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Only started playing D&D 4e recently and have really gotten into it. On our last adventure, we infiltrated a blood ritual used to summon unholy terrors by followers of the demon prince Orcus. We had one unaligned bard in our party who was known to do very odd things. After retrieving a black cloak from a felled priest of Orcus he decided to go all-in and carved the priest’s face off, using his gear to fashion himself a mask (even with high bluff, the DM told him he looked ridiculous). We climbed our way down chains into a pit of blood used for the ritual. Myself, a Paladin, was the least acrobatic of the group and slipped and fell down the pit, the fall doing heavy damage and leaving myself exposed. The room below was full of skeleton minions, a few brutes and a high-level priest of Orcus ready to gently caress our poo poo. As the skeletons moved in to attack me, the bard missed his skill check and ended up falling in the blood pit next to me. It was me and him against a room full of evil cultists (the others were still climbing down the pit) so what did he do? He immediately walks up to an altar to Orcus, praising his unholy name while cutting himself and using his blood to fufil the ritual. He figured the rest of us were hosed anyway, why not devote himself to an evil cult? Due to his mask, high bluff skills and the fact he was helping to fulfill the ritual, the enemies decided to leave him alone. As a lawful good Paladin, this did NOT fly with me. Despite the skeletons drawing closer to my position, I managed to drag my injured body out of the blood pit, cursed the traitorous bard and hit him with my most powerful daily attack (one I was meant to be saving for the high-level priest) It brings him down to 1hp and the little bugger immediately flees into the underdark. So not only did he abandon us, he abandoned the bad guys too. By this point, the rest of the adventures have made their way down the blood pit and we end up victorious (barely), with the bard nowhere to be seen. Our DM has promised us that in one future dungeon encounter we will come across an insane, gibbering bard wearing a black cloak, covered in blood and wearing someone else’s face crudely attached to his own.
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Apr 3, 2013 05:58
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Bonus points if it's not the same face as before.
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Apr 3, 2013 17:30
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New story from my D&D 3.5 campaign! One of my players wanted to be a Dread Pirate (prestige class in Complete Adventurer). One of the prerequisites is owning a ship of at least 10k gold in value. I told him I would allow this, but I reserved the right to gently caress with him. The prerequisite actually says it doesn't matter how the ship is acquired, be it by purchase or fraud or outright theft. I picked up a copy of the Stormwrack book and set to work researching how sailing rules worked, and what I could do to mess with my friends without killing them. We get going in the session, the party had been tasked with investigating the sudden loss of communication with a bunch of small northern towns. They discover a zombification plague being spread by tainted grain (yes I know I'm ripping off Warcraft 3 here). After fighting off some zombies and discovering a certain symbol of another country on the crates the grain had been shipped in, they realize the grain is likely being shipped by boat because the other country is several hundred miles down the coast. So they go further east to the port town, fight more undead, and attract even more during the fight. They dash to the harbor to see if there's a way to escape the seemingly innumerable horde, and find a lone ship still in port. They find a lone man aboard, who was stuck on the ship, unable to leave because he couldn't operate the boat himself. He goes by the name of Owen Chase, and the ship is the Pequod (they don't know this yet, but Chase is actually the Legendary Captain Ahab). With this man, they have barely enough to get this thing underway without massive penalties (ship is a Caravel class, minimum watch is 7) They sail south for a bit, intending to stop by the pirate town on the way to pick up some more crew and repairs. Two of the party members are actually from this town, so they are confident that this plan will work without getting them hosed over. I had no intention of loving them there, it was all going to happen on the high seas. As they're sailing, another ship comes into view. This one is the Pelican, captained by the honorable Dread Pirate, Francis Drake. Good old El Draque happens to have a bodyguard in my campaign, a woman who wears full adamantium plate while sailing the open ocean. As the sailing and boarding actions commence, this woman dives off the side of the ship. The players all dismiss her as an idiot and proceed to attack the ship's crew and captain. Three rounds of combat go by, the players are doing well, fighting is going on across both ships, when suddenly there is a loud but muffled thump from below the Pequod. The warforged fighter in the party fails his Balance check and nearly falls off the ship completely. The players are freaking out wondering what happened, someone goes belowdecks to see what gently caress is up, and finds a gaping hole in the ship at sea level, like someone had stuck a depth charge to the ship from outside. Fighting continues, with people trying to scramble over to the Pelican, when suddenly the woman wearing the heaviest armor in the game pulls herself up over the railing of the Pelican. Slight derail occurs while I explain what a Knight of the Pearl Order is and how their Bouyant Armor ability allows them to ignore swim check penalties from armor, then they fight her and finish off Drake. The newly christened Dread Pirate player intimidates the crew into joining her as they kill off the lady in armor. After a frantic bout of getting the players over to the more seaworthy ship and unhooking the grappling ramps so they don't get dragged under the sea with the Pequod, they get back underway and continue. Outside the pirate town, an Orc who called himself Elfbane captains an Elven Wingship he stole and renamed the Pointy Eared Bastard. He demands tribute before they can enter the town. It's worth noting here that one of the players is an Avariel Elf, which is basically a winged elf from some drat book or another, so he's really pissed at this guy, because he recognizes that the name of the ship is crudely scrawled on the side in elven blood. I made some sailing checks at this point. It's also worth mentioning that I had planned to have the Pointy Eared Bastard ram the Pelican when I was making these encounters. I was doing open rolls for these checks, because Owen Chase was appointed helmsman while the players boarded. I announce Elfbane's sail check to attempt to ram, Natural 20. I announce Owen's check to try to avoid, Natural 1. Since the dice were agreeing with my already laid out plans, I told the players that Owen turned the wheel hard to port and dropped the anchor, leaving them broadside to the oncoming wingship that was attempting to ram them. "What the bloody hell are you doing?" screams the Dread Pirate player. Owen pauses for a second, spits out a wad of tobacco, and says calmly, "We're going to take that ship from them anyway, right? Might as well let them come to us. You might tell everyone to brace themselves." So the fastest ship in the Stormwrack book has a clean line to ram the poo poo out of the side of the Pelican, and does so, dealing something like 120+ damage to a few sections and nearly splitting the ship in half. More scrambling ensues, warforged almost falls off the boat again. At this point the avariel elf flies over to Elfbane and attempts a grapple. It succeeds, and he spends the next two rounds flying directly up at top speed. I'm making a bunch of grapple checks for Elfbane trying to get him out of this, the player keeps rolling well. I finally manage to get Elfbane's sword arm free, and he strikes at the elf with his Cutlass of gently caress Elves (if you haven't figured out which Bane this sword is enchanted with, read the last few paragraphs again, this time concentrate) It hurts like hell, but the elf is determined. After he gets about 400~ feet above the ships, he dives, driving down toward the already hosed Pelican, and lets go. Needless to say it takes most of the d6s around the table to calculate the damage (I could have just said he died, but I know my players like to have pissing contests about damage done, so I indulge them, especially when they do things like this that require effort and planning and not just mindlessly slinging spells and blades around) It amounts to something like 258 damage, which actually wouldn't kill him outright, he had around 300 (I had planned for this to be an extended fight, but you know how planning things goes around any given player) He slams through all three decks of the weakened ship and ends up in the water, takes a lungful of water, and promptly drowns. So now my players have the ship I wanted them to have, I just wanted them to work for it. I had a lot of fun running that session, and I think all the players learned a lot about the game, since they had never really done much at sea before.
