ships, why all the secrecy?' and end up destroying them; plenty of breadcrumbs had been dropped (including a schematic making direct reference to something called an 'Aethershield system' which no one ever asked 'hey, what's this mean?'). But we didn't, we went on to other things... and those two SSDs made all the difference in the Battle of Endor, because they were able to gently caress up the Rebel attack before Solo's team could drop the shield generator, which meant that by the time the generator finally dropped there were a lot fewer Rebels attacking, which meant that the Death Star and its attendant forces were able to hold off the fighter runs that, in canon, ended up destroying it. .....poo poo done got real. "Do we want to end the campaign?" Do we gently caress, man, there's more stories coming someday down the line. Game's been going intermittently for like 16 years; I figure we shouldn't stop until the campaign is at least old enough to vote.
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Sep 30, 2012 05:56
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For the past couple of months, every time I saw this thread had new replies I would click on it hoping it'd be the conclusion of your Amazing Star Wars Campaign. I'm glad to hear your group finally found the opportunity to have another session, and that it went so well! This is just wonderful.
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Sep 30, 2012 06:31
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:STARRR WAARRRRS That's eerily similar to what I've had planned for my own campaign. Which clearly just means that it's going to be truckloads of fun to run.
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Sep 30, 2012 15:55
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Your campaign is awesome.
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Sep 30, 2012 16:03
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DCB, that's is at least 15 distinct kinds of awesome. I want to lock you, your group and your GM in some kind of game-playing sweatshop and make you do awesome things for 14 hours a day, breaking only to relate your adventures.
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Sep 30, 2012 16:48
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Star Wars game The  in me wants to move to your town specifically so I can join this game. GOD drat. I'll bring the beer!
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Sep 30, 2012 18:33
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I was told this was the thread for bad GM stories, so here's mine. Ruleset is Pathfinder 3.5, everyone rolls up characters, everything's normal. Start off in a tavern, do some looking around, etc. Then things get weird - GM tells us that a man has "knocked us all out with 'super doobies'". We wake up in a dungeon where what is described as a "Fat, Black, Willy Wonka" is cackling over us, demanding we do a challenge. Kinda weird, but I've played worse. Then our Anti-Paladin decides to throw out a "gently caress You", to which "Charles Wonka" retorts "No, it is I who shall gently caress You!" We think it's a metaphor. Then we hear a phrase none of us ever hoped to hear, ever. "Roll to clench buttocks." He failed. Needless to say, play immediately stopped while we explained to our GM that a campaign featuring anal rape was one that no-one present would be a part of, and the next instance of any similar poo poo would lead to his players walking out the door. He settled down after that. Campaign ended three encounters in once the PCs started killing each other. No regrets.
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Oct 1, 2012 01:34
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That's just loving surreal 
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Oct 1, 2012 01:42
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sniper4625 posted:"Roll to clench buttocks." To be fair, that DOES make one hell of a metaphor. Edit: I cannot stop laughing from that line. It is just TOO good! Volmarias fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Oct 1, 2012 |
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Oct 1, 2012 03:29
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Man, if he would have laughed it off right after that line and explained he was joking, it would basically be the best thing ever. But nope, instead it's the worst thing ever. Funny how that works.
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Oct 1, 2012 04:27
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Captain Bravo posted:Man, if he would have laughed it off right after that line and explained he was joking, it would basically be the best thing ever. But nope, instead it's the worst thing ever. Funny how that works. See, at the beginning of the night he said "there may be some rape involved in this campaign", which we thought was the joke. In hindsight, not so funny. Also, I just want to say that Star Wars campaign above is probably the greatest result of an RPG that I have ever heard.
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Oct 1, 2012 04:39
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DCB, your Star Wars campaign is truly amazing and I only wish someday that I could be involved in a game that awesome.
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Oct 1, 2012 05:06
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Either this Tuesday or next I'll be running a new campaign, Legend of the Five Rings. If it's any good I may write it up. In other news, Donnie, the man responsible for Dr. McHeadbutt, has shown back up and is in another group I know. I actually turned him down for a game of Everyone is John last Tuesday because I had too many players (he figured he'd gamed with me before and it'd be better if I took people who were new to the society). I believe he's playing Scion, though I could be wrong. Should I hear of the saga of Headbütersson, Son of Thor, I will be sure to pass it along.