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Apr 4, 2013 00:00
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I had my first time GMing the other night. It was a one-shot of Unknown Armies, and it was a total blast. The session ended up having exactly the right balance between creepy and hilarious, and the players caught me completely off guard with some of the stuff they did. The session started off with the players, a psychoanalyst, a chemist, and a physicist, having a group therapy session with a nervous guy who was shortly ripped apart through the window by an Entropomancer (chaos mage) significant blast in a way that would frame the therapist for the murder. They found some stuff on his body and booked it out there highly unstealthily before the cops came, and followed up some of the leads in the most natural way possible in a modern setting game: they went to a Starbucks, bought some muffins, and used the free wifi to google every possible combination of words relating to the guy and the stuff they found on him. This totally blindsided me, and I had to make up a ton of stuff on the spot. Without going into an obnoxious amount of detail, they eventually ended up infiltrating a (totally improvised) fascist fundraising banquet being thrown by the Big Bad Avatar of the Demagogue (sort of a crowd-level mind controller). The physicist followed the guy into the toilets, and when the Big Bad was trying to dry his hands with a lovely air dryer, made a successful Physics roll to fix it by punching it. This display of good old-fashioned British ingenuity impressed him so much that he invited the party to dine at the head table, where he got into an impromptu horseradish eating contest with the therapist. He lost immediately, turned bright red, and ran coughing into the bathroom leaving his jacket behind. The therapist acted as a diversion by pretending to choke while the physicist grabbed the jacket. The Entropomancer then threw open the restaurant doors and came after them, and the physicist and therapist booked it out the restaurant's loading dock in a ridiculous chase scene that involved a lot of falling over. Meanwhile, the chemist, the only one with a gun, decided to carjack a late arrival to dinner. Despite the fact that he was pretty drunk from pounding back free fascist champagne all night and had previously crashed the therapist's car while sober, the party managed to narrowly beat the Entropomancer to the car, successfully start it, and get away. From the jacket they got the Avatar's home address and some other clues, and after some more craziness (including using Google Maps to get a loving satellite map of the whole neighbourhood) they managed to mix up a ton of thermite and use it to break into his house to stop the evil ritual he was carrying out. They killed the Entropomancer by shooting him and then specifically punching him in the gunshot wound, and the physicist critically pepper-sprayed the Big Bad, causing him to go into anaphylactic shock so that he could be beaten to death with his own barbecue lid that they'd scavenged out of his back yard while breaking in.
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Apr 4, 2013 00:03
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My God. Are you sure you didn't just invent Space Station 13, the tabletop game? All that story was really missing was an airlock and a clown.
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Apr 4, 2013 06:39
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They didn't weld anyone into a locker. 
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Apr 4, 2013 16:59
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Nucular Carmul posted:So now my players have the ship I wanted them to have, I just wanted them to work for it. I had a lot of fun running that session, and I think all the players learned a lot about the game, since they had never really done much at sea before. That sounds like a really awesome session and it makes me want to reroll for a Freeport campaign I'm currently playing in as I completely missed the vibe and feel of it. I was originally told that we were going to be running a city campaign, so I imagined a grey, misty pseudo-medieval sprawling thing with a grasping Guild of Thieves and a mysterious Mage Tower. So I build myself a full-on Drizzt ripoff as a Wizard/Thief thinking that I'd be up all night and sleeping all day as I did my nefarious deeds all over town. Instead I got a mediterranean port town with a monsoon season, a Pirate's Council and plenty of crazy cultists bent on destroying the world. If I'd known that I would have totally gone for the Errol Flyn dual-wielding paladin, maxed out in acrobatics and seduction. Instead I have a horribly sunburned drow with penalties for operating in daylight who hates boats and open spaces. Ooops.
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Apr 4, 2013 17:00
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Winson_Paine posted:
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Apr 5, 2013 04:16
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poo poo like that is why Winson's mod around here.
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Apr 5, 2013 04:55
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Agrikk posted:If I'd known that I would have totally gone for the Errol Flyn dual-wielding paladin, maxed out in acrobatics and seduction. Instead I have a horribly sunburned drow with penalties for operating in daylight who hates boats and open spaces. Ooops.
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Apr 5, 2013 05:12
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Our party is almost entirely Defenders. I'm considering swapping to the Pixie Werebear posted in the Murphy's Rules thread. - Human Paladin (TalonDemonKing) - Human Avenger (AJ) - Warforged Warden (J) - Elven Ranger (T) - Changeling Warlock (me) We're playing through Scales of War. In the past, we've looted a giant painting that was trying to eat my Warlock, raided the ettercap room of the silk, tried to abscond with an iron door that the DM accidentally called unobtanium, and now have run off with a magic circle trap and a large section of stone floor by abusing J's Strength of Stone, reasoning that a 1d10 disintegration field would be useful later. After all, the ranger has cursed dice and if we have to use someone to activate the trap we may as well use him. I have no idea what we're going to do with it but we're considering throwing it at the BBEG or just selling it to a local jail. We also had a run-in with the Cat-Piss in the guise of a mulleted, neckbearded, flatcap wearing grog whose players included an emasculated half-orc wielding his own severed penis as a bludgeon. He uses a hideous system of all seven major versions of D&D and claims he prefers 5th Edition.
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Apr 5, 2013 05:17
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From a party optimization point of view you're probably better off going a Leader of some kind, maybe a warlord. I see two Defenders and three Strikers. I think you can get most of the "turn into a bear" stuff, and be a pixie, while being a Warlord, though. Plus, you know: Pixie Warlord. 
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Apr 5, 2013 05:30
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Zereth posted:From a party optimization point of view you're probably better off going a Leader of some kind, maybe a warlord. I see two Defenders and three Strikers. We really aren't too worried about party optimization; we have a new DM and out of eight or so encounters I'm the only one who's been downed, and even then I was back at 26hp by my next turn from some absurd paladin bullshit. I believe the current plan is to hit level 4 and all grab the feat that grants bonus AC for all party members with the feat. The werebear pixie is mostly because you can turn into a 6" bear with Fly 6 that, once bloodied, grabs on every attack. The only real downside is there aren't many Fighter powers with the Unarmed or Beast keywords.
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Apr 5, 2013 05:43
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... What about Every Brawler Fighter Power? 
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Apr 5, 2013 05:46
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Mr. Maltose posted:poo poo like that is why Winson's mod around here. Well, he only realized it when I pointed it out, which made the whole thing completely hilarious in a  sort of way.
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Apr 5, 2013 12:07
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The Avenger is actually a Paladin  , so we have 3 defenders running around. I'm sort of filling the leader role with judicial use of Lay on Hands, and it's been working so far, despite our best attempts to steal everything not nailed down to the ground.I'm not a very good paladin.
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Apr 5, 2013 14:35
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TalonDemonKing posted:The Avenger is actually a Paladin
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Apr 5, 2013 14:37
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Zereth posted:I was more thinking of the Warlord's ability to buff attacks/damage and provide more attacks. Who cares? Everything that's on the field is marked and if it so much as blinks it takes a shitload of radiant damage.
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Apr 5, 2013 20:21
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Zereth posted:If your GM is nice enough to let you buy some sunscreen and sunglasses to deal with the mechanical penalties, playing a character who absolutely hates the place they're stuck in could be fun too. As a matter of fact, this character has become the most over-the-top 14-year-old-drow-fanboy-wetdream ever, partially due to this. I've taken on levels of ninja, swashbucker, and assassin to make this horrible monstrosity of uber-drow. The drowiest drow's drow ever. I'll show them what it means to be a drow, drow. The magic-user/rogue/ninja/swashbucker/assassin drow. Basically, my drow got to Freeport and decided he hated the place only slightly less than the uncle that caused the destruction of his noble house in the underworld (who he is stalking and plans on assassinating when he catches up to him - the loose plot device that brings a drow to the surface) so along the way of accomplishing his many adventures, he causes as much collateral damage, chaos and strive within the town as possible. It's not so much chaotic rear end in a top hat as lawful evil rear end in a top hat (a rarity among drow, I know) who needs order in his life and has a long term goal of destroying Freeport as much as saving it. Agrikk fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Apr 5, 2013 |
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Apr 5, 2013 20:29
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Playing a 7th Sea game, you have to understand that the system has weird nation only magic systems. Not-France has this portal magic that you cut yourself for, Not-Spain has this fire magic that brands you a heretic. But Not-Russia has the best. If you become the bestest of buddies with an animal in the woods, you can become that animal in shape, while still retaining your mind. Especially skilled people can become multiples. My friend Eli was one of these people, and managed to friendbond with a falcon and a panther (shut up, there are snow panthers). When he first met up with our group, he would go into panther mode all the time, and what you are wearing molds into the panther, and vice versa. We thought it would be funny to tie a cape around him for SOOPA PANTHA. As you can tell, this game was serious. About 2 months later, our small group joined up with another group who was captained by a player(Louis) character that was racist to Not-Russians. To deal with this, Eli made sure his character was a falcon almost all the time, unless he needed to be human. This was cool with Louis, as his character was a Not-French noble who prided himself on his falconry. Why look, its almost as if the bird understands exactly what I am saying! This entire tale culminates in a battle where our ship and a villains ship were boarding each other and beginning to fight. Louis stands on the fo'castle of his ship with Eli on his wrist and yells, "BIRD! I want that captains eyes!" and flings him upwards. Eli, of course follows orders. However, 10 feet away, he shapechanges. Into the panther. STILL WEARING ITS CAPE. That ship surrendered just after flying panther falcon finished eating the captains face.
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Apr 6, 2013 21:24
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Captain Foo posted:Winson, April 4th is the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot.
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Apr 6, 2013 21:34
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Not-Russia magic is the best. I, too, have known the joy of ceasing to be a bird and turning into something that can kill the hell out of people on their ship, and it is a glorious experience, though not nearly as awesome as that. I hope your buddy got all the Drama Dice for that one.
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Apr 6, 2013 21:35
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Night10194 posted:Not-Russia magic is the best. I, too, have known the joy of ceasing to be a bird and turning into something that can kill the hell out of people on their ship, and it is a glorious experience, though not nearly as awesome as that. I hope your buddy got all the Drama Dice for that one. For me it was going from a sparrow into a bear, nothing says 'gently caress you I'm a Russian mage' like dropping a bear into the middle of a ship deck.
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Apr 6, 2013 22:57
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Savage Lego Pirates So we did have that big battle, which took about seven hours in playtime. Let's go over the cast before we begin. The party: Jean-Luc "Blackpowder" Morrison: Our half-English, half-French captain. An old, mean bastard with a crippled leg. Despite his unpleasantness, he is actually a skilled captain. Where his strength truly lies, though, is in the enormous arsenal of pistols he's carrying. Nana: A native caribbean who used to work as a servant on ships. Nowadays she's our quartermaster. She's also the lookout and arranges most of our trades. Though she's generally useful to have around, she's also superstitious and delusional, which results in some awkward situations. Jonkheer van Capellan: A minor Dutch noble looking for adventure. He's the master of guns and our best shot apart from the captain himself, and rapidly becoming the best candidate for second-in-command, despite his lack of experience. Something of a daredevil. Roy: A new addition to the group. As a pampered son of a British-American merchant, he's not much use in combat. A very charismatic and handsome fellow, but somewhat naive. Marius Cloutier: My character, a one-eyed French navigator, formerly of the French navy. Knows a little bit about everything, which can come in handy. At the moment, he is the frontline fighter of the party with his two swords. Then there's The Mad Crimson Angel. A notorious pirate feared throughout the Caribbean. As it turns out, she has revived a Mayan religious cult and sacrifices the people she captures to the goddess of the moon. She's way out of our league, but here we are. Besides her pirates, she also has a group of native archers and their chief on her side.  Every figure (and candy token) in the above without a name actually represents five dudes. That's a lot of people to keep count of! To simplify the battle, each group of five mooks functions as a single character (a Wild Card in the game's terms). What you also need to know is that we used the Pirates Adventure Deck, special ability cards that were dealt randomly at the beginning of the session. The way the battle started out was with Marius and our crew keeping the enemy busy while Capellan and Morrison shot them for huge amounts of damage. Marius used the Barrel Of Monkeys adventure card to distract the enemies and make them easier prey. Thinking up different tricks for every round was pretty challenging, especially since the game books don't give many examples of Smarts tricks.  The strategy worked somewhat well before the Angel herself engaged Marius in a railing duel. We were forced to focus on the Angel to keep me alive, and with her huge stats she was nearly impossible to take down. We managed it, though.  Great, the enemy leader is dead and we can have the bounty we came here for! Except... The enemy forces still have the advantage, and they're not trying to capture us for sacrifices anymore. poo poo. Marius and our melee forces are fairly quickly overwhelmed. The rest of our group, the five or so that were left, retreated to the quarterdeck. Now that there weren't as many characters on the field anymore, we switched to tracking everyone individually again.  Morrison and Capellan kept shooting the enemy and everyone else started loading their guns so they could shoot as often as possible. Nana's dog proved its worth by defending the stairs to the quarterdeck for like ten turns while the sharpshooters whittled the enemy forces down to five. We had the advantage, except that the scoundrels managed to take a hostage. Virginia, the daughter of Jeb Cotton, one of our NPC crewmembers, had been in the captain's cabin, recovering from severe illness. We couldn't shoot all of them before they could kill her, and after some tense negotiations, we allowed the remaining five enemies to leave on a boat. We gathered our wounded, celebrated our "victory" and ended the session here.