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Oct 1, 2012 07:44
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In our last installment, the acolytes had enlisted the aid of the local crime boss with the intent of using her men to ambush and kill the terrorist/Inquisitorial agent they're pursuing whose name is Gallus Cromwell (just to make this easier to tell the story). They have something he wants - a heretical book - and want to use it to set up a meeting with him and just one of the PCs. They call him up, and surprisingly he agrees to meet them in person. And he wants them all there (each of them had done something he wanted to 'speak with them about'). He wants to meet in the same bar in the lower hive they'd met him in twice before. Several hours before the meeting, they get their hired goons in position in the bar. They're regulars there anyway, so their presence isn't exactly suspicious. The acolytes have a final discussion with the crime lord before the meeting, and she says there has been an influx of "mercenary-looking types" in the area in the past day or so, but nothing has happened. They assume these to be Cromwell's hired thugs and that there'll be a shootout. The acolytes arrive 30 minutes before the meeting is scheduled. 15 minutes before the meeting, they hear a commotion outside. The assassin nonchalantly leaves the bar to report what's going on since the acolytes all have microbeads, but walks straight into two dozen arbites stacked up on the bar. They pin him against the wall and storm the bar and arrest everyone inside. Except the psyker, Drake, who's holding the book. He runs out the back with the bartender and after a tense chase scene escapes into the hive. The other acolytes are arrested and carted off. They try to flash their rosettes, but are told that they're being arrested under the authority of the Inquisition. Uh oh... The psyker decides to lie low and shacks up in a dive somewhere in the lower hive. He shaves off his luscious, luminous hair and changes his clothes and hunkers down and tries to figure out how to proceed. Meanwhile, the other acolytes are being interrogated about the book, the murder of an upper hive noble and about the psyker who got away. It becomes clear they've been painted as rogue acolytes who murdered a noble and are known to possess a book of heretical knowledge. This is Cromwell's doing, his second attempt to recover the book. They're held for about a week. In that time, the political situation on the planet seems to be boiling over. In addition to the acolytes, several dozen people were arrested in the operation in the lower hive, many "innocent". Given that the only time the arbites are ever down in the lower hive is to crack some skulls, people are pissed. The whole of the lower hive is about to boil over, and our friend pskyer knows just the man to piss gasoline on the whole thing - Elias Flavius, the fallen-noble drug addict turned zealot and would-be demagogue. The plan is this: the crime lord wants her men back, and Drake wants to rescue the rest of his cell. Drake will bring Elias down to the lower hive, who will be more than happy to rile up the crowd, and when they revolt in full, direct them to the middle hive and riot all over the city. The arbites will have their hands full dealing with city-wide riots and the facility the acolytes are being held in will be vulnerable. And so it happens. Elias sparks mass revolts and Drake and company storm the facility. Inside, the arbites have decided to move their prisoners to another, more remote facility, but get stuck in a hallway when the techpriest yells at the wiring in the walls to stop working. Drake finds them, and the protracted firefight leaves five arbites dead and the assassin acolyte at crit 8 to the head and had to blow a fate to survive. They recover their gear and escape into the city. They hole up for the next 5 weeks. The tech-priest jury-rigs a cerebral implant out of his laptop computer and replaces most of the assassin's head with machine parts. The psyker takes the time to translate the book (which he told he lost to the other acolytes) so that he can make use of it. During this time, the planetary governor declared martial law, coinciding with the Feast of the Emperor Ascendant, the most sacred holiday in the Imperial Creed, effectively cancelling it. With the arbites decimated by the riots, the planetary defense force is brought in to keep order. The faces of the acolytes (minus the assassin who now has a new face) are plastered all over the city as being wanted heretics and very dangerous. The city is in chaos. Protesters clash with PDF forces, PDF goes door to door looking for dissidents and heretics (the players), and Cromwell has gone silent, perhaps equally caught up in the chaos. Things are looking bad. We played another session after this, which I'll write up later.
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Oct 1, 2012 15:25
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Finally, finally, I get to finish the story. And an awesome story it is! I love these installments. One of the things so great about this campaign is that it feels familiar but yet it takes awesomely weird twists that keep it from being a "Yeah, you help Like kill Vader and Solo blow up the Death Star. The End." campaign. So much happens in your sessions. How long do you guys play at a stretch?