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Apr 7, 2013 11:33
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I finally finished this thread, and in exchange for the many hours of entertainment I'll provide some stories of my own. Most are bad, because those memories stick around longer, but I'll try to think of some good ones as well. On to the stories, however! Connor's Campaign, or The Night Everyone Was That Guy This is the story that comes up most frequently when reminiscing with friends back home about when we got to play more than once a year because we were in high school and had no real obligations. The high school part is fairly important to this story. We were just coming off a long campaign of about two years run by someone who didn't game with us anymore, since he went into rehab, found religion, and no longer wanted to play D&D. In that game we were supposed to be Big drat Heroes, or at the very least nominally Good characters, with motivations oriented toward saving the world, helping people, etc. All well and good, but after two years this got stale, and some of us wanted to play dysfunctional murder machines, or cool anti-heroes, or something beyond "I do Good because Good." Instead of breaking out Paranoia or something to get it out of our systems, we immediately lurched into another game, and took Connor's offer to DM for us. We get together at the designated time, pool our Mountain Dew and Doritos, and start rolling up characters. We ask Connor what sort of characters we should make, what sort of campaign he wants to run, stuff to help guide us with our characters. He tells us "Make whatever you want, just don't choose a god." So we shrug, and open the door in our mind to the little sociopath that lives inside every teenager. The party ended up with: Me - Human Transmuter who loves fire, hates elves Gary - Human Fighter who is a lumberjack, hates elves John - Dwarven Fighter who is evil, hates elves Walter - I honestly forget but I think he was a wizard of some sort Tom - I think a cleric of some sort? Had no firm motivation Karen - Elven Ranger who is the DM's girlfriend So with characters made, we bullshit for another hour and finally get around to playing. Connor starts us off with only the clothes on our back on a forest path with trees so thick on either side that it's literally impossible to leave the path. We tried, he just said that we couldn't, but we sensed that there was a settlement down one way. John and Tom already had some sort of IC conflict within the first five minutes, so when Tom says "I go toward the city," John immediately replies, "I go the other way." Connor looks directly at John and the following happens: C - "You can't go down that way." J - "Why not? I have no reason to be with [Tom's character]." C - "It's... you just can't." So we all get herded into a city, and Connor describes it as a city in the trees, buildings set in the trunks, your stereotypical elf village crap, and for some reason we're immediately taken to see the Elf King. Me, Gary, John, and Walter aren't particularly pleased, since we all at least disliked elves and I think at least two of us were straight up evil. Elf King looks at us and says, "Adventurers, are you? Perfect, I have an excellent job for you! "I NEED SOMEONE TO ORGANIZE MY STORAGE ROOM." Remember, we were all in high school and had lovely minimum-wage jobs. I actually worked in a storage room in my real life, so you can guess how THRILLED I was to be doing it in an Elfgame as well! But we were still trying to keep it together so that the game would run smoothly, so we organized the drat king's storage room, all the while bitching to Connor about it while making quips to each other about how we were trying to find the most creative ways to goof off, just like we did at our real jobs. Around thirty minutes real-time passed, and Connor decides that Wage Labor Simulator has gone on enough, has us go back to see Elf King so that he can pay us for our work. The two fighters get 200 gp, and then I get 50, so rather confused I ask: M: "Yo Connor, why'd I get paid less?" C: "Because you're a wizard." M: "Elaborate." C: "Oh, this is your starting gold, go buy gear." So we start another round of complaining, I'm annoyed at having to do my real job that I hated in a game and getting paid less for it, Gary and John are pretty miffed at it too, and Walter is drunk I think. Tom's only purpose at this point was to act as an insult magnet, and Karen hadn't said one word. But Connor wasn't done yet, he had a REAL ADVENTURE planned for us! So we go buy our gear, king tells us, "A few miles away there's an old wine cellar, there are some bottles of wine in here I really liked but can't get anymore, go get one and I'll give you 5,000 gold." So we think, five grand just for a bottle of wine? poo poo, easy money. We head out, immediately appear at the wine cellar which was apparently a stand-alone building, and fight a Parasect from Pokemon. In the course of he fight two party members are grievously wounded and somehow I set part of the building on fire (I am pretty sure it was intentional), so we rush in, grab a bottle of wine and ask Connor if there's only one bottle. "No, there are about 50 or so all of the same type." So we get a box, place 10 or so wine bottles in it, and carry it out, thinking we're going to score 50k off this and live like brain-damaged kings. On the way back, Connor decides we have to stop for the night, so we build a fire, Gary sits on the chest to protect it, we're having a good time with fireside roleplay and I'm even insulting Tom less than I had been. Everything's fantastic until Karen looks at Connor and says, "I take a bottle of wine and go back to the elf city." G: "How do you get to it? I'm sitting on them." C: "Sorry, she already said it, so it happened. She's long gone." Everyone else: " "So we grab our chest, hop on our horses and ride back to the elf city. At no point do we have any chance of catching Karen, and when we get to Elf King he says, "Sorry, I already have a bottle, don't want the others, and gave all the reward money to her." Before he could have us on the hook for the next adventure, me, Gary, John, and Walter all announce that we're leaving, buying some shovels and going to ground level. As vengeance for being stiffed on our reward and being treated like garbage by the king as well as frustration with the bizarre railroad we begin using axes to cut up the tree roots, and shovels to dig out around them so that they'll fall over. Connor of course sends the guards after us, but we cause a partial cave-in in our tunnel and keep digging up. When we hit sap, I blast it with a Burning Hands and the tree explodes, killing hundreds, after John's insistence to Connor that sap is incredibly flammable and that would happen, and everyone backing him up. Our job done, we begin tunneling away from the city. Connor declared the game unsalvageable after that point, and we cheered, because he revealed it was going to be Baldur's Gate only with an entire party of Bhallspawn as if that were a good idea. But this wasn't the last we'd see of Connor's DM'ing, and next time it wouldn't even be our fault his game sucked. NEXT TIME: Campaign-Loss.jpg
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Apr 7, 2013 21:35
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Softface posted:NEXT TIME: Campaign-Loss.jpg Oh my god, you can't possibly mean what I'm inferring from this.
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Apr 8, 2013 19:02
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I'm just glad I'm not the only one who immediately went to that same conclusion.
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Apr 8, 2013 21:00
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Unsummoning is harder on the wizard than the familiar.
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Apr 8, 2013 22:08
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I've got a few simple stories I can share: Weirdest: I just posted a huge long version of this story in the dnd/satanism thread, so I will give the truncated version here. Many years ago I worked in a theatre as a projectionist. Started talking to an assistant manager one day about gaming, and I ended up being bullied into playing in his dnd campaign. He tells me to role a character at home and bring it the night of the game. I roll a wizard and on the appointed night my then girlfriend and myself go over to his house. There I meet the mans wife (not playing) and his gaming "group"--one other guy. When I'm asked what character class I rolled, I say "magic user," or something to that effect, and the guys wife starts flipping out. First she closes her eyes, and rocks violently back and forth. Next she stands, with tears streaming down her face, starts speaking in tongues and clawing at her face and hair. I'm really unprepared to guess how long this lasts as I was in shock. When it does end she grabs my books and dice and hurtles them across the room towards the door. Pointing at me she starts screaming "HOW DARE YOU! HOW DARE YOU BRING THE DEVIL'S EVIL MAGIC IN MY HOUSE!" Just then my boss glares at me and says, "I told you we are Christians," he hadn't "and no magic is allowed" definitely didn't "Now we are going to play GURPS instead!" At that point my then girlfriend grabs me, yells some and we leave. Funniest Delivery 1. This happens around 1993 playing AD&D 1e. A friend of mine (a guy of course) playing an elven female starts whoring himself at an inn for extra money. Literally 6 months later the GM passes him a note. My friend gets this shocked look on his face and blurts out "I magic missile my uterus." Turned out the GM decided my friend had gotten his character pregnant, and waited 6 months to say anything as these things work "differently in long lived races." 2. Same GM maybe two years later, different player. We are playing WFRP 1e. The player in question gets himself caught by a witch hunter and accused of being a chaos cultist. The witch hunter questions him, in the process severely breaking both of his arms. When the PC finally fails his toughness check, he passes out. Apparently the NPC witch hunter is satisfied the PC is not a chaos cultist and calls a physician. If you know anything about WFRP 1e you can probably see where this is going. Sometime later, the GM rolls back to this PC and the following conversation happens. GM: Jerry, your character is groggy but coming to. As you slowly get your bearings, I need you to give me an insanity check. Jerry: I pass! GM: Good. You notice you have no arms. Just above where your elbows would normally be, you see bandaged stumps. It looks like they have t been changed in awhile as blood and puss are seeping through the bandage. The smell of the nearly makes you gag.
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Apr 8, 2013 23:36
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Played a zombie-themed oneshot of d20 Modern at a con on friday night. Grocery Store of the Damned I'm horrible at names, but our group composition was randomly assigned pre-gens: - a marine (I believe he was a younger one/home from the middle east) - an employee of the store - a surgeon who only became a surgeon because she liked cutting people - a businesswoman who was a closet disciple of the Anarchist's Cookbook - a butcher/biker with a bad attitude and a love of drunken brawls - and my character, a C-list actor who never starred in anything better than a list of lovely films that even the Sci-Fi channel had to think twice about airing. Was supposedly regarded as a bigtime celebrity by the folks of his one-horse hometown (ironically, everyone in the group save for the marine failed their rolls to know who the hell my guy was) The entire session takes place in the local grocery store in a small town in Wisconsin. We've all heard reports of problems at a nearby nuclear facility, and the more astute player characters are concerned that something is going to go down. The biker is in a shouting match with the employee over cigarettes. The marine and the surgeon were in the frozen foods aisle (they were dating irl, so they wanted to stick together in-game), the anarchist was chemical shopping, and my guy was there for the chance to hear people go "Hey look! It's Chazz Black!", having made sure to plaster his trip to the store over every social media page he had an account on. In the freezer section, a woman collapses in front of her daughter and begins vomiting blood. Another nearby NPC goes to check on her, and gets his throat bitten out as a consequence. The only ones who see this are the marine, the surgeon, the little-girl and an old-man npc. The marine pulls out his gun and fires at our first zombie, taking her in the shoulder and getting everyone's attention. Our biker rushes to the aisle, sees this zombie crouched over a dead guy, and immediately begins stomping her head in while the old-man npc starts flipping the gently caress out on the marine for shooting his gun. The argument turns violent, and the marine fails every roll to punch while the old-man's dice are hot, and proceeds to beat the crap out of the marine, knocking him into the beer cooler. The surgeon proceeds to blast the old man with her taser and it is declared that he has pissed himself. The store employee grabs the little girl, who is freaking out and bawling her eyes out, and hands her off to the surgeon so he can go call 911. The surgeon proceeds to wrap the child's mouth up with ducttape because she's not in the mood to hear her scream (earning her s around the table, her defense being that it was completely in character for her to do)The anarchist, having gotten some sort of e-mail alert on her ipad, proceeds to stock up on armfuls of baseball bats and machetes from the sporting goods section, prepping for the zombie apocalypse she knows is coming. My character, being a self-absorbed douchebag and having convinced himself that the problems at the nuclear plant are just the beginnings of a viral marketing campaign, believes 100% that this is just some sort of prank for his benefit. He proceeds to record everything he's seeing on his smartphone, offering commentary about the decent special effects, and yelling out "C'mon Tracey, I know Scare Tactics when I see them, you can come out now man!", and basically laughing his rear end off. It's decided that my phone is livestreaming to Youtube the entire time, and the players and DM offer a video comment every once in awhile because we think it's hilarious. The store employee and the biker team up and begin fortifying the building, trying to block off the doors and large front windows. The marine is still recovering from his beatdown. The surgeon is chasing after the child, who understandably is running around in a blind panic. The anarchist is constructing homemade explosives out of batteries. The old-man awakens from his tasing, sees me videotaping him, and threatens me to turn off the camera, attempting to grab me when I tell him to gently caress off. So, I mase him and haul rear end out of the aisle, running into the anarchist. She is overwhelmed at how goddamn stupid I'd have to be to be videotaping what is obviously a real crisis, and decides to slap the poo poo out of my character because he's being a sexist rear end in a top hat to her. One very successful Diplomacy and an autographed baseball bat later, and she is temporarily the newest member of the Chazz Black fanclub, gifting me a machete because it would be terrible if I got hurt. She quickly comes to her senses, is once again reminded that I'm a moron, and tries to convince me that this IS a movie scene and I should definitely be in character right now. Bullshit, my agent never told me anything about this. I call him up, and in a panic, using loud, simple words, he explains that THIS poo poo IS REAL. Realization dawns on me, and I panic, running to a corner of the store that the marine has begun to fortify (having been warned by one of his war-buddies that zombies are happening, but the army is on the way) The store employee and the biker rush to the back, towards the loading garage, where a panicked npc had opened the gates, intending to make a run for it. They come across her being eaten, kill the handful of zombies that made it inside, and try to close the doors. They jam. Luckily, the anarchist is a major tech-head and able to get the switch working again, closing the door, and helping take out the few extra zombies who made it inside. At this point, all the player characters and the handful of npc's who haven't been killed, are in the fortified section of the store, knocking down shelves and throwing whatever they can on the floor to give the zombies difficult terrain. The zombies bust through the front door, and begin shambling towards us by the dozen. The employee and biker rip sections of shelving off of the wall, leaving a large bare-patch that the marine affixes the anarchist's battery-bombs to. Taking a step back, he opens fire, fails a reflex save, and takes some damage from the explosion that is sufficient to blow a hole in the wall. Outside, we hear helicopters, and the marine urges us to GET TO DA CHOPPA. I protest, not knowing that there IS a rescue team coming for us, but knowing that when the army arrives to Bumfuck, USA in the movies, it typically leads to quarantines and nukes. Eventually, seeing the encroaching horde of undead coming past our meager barriers, I decide that a bullet to the head or speedy death by nuke are better than being eaten alive. I am pleasantly surprised to see that we ARE in-fact being rescued. Once we all get aboard the helicopter, the pilot turns back to us and says "Turns out that the General is a big fan of Mr. Black." (unbeknownst to everyone except the DM and the marine, the General in charge WAS a fan of my character, saw the Youtube posts, and made sure to rescue us before the bomb went off) We all relax in the chopper while a mushroom cloud explodes where our town used to be.