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Oct 1, 2012 18:26
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So I'm doing M:TG prerelease down at a local game & comic shop here in Miami, and on Sunday a bunch of people are here ready to go for a small side event. There's a bunch of people here and we're totally ready to play, and a group of dudes are there but one of their friends can't play. No biggie, I'll be a nice guy and sponsor him so he can play while we're there, and just keep the guildpack afterwards -- if he makes prize support, we agree he can keep half of the stuff. He's down for this, and so he gets an Izzet pack while I get Selesnya. Somewhere after round two, he decides to drop and leaves me the box of stuff; apparently he has to hurry home. I don't think too much of it, but I peek through the box and inside is his DCI card, and the cards from the packs -- except it's missing most of the rares and the Izzet promo dragon. He's just left with one of his friends. I go outside with a friend of mine (who is convinced he is stealing -- I am all benefit-of-the-doubt-ing here), since he is still in his car, to ask him to make sure he didn't accidentally mix my cards with his. He's in the car with one of his buddies driving. They peel out of the parking lot and dip. (I am smart enough to remember the license plate number.) It gets more amusing from here on: I knew what he cracked, and it wasn't very good, but one of the guys I'm friends with at the store insists he's just knowingly stolen from me. I help out at this particular game store, so I have access to his DCI information, which he has just filled out, and I've confirmed is accurate (so I have his home address + phone). Really, why you would be a thief and leave this much of a paper trail is beyond me, so I think it's a mistake, still. One of his friends calls him to "ask him" if he forgot the stuff. Eventually one of the friends comes back and gives me the cards that were taken, and I think everything's over with, but the best part is that apparently one of the dudes is on the phone with him and he asks to talk to me real quick. I'm like, oh, sure, I guess he's gonna apologize. Not gonna give him THAT hard of a time (seriously, I don't care that much). THE DUDE™: "If [I don't catch this part; something about telling someone about cards?], I'll kick your rear end!" *click* Me:  I relate this to the guy who I about to start my third match against, a police officer. The game store is across the street from a police station. I've got the dude's license plate number, his home address, his name and telephone number. Found him on Facebook, so we have a picture to post up at the store, too. Needless to say, that guy's banned as hell from the store. The funniest part is that I remember seeing him here at FIU quite a few times. I work for FIU. This will be fun!  (As for the actual game part, I went 4-1 but legit lost the first game to la niña, and this wound up meaning that I did not make top 4 because she pushed me out. On the flip side, she cracked Rakdos, Dreadbore and Mizzium Mortars, all of which I needed. And she played Izzet, colors which from the very beginning she stated, "gently caress, I HATE blue and red!" -- so it was funny as poo poo.)
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Oct 1, 2012 21:58
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The next session began with the acolytes waking up early in the morning to the sounds of a truck outside their safehouse. It was the PDF stacking up on a house across the street, and they knew it was only a matter of time before their house was searched. They leave out the back. As they're regrouping in the alley they hear a large explosion. Across the street, the house the PDF had just entered had gone up. Seizing the opportunity, the acolytes kill the driver and only surviving trooper and steal their truck. Grasping at straws for a safe place to go, they decide their best bet is the Mechanicus shrine, seeing as one of them is a tech-priest. The shrine has been shut tight given the political turmoil (intending to wait it out), but they open their doors for one of their own and his team of menials. So, they've got a place to stay, and some resources to do investigation. The pysker, Drake, decides to look into Cromwell's escape routes. He figures Cromwell was planning on setting the bombs off on the Feast of the Emperor's Ascension, but got tripped up by the riots and couldn't. So he looks up a list of flights leaving the city on that day from ports that wouldn't be effected by the bombs and comes up with a dozen or so. Using the psychic power that let's briefly him take on the face of someone known to him, he video-calls up each one and asks about his arrangements. Twelve video calls and 2 psychic phenomena later he's found Cromwell's original flight out, but the captain was grounded thanks to the PDF and hadn't heard from Cromwell. Drake corrects the man's contact info with his own number and instructs him to call as soon as he has clearance to leave. Next, he decides to investigate the man they'd killed and gotten the book off of, named Quintus. There have been hints that he was the center of a cult, and Drake wants to track down the other heretics and Meanwhile, the tech-priest, Osiron, consults with the other priest who had originally examined the bombs captured from Cromwell's warehouse. They decide to try to build a device to detect the energy signal of the bomb. Next, he researches the most likely bomb sites and finds 10 candidates, such that if they were all destroyed would collapse the upper hive. Osiron and the other acolytes decide to spend the day driving by the likely bomb sites and see if their plotonium detector works. Drake stays back, saying he's tired from all the face-shifting the day before. He leaves for his meeting shortly after they do. The tech-priest and company make their way to a apartment building spanning height of the hive, the center of which is a support strut for the upper hive. Using their plotonium detector, they find one of the bombs in an otherwise empty apartment and dismantle it. They return to the mechanicus shrine to report what they found (tech heresy) and have them send a team to recover it. Oh, and Drake is nowhere to be found. Where'd he go? Drake met up with his heretic contact in an abandoned apartment near an elevator to the upper hive. She comes with two armed guards and sees immediately Drake is not Quintus (98 on his bluff roll. Welp.). Failing that, he decides to reveal his status as an agent of the Inquisition, but don't worry, they're not after her, he only wants the materials she has. She looks around the apartment and asks if he's alone. He says that he is, and she orders her men to shoot him. Two max-damage shots to the torso later, Drake is critically wounded and slipping quickly into unconsciousness. He's discovered by a neighbor, who quickly alerts the authorities, who cart him off. He wakes up in a hospital bed with his wounds treated. He's handcuffed to the bed. A voice coming from the closet tells him he needs to escape, and that his things are inside. He drags the bed over to the closet and discovers his belongings (book included), but no obvious source of the voice. Weird. So he's got his clothes and pack, but no weapons, and he's handcuffed to a giant metal bed. He starts struggling, trying to pry his hand free. Just as he draws blood, he hears the voice again, promising aid, if he wants it. He says he does. The voice says to check the table at the other end of the room. On that table lies the key to his handcuffs. The voice tells him to count to ten, then leave his room, head right, and enter the third door on the right. He does so, and sees that he's narrowly missed being noticed by a patrolling guard. There's a chair right outside the door to his room, empty. In the room down the hall, he finds his weapons and armor. The voice tells him again to go to the end of the hall and turn left, then right. There he finds a security door locked with a number pad. Drake's player tells me he enters a random combination. I tell him it works, the door is unlocked. Through the door is a long, straight hallway. The voice tells him at the end of this hall lies his freedom, so off he goes. About halfway, he bumps smack into an arbite, who drops a mug of coffee. The arbite goes to draw his stun baton, but slips and falls in the coffee. Drake blows his head off with his shotgun pistol, then runs out of the building, back to the mechanicus shrine, arriving just as the other acolytes were inquiring as to his location. Drake isn't at all worried about the voice, chalking it up to whatever they were pumping into his arm at the hospital.
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Oct 1, 2012 22:11
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Agrikk posted:And an awesome story it is! I love these installments. One of the things so great about this campaign is that it feels familiar but yet it takes awesomely weird twists that keep it from being a "Yeah, you help Like kill Vader and Solo blow up the Death Star. The End." campaign. Anywhere between four to eight hours; usually around five or six. Sometimes we get carried away and go around 8+ hours, like the game where we ended up catching Michael Westen (I know he's got an actual name but he's the dude who got burned by ISB so to me he will always be Michael Westen). That game was supposed to wrap up like three hours before it actually did.
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Oct 1, 2012 22:18
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Clanpot Shake posted:Drake isn't at all worried about the voice, chalking it up to whatever they were pumping into his arm at the hospital. Man, I wish I hadn't flaked out on that game
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Oct 2, 2012 00:26
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Liesmith posted:Man, I wish I hadn't flaked out on that game Don't we all. I let him make of it what he would, but next time he starts hearing things I'll make it clear it's totally his inner voice and not anything remotely nefarious.
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Oct 2, 2012 12:54
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Clanpot Shake posted:Don't we all. "Hey, it's me, your internal voice again. Just letting you know that you should totally eat that baby when its mother turns her back. No, trust me, it'll all work out. What? Tzeentch? No, no, clearly I am not an evil chaos god trying to tempt you to evil, honest. I'm just your inner voice. Yup. Nothing suspicious about me. So how about that there baby? You should totally eat it."