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Apr 9, 2013 02:15
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bottles and cans posted:
A miscarried campaign is definitely not a joke, and I have no intention of making light of it. And it can be a tough and emotional thing for gaming groups to go through, speaking from personal experience. And I know that it's often much harder on the GM than on the players. However, I also know that it doesn't necessarily turn you into a sad, depressed sack of tears for the rest of your life. People can move past it, and cast Heal. Campaign-Loss.jpg Fortunately the only miscarriage that happened in this was the whole campaign, but it happened in such a spectacular way that when it did we were all amazed. About half a year after Connor's first campaign was ground to a halt by railroading and player rebellion (we really should have gone easier on him, it was his first time), he decided he wanted to run again. We were currently midway through act two of my campaign, but we all agreed to give him another chance. He had about a month to work on it, bounce ideas off people, and get whatever help he needed to make it work. On the night of the game, we all meet at my house, and begin rolling up characters, same deal as last time only with deity choice being A-OK. Tom had left the group a while ago for mysterious reasons, and Karen was working so she wasn't there, so it was just myself, John, Connor, Gary, and Walter. We ended up with the following roster, many of us leaving our comfort zones and trying new things: Me - Cleric of Svantovid, four-headed Slavic God of War; Gary - Assassin; Walter - Necromancer obsessed with poisons; John - Ranger, since he liked to fill in the party gaps We start out in the streets of a fairly large town, walking through the market. Gary tells Connor that, as an assassin, he wants to find someone to buy some weak poisons from, just to add a bit of extra damage. Connor says no, there's nobody who sells anything even like that, but there's a magic shop right next to you guys! So we humor him, go talk to the magic shop dude, when someone comes up and tries to rob the place. We turn around, ready to fight and stop the mugging, when the shop owner says, "No, I got this," and draws a four-barreled crossbow, as per his exact words, and fires it at the robber, driving him away. We all scratch our heads and walk off after him, thinking this is the plot hook, but he's nowhere to be found at all. However, the neighboring shop's roof is on fire! I get ready to cast Create Water on it, when a random mage walks buy, pulls off a pendant and throws it on top of the roof, creating a water sphere which extinguishes the fire. Then he walks off, leaving us unsure of what exactly's going on. Eager to take some time to sort this out, we head to an inn to get some rest. Walter declares that he was going to try to make ricin in the sink, which Connor replied to with, "Okay, give me an Alchemy roll" despite just telling Gary a few minutes earlier that there were no poison or poison accessories in town. Gary is upset, but we decide to end the in-game day and see if we could find a plot hook tomorrow. Sure enough, we're awoken by a knock on our door, telling us to go meet a dude! We make haste to his estate and are quickly shown in to see him, and Connor quickly reveals that this is his PC from the game we were in previously. A bit of a red flag, but okay, we'll get his mission anyway. He tells us that there's a lighthouse in a nearby forest with has some undead around it he'd like cleared out. We're definitely curious about a lighthouse in the woods and ask him why the hell it's there, and he stammers around, says "I'm not sure, it just is," and asks if we have any more questions Gary: "What's the reward?" Connor: "...you will be rewarded." Gary: "Howso?" Then he goes OOC and straight up tells Connor, "I'm playing an assassin, it doesn't really matter what the reward is he just wants some hard numbers before agreeing to a job." Connor: "Um. A thousand gold?" We all shrug and say sure, let's go to this lighthouse in the woods. Connor stops us after about two hours of playing, right when we're about to go on the adventure. Connor: "Guys, I'm sorry, I didn't actually have anything else written." Me: "Okay, so improvise it, that's what I've been doing for the past two months." Connor: "No, I'm not... I don't feel like doing that, let's just end it here." After his campaign died halfway through the first term, we all said gently caress it and never played with Connor DM'ing again, concerned it would fart out just like this one. I have some other stories, but not sure which one to tell next. I'll probably get to all of them unless people hate my writing, but which one do you want to read first? Connor Sleeps with the Fishes Blueballs and You: A Primer to Alan's Campaign World Night of the Living Braindead Ghost Pirates!
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Apr 9, 2013 02:28
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Voting for Connor sleeps with the Fishes
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Apr 9, 2013 02:33
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Myself and my usual gaming group started an episodic 4e GURPS game, set in a seminal version of the 80's - thoughtfully titled "80's Cop". It's basically an amalgam of every 80's buddy cop film, with shoot outs, out of control car chases and pastel suits in every session. Our Obisidian Portal page can be found here http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/cop80 - it's an alternate San Fransisco/Los Angeles, with such iconic locations as the Matlock Expressway, Lucasberg (Hollywood), Lo Pan Alley, McClane Memorial Hospital and Videodrome - the largest video and electronic goods retail chain in San Angelisco. Every session is a combination of outrageous outfits, hammy fistfights and running gun battles through the city. We rotate GM duties through the group in each person's mini story arc, allowing everyone to play and evolve and advance an underlying story, where the next person has to deal with the twists/events of the last. Important setting notes: reality need not be adhered to - if it sounds like an action movie thing to do, it's possible and will happen. Highlights: After discovering a drug smuggling operation using packaged meat, thus ensues a meat-packing plant shoot-out. The heavy bruiser throws some poor mook onto a meat hook, while the wheel-man slams the tines of a 2T forklift into the belly of the BBEG and the token Chinese-American gun-fu artist (a la every John Woo film ever) sends a bullet through the gas bottle, sending BBEG and a large part of the plant sky-high. On the biggest holiday in San Angelisco, the team is tasked with protecting an international diplomat from unknown assailants. Fending off the first thrust, the team begins the strangest foot-chase across the deck of the hull-to-hull boats in the harbour for the fireworks. A speedy gun-fu artist sends one assassin intro the drink with a fly kick, making them miss the jump between ships and bounce off the railing (the guy got kicked mid-jump, fails a save, eats rail and falls unconscious - ever the public servant, the Chinese-American orders a boat-owner to fish them out with a boat hook while they continue the chase). I believe this entire storyline episode finished with the team fighting the rest of the group on a military plane in the cargo area with the ramp down, while the US military scrambled jets to shoot it down before it crashed into a populated area. Intense.