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Oct 2, 2012 19:36
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No, see, here's what you need to do. Play it really close to your hand, keep having him hear the voice, but don't give it any overtly evil ideas, or stuff like that. Keep at it, until the player figures out on his own that the voice is a demon which will try to corrupt him, and then tries to figure out a way to stop it, or shut it up. Allow him to succeed. Then you reveal to the player that the voice actually was an inner part of himself. And now that it's gone, it can't keep the other voices quiet. Oh, hello there Nurgle, what's that you say? You're going to constantly, loudly, and graphically describe the many ways I should kill each of my teammates and befoul their corpses! Awesome! 
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Oct 2, 2012 21:24
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I should mention he reads this thread. Stop reading this thread, Drake!
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Oct 2, 2012 22:55
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Clanpot Shake posted:I should mention he reads this thread. Stop reading this thread, Drake! Is he new to 40k? I can't imagine anyone who's familiar with the setting thinking that "voices in your head after reading heretical stuff" are totally legit.
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Oct 3, 2012 00:55
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I choose to believe it's more "That's a great idea, and I want to use it, so I can't let him see it!" 
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Oct 3, 2012 01:29
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Was I the only one who got the impression that he was just roleplaying well?
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Oct 3, 2012 17:37
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GrumpyDoctor posted:Was I the only one who got the impression that he was just roleplaying well? No, that's totally possible too. I was just curious since if he IS just roleplaying well, hearing demonic voices after reading heretical texts would probably be expectation #1.
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Oct 3, 2012 18:18
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Yes, but you see chaotic possession is something that happens to BAD people. Nobody who is so stout of heart and pure of mind as [character] would ever do something so foolish as falling to the chaos gods. It's just a side effect of the drugs, and the stress. The fortuitous events that allowed his escape were just proof of the Emperor's divine hand guiding his path.
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Oct 3, 2012 18:24
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goatface posted:Yes, but you see chaotic possession is something that happens to BAD people. Nobody who is so stout of heart and pure of mind as [character] would ever do something so foolish as falling to the chaos gods. It's just a side effect of the drugs, and the stress. The fortuitous events that allowed his escape were just proof of the Emperor's divine hand guiding his path.
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Oct 3, 2012 19:57
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Bill Williamson's player has complained that I do not give a very accurate description of game time "only cherrypicking the worst moments" he said. "All these people on the internet think we're deviants!" I claim he said. Background info: They are all working as bounty hunters for the Icelandic government. Their job is to pick up criminals all over the world (and sometimes off the globe) and toss them into a prison Colony in the western most fjords. One of the perks is that the agency has a team of highly experienced lawyers to help smooth over things that might occur. Previously their next door neighbor broke into their apartment, disabled Bill Williamson with a syringe and the recent widower Lucas Reacher disabled himself by faceplanting down a flight of stairs. Casanova Frankenstein, a con artist, protected the house by shooting the intruders leg off. As Casanova's player couldn't make it during the Snickers escapades, the boys got off to do their own thing hunting down a serial killing priest. So we began with Casanova Frankenstein in a holding cell waiting for his interrogation. I realize that this might take a while, so I give the roles of police detectives to Bill Williamson's player, as well as Brian Miller's (he's the doctor). They name their characters Dick Justice and Einar Johnson respectively, and the interrogation start with Dick turning off the cameras, wrapping his baton with a towel and beating the crap out of Casanova, aiming for places that won't show too much, all while expecting him to talk and give a confession. ... Which Casanova had done on the way to the precinct. "I don't read these things!" Was the official excuse. Lucas Reacher's player entered the room, taking the position of Casanova's lawyer, he'd shown up with big law books. He'd been preparing for weeks, picking his girlfriends' brains (she's a law student) paging through law books. Seeing how poo poo's done. He put in a beautiful performance, picking apart the injustice that was being done to his client. "That maniac doctor had a needle in his