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Apr 9, 2013 03:05
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Connor Sleeps with the Fishes This was my first game with this group so it may be particularly memorable to me for that reason, but also because Connor was in high idiotic form. We were playing Andy's campaign at this point, and he had a lake where you could fish out magical items. Kind of cheesy, but since it was my first session he thought it'd be a good idea to help me get somewhat up to the party's power level. How it worked was that you would cast a line, then he'd roll on a random chart to see what you got if you could reel it in. Not sure why he couldn't just give a magical item based on what you wanted, but we were all fairly new to the hobby so that degree of fun-having was a bit beyond us. Since that was going to go on for a bit, of course the other players could participate too, or just hang out and RP a bit, get my dudes established with theirs, do whatever so that they weren't just sitting there idle. Connor of course decides he was going to fish for magical items, so he gets in a boat and sails out. He hooks up a line to his super-magic staff for some reason, and fumbles it into the water. Connor declares "NOT MY STAFF!" and hops in the lake. Andy warns him that there are more than magical items there and while underwater he'll be unable to use spells, since we were ignoring material components we'd need to at least have SOME limits on spellcasting, and verbal seemed like a good one to keep. He goes in anyway, and once he's in good and deep, still having trouble locating his staff, Andy tells him, "A school of piranha approaches you." Connor starts freaking out, trying to get away from the fish, but they swim way faster than he can and they keep nibbling at him. He screams at us to help, so Gary throws out a line and tells Connor to grab on. A couple of rounds pass before Connor can reach the hook, and he's in seriously bad shape. Fortunately he makes it out just before his level 9 wizard is killed by a couple of level 1 fish, which my level 1 fighter quickly cut in half. Later on, in a session I unfortunately wasn't there for, Connor was playing his paladin and decided he wanted to water ski behind a boat. Everyone told him that was a horrible idea, because there was a gigantic fish they were actively running from. He ignores them, says "I do it anyway!" and is promptly eaten by a huge fish and had to be resurrected by a Wish. As an aside, not really related to RPing but speaks to Connor as a person and this update is mostly about him, he got a nickname at one point: Faye-Fapper. One night while waiting to start, Cowboy Bebop was on Adult Swim, and Connor told us that Karen didn't let him watch the show. We were all intrigued by this, because what possible reason could she have for forbidding such a sweet show? Turns out she caught him jerking it to Faye one night and got jealous.
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Apr 10, 2013 03:07
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Tatum Girlparts posted:For me it was going from a sparrow into a bear, nothing says 'gently caress you I'm a Russian mage' like dropping a bear into the middle of a ship deck. My group has also done the bear from above more than once. They've recently started discussing awful things to do with Porte magic. Primarily blooding arrowheads and either firing them over an enemy ship, opening a portal, and pouring burning pitch through, or just shooting a guy with one and reaching through the portal to get his heart. Players just love loving with magic. (We've also got a slightly weird group, in that three of the party are Avalonian nobility, one's the daughter of a dead Montaigne nobleman, and the last is a Rilasciare assassin. That creates a little tension.)
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Apr 10, 2013 04:20
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My friend and fellow goon Zemyla wanted to post about the Ghostbusters International game I've been running for a while. He lost some/all of the logs he'd been keeping, so he's asked me to help fill gaps in his memory--and the first session in particular, since he joined in part 2. Let's do just that. So here's the gist of it: after not GMing for the better part of--give it six months, maybe? I decide that I need to get back into the game. There's an opening in my pals' schedule and I think to myself, what can I run with confidence? And that's the Ghostbusters game. Ghostbusters International, specifically. I've been a fan of the series literally as long as I can remember, the game is stupendously light, and I've got a backlog of beasties to draw from--some creepypasta creatures, some idle plots I had bounding around in my head, all sorts of stuff. It's been going on for a few months now and it's by all appearances a big hit! Here's the gist of the first session--Zemyla wants to write more about it, but they weren't present for the first session. The Ghostbusters franchise is set up in Fairfield, a generic midwestern town; more specifically, it's set up in a college. The three characters are: Chelsea, aka Chel, a psychic with a PhD in parapsychology. She set up the franchise and is its more-or-less official leader. Her preferred armament is the proton pistol. Devin, an ox of a man who was originally just hired to move heavy equipment, but being a crack shot and, again, strong as an ox, he wound up on-board with the heaviest proton pack available (with a Boson dart attachment from the video game!) And Vernon, a violent army engineer who ran into some spooky ghosts. His player loves two things: shooting stuff, and making new stuff to shoot with. Thus he called invention-handling and has regularly produced new weaponry for specific missions and personal use. The first session saw our intrepid heroes meet, briskly skim some safety information, and bust a wandering specter! Chel's academic rival and dunderhead (I Keep Forgetting His First Name and I Still Haven't Written It Down, Maybe It's Simon?) Watchmann. He was looking to cash in on the "tulpa" thing going around lately and had a circle of volunteer students focus on creating a tulpa. There was a plot thread here that hasn't been picked up since and is sort of lying like a land mine, so I'm going to briskly avoid mentioning it until it becomes relevant again. The gist of it is that the tulpa 1) became semi-physical and 2) escaped, scaring the crap out of students and generally being a huge nuisance. It makes a Terrify roll against Vernon and succeeds, transforming into a hideous spectral version of an old enemy of his from his army days. Vernon loses his crap and proceeds to blow a hole through the wall behind it--while Devin makes his save and wipes half the specter's ectopresence (ghost hit points, basically) out in a single shot. (This is a recurring theme.) The tulpa flees. Eventually our heroes corner it in an elevator shaft and all of them open fire on the beast! This would normally have clinched it, but two of our heroes rolled ghosts. Quick aside: the Ghostbusters game uses six-sided dice pools, but one die in the pool is always a ghost die. In lieu of a 6, there's a ghost, and it counts as 0. If you succeed at the roll but roll a ghost, you succeed, but there's some hilarious backfire to go with it. If you fail and roll a ghost, then you enjoy a catastrophic(ally funny) failure. In light of the attacks hitting but with a ghost, I declare that they've accidentally crossed the streams. Nowadays (in the game) proton packs have cross-stream governers preventing streams from crossing for too long, but they still result in small, some might say demonstrative explosions. The amateur GBs are all flung into the walls behind them... except for Chel, who teleports through a wall instead of smashing against it. Since everybody else got knocked out for a few seconds, all the other guys noticed was that she was the only one on her feet and clear-headed when the smoke cleared. In fact, it was a long time before Chel used her powers in a vulgar way while everybody was paying attention to her--her player would make a killer Mage in Mage: the Awakening/Ascension. The tulpa, lucky for her, was on its last legs, and she burnt the last of its ectopresence and wrangled it. Vernon regained some consciousness, then tossed the trap and set it off. In such a way did they wrangle their first incorporeal undead! After that Zemy joined the team and things really went underway. But that's for him to tell. Personally, this is the most fun I've ever had running a game and every little thing about it comes naturally to me. If I had to change one thing, I'd shift the system to something a little more modern--maybe a *World hack since it's got the total/partial/no success thing going.