hand and had already taken out two of his partners. There was a woman and her child in the house and you're trying to crucify this man for defending himself with the only weapon he had on him?" Two hours of game time disappeared easy this way. Lot of arguing back and forth, the law shouting decades in prison while the defense shouts let my client go. We take a small break to get food and stuff when the defense attorney gets me away from the other guys and presents me with a scheme. He'll get his client to accept a charge for inappropriate force during self defense and a gun law violation, if the sentencing will be mandatory work for the government. I add that he won't be able to carry or use any sort of fire arm as long as he stays in the country, and it's drug testing till he works his sentencing off, which will be years. The defense thinks that's a great idea, he has a wife and kids. Once we get back, finish eating and get back to the interrogation room, things go just according to plan. Almost a decade of voluntary work for the government, no guns, drug testing. It almost seemed too good to be true! You see, Casanova's player has a penchant for mass destruction, he is the one who raped the doctor. He is the guy who picked up the crying cyborg and tried to get him to go on a killing spree. He is the guy who when poo poo got serious on a mission, decided to go shoot up a dentist's office somewhere else. Everyone at the table seemed really relieved at the end of that law and order bit, Casanova didn't have to go to a prison colony and the rest of us because collateral damage isn't a thing you try to maximize. We cut back to where they left off, on their way to a church, they have reliable information that states that the priest there knows where their target is hiding. They are super paranoid about all of this, last time they went in somewhere blind, they wound up fighting gunships, clones, a Chaos Marine and that got them blown to pieces. They immediately start drawing up crazy battle plans involving kicking down doors, gassing fools and shooting rifles, while I try to describe to them the scene which I felt was pretty important. Given the small bus, the kids and the people singing and playing gospel music. After a while, they decide on a parking spot and to send in Casanova, he's the guy with the mad social skills. He's the guy with an empathy rating above three. So he goes in, greets people and gets to talking to the priest in his office. He knocks his rolls out of the park, getting to know their anti-cybernetic agenda. Now, in the previous session Bill Williamson had counter-mugged four boostergangers, walking off with some new clothes, cell phone, imitation rolex, sun glasses and pocket change. That phone had been instrumental in getting closer to their target. So when he'd called the phonenumber for boss, fed her lies about the guy he mugged talking to the police and hiding out at the church they were just at, that required a human perception roll on the Boss's behalf, which she failed as much as anyone could. While Casanova is smoozing up the priest, four of these show up, filled with six cybered up thugs each, holding SMGs and axes.  Bill Williamson, and Brian Miller are all in the line of fire, Lucas Reacher has decided to try to get around these guys and put their vans on fire. Brian looks for his tranquanaught (customized tranq rifle), while Bill leaps out of their own armored van shouting.  Everybody loving freeze and drop your weapons. We're loving bounty hunters.It didn't go too good, as he ended with a bullet in the head. Brian Miller shot a few rounds off taking out some boosters, moved the car to shield Bill Williamson's body as he slowly bleeds out with emergency services on the line. Abandoning his previous mission, Lucas Reacher launched an EMP grenade into the swarm surrounding what looked like the leader, disabling most of them, but receiving a bulletstorm for his troubles. His armor took the brunt of it but it isn't enough as he winds up with an axe in the face and going instantly down. Inside the church, the people are freaking out, crying kids, scared adults, the soundtrack of a warzone coming from outside as windows shatter as bullets fly through. Casanova just takes charge, getting everyone into cover, going into full Messiah mode. He's spouting poo poo about avenging angels, protecting shield of our god and saviour, forces of satan, all the things you want to hear from a fire and brimstone preacher while me and the players would occasionally join in with the odd chorus of amens. As he wound down, he dropped what I felt was the best line of the evening (though that may have been in the delivery) "I was sent here to save you from Geeeeeeeeeeermaaaaanyyyy." And he explodes his dice all over these people and kids. Sunlight breaking through the tattered up church, giving him a halo as finally the cops arrive in the nick of time, gunning down the boosters from a helicopter with machine guns. Just in time to smile for the network news and give Casanova the shakedown, in case he had a gun. (He had a taser, which was ok) Brian broke out his medical equipment, getting to work on his two fallen comrades, seeing if there's something he can do to keep them alive. We've never been in this situation (except for Bill Williamson's player) in this system so must of us are extremely stressed out. Lives could be lost, two dice rolls would decide the fate of two of his players. The first roll beats the DC easy, the second roll beats it by one. And both players make their death rolls. Meanwhile Casanova poses with the cops for the cameras and spends quality time with the cult learning that some other German out there has been sending letters setting Bill Williamson up as the Devil himself. Bill and Lucas' players get so stoked about their dudes being alive that they're only marginally annoyed having to get a replacement jaw or a replacement eye and having to spend like two weeks in the hospital to recover. Brian makes good use of the time, cooking up some new airborne drugs. He had a lot of sleepytime on him, but that was all for his tranq gun. This new thing, which he names Hammer, is pretty much Scarecrow nightmare gas with the added property that you won't be able to run away for long. Casanova plans to deliver the gas in person, along with Brian. Brian buys a big pack of nasal filters and gets ready to perform surgery on the crew, he starts with Casanova, seeing as he's the most vital to the plan. Spends one of his last luck points on it. The surgery is a success with minimal surgery damage. Lucas Reacher requests nasal filters as well, and Brian fucks the whole thing up (after being on a roll) and has to amputate the nose. Reacher's players gets pretty pissed at this point, especially since I keep referring to his character as Red Skull for the rest of the session. Casanova contacts the priest once everyone is in fighting shape, and asks to be taken to Father Raven (their target) along with Brian Miller "the miracle worker." The priest does just that, and gladly, while Lucas and Bill just use their fancy future phones to follow the other car, without ever having to physically see it. They are greeted by two large men and a woman. Only one of them seems armed, but a second gun can be seen in the kitchen. The meeting, goes pretty smoothly, I let go off all the secrecy surrounding how far the church is willing to go to battle "the cyberdemons" and that is all the way. Father Raven even grins and nudges the saviour in the ribs with a knowing look on his face, Brian who isn't very good at dealing with people except with drugs or guns, but somehow always get dragged into sting operations, excuses himself to the bathroom, and makes a phonecall. This was the sign Casanova needed, shortly after the doors are closed, he lets the gas flow. Lucas Reacher flashbangs the room just before Bill Williamson kicks down the door, with two red smoke canisters shooting out of his pocket, large shotgun in his hands. He warns them, the devil has come to town. The armed guy manages to raise his gun in protest, fires off a few rounds, doesn't hit anything, and gets rewarded with rubber pellets in the face. Raven makes a run for the gun in the kitchen, but the good doctor intercepts him and has him rolling on the floor weeping within seconds. The session ended with them loading crying, terrified, hallucinating people into their truck saying. "We're gonna get mad money!" Casanova learned that shooting people isn't always (or usually) the most effective strategy. Brian learned that with great power comes great responsibility. Lucas learned that axes to the head will kill you most of the time. Bill learned that the police has a pretty impressive response time.
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Oct 4, 2012 09:22
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I’m relatively new to tabletop RPGs, having spent most of my childhood playing RPGs with rules similar to kill puppies for satan. I just got together with an RP group, and we just had a blast going through a Pathfinder campaign. Just for backstory, this campaign’s set in a world resembling the endgame of FFVI. The Heroes failed, the world descended into Chaos, and it took a nigh-invincible, immortal Avatar of Law to set things straight again. The world’s slowly been rebuilding for centuries, forever stuck with the warning that if things go to poo poo again, he’s just going to come back and solve everyone’s problems (by killing us all). This is the basis for our quest: as we’ve inexplicably come across one of the Six (Weaponized) MacGuffins of Law, our governing country’s tasked us to find the other five before the Legions of Chaos™ can use them to unmake the world. We’ve got a complement of six going, with the Warrior class well-represented by a human Cuisinart, an Orc dual-wielder, and what amounts to Big-rear end Captain America if he were riding around in the fifteenth century. We’ve also got a firebug of a priest, a darkfae smuggler-turned-beat-cop (that’s me), and a necromancer with a severe inferiority complex (as he’s 63rd-in-line to the throne and his daddy’s a high-ranking (lich) advisor to the king). Did I mention that one country uses their dead ancestors as the ultimate Advisory Board? Anyway, because half our crew is absurdly competent at exploiting combat systems without looking like complete douchebags, we’re slicing through enemies like they’re Swiss cheese. Our DM (who is at once happy that we RP well and thoroughly cheesed off that we’re doing so well), thus decides to compensate by putting in an ice giantess in our path as we go through the Frozen Northern Wastes. Now, we’re adventurous and all, but that ice giantess’ got a CR