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Apr 10, 2013 04:44
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TombsGrave posted:If I had to change one thing, I'd shift the system to something a little more modern--maybe a *World hack since it's got the total/partial/no success thing going. I've been looking into what would be a good fit for running this, and I found a fan conversion for GURPS. Either that or Fate Core is what I am leaning towards at the moment. Great story by the way, looking forward to seeing the next part.
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Apr 10, 2013 05:12
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Lallander posted:I've been looking into what would be a good fit for running this, and I found a fan conversion for GURPS. Either that or Fate Core is what I am leaning towards at the moment. I was invited to TombsGrave’s Ghostbusters game after the first session, and I came up with Danielle, a young psychology student whose initial concept had her being bored-looking, snide, and unflappable. She didn’t stay that way, but we’ll get into that later. Anyways, she was retconned as having been one of the students present for the tulpa experiment of Dr. Watchmann’s, and instead of having been horrified by this, she had been intrigued. I stationed myself in front of his office door and waited for the Ghostbuster group to head over there. I said that I wouldn’t let them through to see him unless they let me join them. And so they did, and went through to the good doctor. He was a sad sad sight. He’d emptied out the vending machine of all its sweets, and was down to the sugar-free honey buns. And he was weeping into them. Chel took command at this point, and told Dr. Watchmann that she could easily force him out of his faculty position at this point for what he did, but that she wouldn’t. Not out of mercy or anything, but because he would be less of a threat here, where she could watch him, than he would at whatever community college he washed up at when he was fired. He was utterly intimidated by her threats, and agreed to whatever she said. Then there was a call, so we got our stuff together and headed out! It turned out to be at a Best Buy, where there was some kind of ghost there. Vernon, Devon, and Chel grabbed proton packs, while I picked up a slime blower. We then went inside, where there was a vortex of consumer electronics flying through the air, along with a barely-recognizable 8-bit tune. “It’s not Battletoads, is it?” Vernon asked. The vortex slowed to a stop, revealing the Princess (though we wouldn’t find out a lot of the stuff about her until later), and she looked pissed. “Crap, it is Battletoads,” Vernon said. A whole bunch of electronic equipment was thrown out of the vortex at us. Devon was clipped by it, while Vernon got hit square in the chest by a printer and broke some ribs. I avoided it entirely, not the first time the talent “Dodge while looking bored” paid off. I threw a trap at the Princess, but since she hadn’t been sufficiently blasted, all it did was alert her. This is what happens with on-the-job training. Meanwhile, the other three took shots at our ghostly foe, and they hurt, but not enough to wrangle her. The Princess wasn’t having this. She pulled out two games, and yanked a raider from a Fallout game and a glitched-out student from a Sims game, and they both went after Chel. Chel dodged the bullets, actually teleporting through one, then resisted a mental attack when the Sims... thing... tried to put a green diamond over her head to control her. Devon and Vernon took down the Sims ghost, while I tried to slime the Princess... and rolled not just a ghost, but an unsuccessful one. So the GM ruled that I hit the wrong button and used the slime tether to attach myself to the ceiling. Then I had an idea. Since video game characters are weak to being jumped on, I applied slime to my boots and dropped from the ceiling onto her head. The roll was... successful, but also a ghost. I indeed landed on her head, but was stuck, bouncing there as my score grew ever higher. The Princess started flashing, and tried to escape through the TV she’d entered through. Devon blasted her with a boson dart, and rolled another ghost. This caused the blast to shear me off the Princess’s head, and launch her through the TV instead of being stuck in the capture stream. With the Princess’s exit, the Fallout raider started blinking blue like a Pac-Man ghost. I spent a brownie point, and controlled my fall sufficiently to land square on the trap’s activating button, catching the thing. I then slimed the TV, closing the portal in it, and we went out to tell of our victory and take Vernon to a hospital. Anyways, next part is by TombsGrave, as he remembers it better than I do.
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Apr 10, 2013 05:25
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So it would be best to preface this with the description of the grognard asshat I will henceforth call Edward, cos goddamnit, that's his name. Now, Ed is a xx year old man - I have no idea what xx is, but if I had to guess, I'd say somewhere between 45 and 1000. It's kinda hard to tell. Ed essentially resembles the bastard offspring of the Crisper Glover Thin Man and Slenderman - he wears a cheap suit all year round, with an Akubra hat. This wouldn't be such a problem except we live in Australia. He also suffers from a really bad case of some sort of social disability, and tends to stay at the back of a room, in silence, staring and 'observing'. Despite this, he appears to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of a whole range of topics from the history of man, however we have caught him out a few times bullshitting, to whit he angrily glares in silence and makes the rest of us feel awkward. More than once we've thought he would have been better suited to living in the late 1800's - he tended to adhere too readily to the real world and refused to suspend disbelief in the attempt to tell a good story. So, we're playing a low-magic GURPS game, set in a European analogue. I'm a Tuathan (Irish) spearman, Edward is an Albion (English) yeoman archer with sub-par intelligence, there's an Albion Spymaster, an Italian-analogue duelist and an Albion doctor who experimented on the living, just after a new King has claimed the throne of Albion, sending the realm into disarray. Numerous times the GM and players have put down our dice to stare in disbelief at the actions of his character. Gems such as buying a heavily-laden supply wagon and horses to cart it while we're being chased through 'France' by the Church's assassins and soldiery. After repeatedly explaining that he was slowing us down, the rest of the characters went on without him and just left him to his own devices. He eventually caught up when we had to deal with an incident a week and a few towns or so away, at which point our duelist unhitched the wagon and pushed it into a river while his character was preoccupied and left him to deal with it and lose days and our support, or leave it. There's a laundry list of events and actions by him that eventually sunk the game - we started the 80's Cop game in the last few months as we saw our other game get run into the ground with his constant rule-lawyering and boring playstyle, and eventually he fun-vampired the game to death.
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Apr 10, 2013 06:27
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crowtribe posted:Ed essentially resembles the bastard offspring of the Crisper Glover Thin Man and Slenderman - he wears a cheap suit all year round, with an Akubra hat. This wouldn't be such a problem except we live in Australia. What's the significance of the Akubra hat in Australia? Is this like a cowboy hat, or some kind of fedora? Ed sounds extremely awful.
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Apr 10, 2013 10:37
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