that’s double our current level. As she can OHKO any of our non-meat-shields (and our DM rewards wise actions), we decide to hide in a nearby cave, requiring a stealth roll from everyone. I, being the rogue, pass easily, and four out of my five teammates get passable rolls. Big-rear end Captain America rolls a one. According to the DM, this means that   ’s MASSIVE rear end is hanging out of the cave for all to see. Thus, the giantess naturally decides to drag him out and try to behead him with her axe.The DM also rolls a one. The giantess drops her axe. Remember, this is before initiative even begins. Combat thus opens with me, a rogue who has been next to useless in combat as I have laughably poor marksmanship – I have literally missed every target in every attack for the past three sessions. I take aim, fire – and roll a natty twenty. I roll to confirm the crit – another natty twenty. I roll to confirm once more – and I am three away from OHKOing a monster twice my level. As it is, I do massive damage with a dinky crossbow, slamming away a fifth of the monster’s health on the first blow. Next comes the orc. He also crits (and lands a second blow with his offhand weapon). Then . HE ALSO CRITS. And then the Cuisinart. He doesn’t crit…but he also drops the ice giant.In the surprise round. Now this would be enough of a crazy experience by itself, but we get caught up in the moment, cheering ourselves for managing to drop something so big so fast , and so no one notices our DM move from spluttering incredulity to ominous silence. That is, until he interrupts us.  “All of a sudden, you hear a THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD, followed by a ‘HELGA! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!’” “What?”The DM has sprung the ice giant’s boyfriend on us. “THEY WERE OUT FOR A LOVER'S STROLL, YOU ASSHOLES” “"NON! NON! HELGA, NON! HOW DARE YOU GO OUT LIKE A BITCH!"”So combat begins anew. It’s considerably more balanced, because the DM has upped the giant’s stats to indicate the giant’s rage, and he manages to slap the meat-shields around a bit. Thing is, this is before the neurotic necromancer’s turn – and as I turn to look at him, I notice a most evil gleam in his eye.  “I’m going to animate the dead frost giant as a zombie.” There’s silence for a good five seconds, after which a few people at the table mouth “oh my god.” Then, eyes still wide, the DM rolls the die to see if the giant freaks out. He gets a two.  “The frost giant male rushes forward after getting burned by the fire, ONLY TO SEE HIS LOVE RISE FROM THE GRAVE, UNDEAD FIRE IN ITS EYES” "HELGA! VAS? NON! NOOOOON! NOOOOOOOOOON!" “I just shrug in the background. "What? I wasn't going to rush him. Look at the size of him!"” The frost giant just STANDS there, terrified by his zombie love, confused and horrified. He loses his turn. You heartless bastard.”Half a combat turn consists of people just stopping to stare at (aside from the orc, because hey, he’s evil (and, by the way, CRITS AGAIN)). Then it’s the undead frost giant’s turn. Not one to waste time, directs her to attack her boyfriend.She rolls a one. I’ll just stop describing combat here; basically what happens is that despite landing a hit on the necromancer and the Cuisinart, the frost giant succumbs to sheer, ludicrous luck on our part. We collect our spoils, which includes a massive spike in XP for taking down something ridiculous for our level, and move on with Helga the Patron Saint of Failure (who failed again to hit her boyfriend during the battle) slowly lumbering along behind us. But that’s not all. As we trek our way through the tundra, we come across a valley surrounding a large city, which we discover to be filled with frost giants. Figuring that such a shrine to Chaotic Evil may give us a clue as to where one of the other MacGuffins are, we have the orc move in with the darkfae to search for clues while the others try (and critically fail) to hide the zombie as a particularly gruesome snowman. In the city, however, we find out that there are posters lining the walls. Each of them have an image of an ice giantess on them, with the words “REWARD: INFORMATION ON THE WHEREABOUTS OF PRINCESS HELGA” emblazoned on them. Another party might have taken advantage of the situation. Another party might have killed the zombie again, then provided directions to her corpse and collected either the bounty in information or sheer cash. Not our crew. Seeing the opportunity, the orc rips a poster off a deserted alley wall, goes straight back to the camp, nails it onto the zombie’s chest and tells the necromancer to direct it towards the city. Hearing this, the GM (who is staring at us, open-mouthed) just shakes his head in disbelief, tells us that the shrieks of horror can be heard all the way out here, and ends the session right then and there – which, honestly, is the best thing he could have done at that point. Since then, it’s become a running joke that our group has sown more insanity than the Chaos Gods themselves.
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Oct 6, 2012 20:36
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Your group is exactly what people think of when they think "adventuring party". God speed you crazy diamonds. 
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Oct 6, 2012 21:49
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