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Chard posted:Welp I've finally made it to the end of this thread. Thanks everyone for sharing and continuing to share your great stories. Tabletop RPG gaming has, for me, been an unattainable and lifelong goal. Literally no one I've ever known has shown the slightest interest, so I don't play. loving sucks. There's a play-by-post forum only three clicks away from this one!
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May 21, 2013 00:51
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Golden Bee posted:There's a play-by-post forum only three clicks away from this one! But there's something that isn't quite the same as spergin' at fellow nerds in real life. I enjoy PbP games when I have the time, but it isn't the same.
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May 21, 2013 09:34
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So, I just remembered a story from a Feng Shui game I ran. The party had just gotten together from across space and time to begin their epic adventure to bring freedom to all reality and look cool as hell doing it, but they were having some problems; See, one of them was a celtic Pict wizard/knife-thrower priestess from 69 AD. Aoife didn't really fit in in 1998 Detroit. To remedy this, they sent her clothes shopping but made the mistake of sending the 2056 Monster Hunter techno-soldier to watch her, who only had 'approved' knowledge of 1998 and was convinced it was a horrible dark age full of fossil fuels and homophobia/racism, and she knew nothing about fashion or really about blending in. So they're off shopping and the techno-hunter is trying to defuse situations by talking about how Michael Jackson is a cool motherfucker (the approved method of doing so, from her training pamphlets) and loses track of Aoife and the credit card. Aoife assumes dyes and especially purple dyes are a mark of royalty. Aoife has free reign to pick out her own clothing and unlimited funds. The Monster Hunter comes back to find Aoife dressed up in a full on, rainbow-colored pimp suit, with a pimp hat, and a diamond-topped cane, pleased as punch. The rest of the party could not convince her to abandon this and she wore it proudly during their entire 1998 adventure, while they battled FEMA commandos and fought MIBs with a knife-conjuring, fire-spewing rainbow pimp pict by their side. It was one of the most glorious moments of 'It seemed logical to the character' comedy that's ever shown up in one of my games.
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May 23, 2013 05:41
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Carebearz posted:We did that mission too but we managed to bring back two of these big dinosaur monsters(where most of their warriors manage to cut off some scales for a rip out a tooth)  This was pretty much the standard outcome in a game where we wrangled some kind of giant alien Grizzly Bear, named him "Kodiak Junkpuncher", and installed him as our legal secretary in the Watch Fortress to deal with all the heat we were pulling down by being completely unorthodox in everything.
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May 23, 2013 18:55
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goatface posted:Oh there's no real joy in ruining their fun, unless you're one of those DMs. Using their silly obsessions as an entertaining pivot to hang half a campaign on is quite good fun though. So you're saying you want to make them play 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, the tabletop game?   "Bitch took my doors!"
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May 23, 2013 20:47
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Keeshhound posted:So you're saying you want to make them play 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, the tabletop game? When you put it like that you make it sound AMAZING.
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May 23, 2013 20:52
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One thing I particularly enjoy about RPGs is how players' ideas can bounce off each other and spiral into some really creative places. I had a great game last Saturday which definitely demonstrated this. The system was Vast and Starlit which is basically Blake's 7 the RPG. You play a group of escaped convicts who have chanced on a powerful spaceship. Character creation works by everyone writing down their character's name and then asking each other (potentially leading) questions. I had decided I wanted to play some sort of amorous/rakish space-pirate character. So when I was asked "why did the spaceship respond to your touch?" I decided that this was because I had a particularly sensuous touch. We ended up with: T4145: A giant battle robot (too large to actually fit in the spaceship, he floated alongside). He cannot kill after being imprisoned for disobeying orders on the battlefield. Vas Trellik was the seed for his AI. Vas Trellik: A genetically engineered super soldier from the slums of Earth. Had several clones which turned up in the story. Evangio Var Stark: My character. The only regular human. Zarquon: A plasma being/grey alien hunted by the souls of his many vanquished enemies. Gemma: A human controlled by an alien symbiot near her heart. The next step was creating our starship. First we had to choose something unique (and beneficial?) about our starship. Playing off the touch thing I suggested it was biological. We then decided the quirk of the ship was that it had it's own agenda. Lastly we choose a lack of life support systems as the ship's disadvantage. After Vas Trellik's player very enthusiastically did the 'draw the the spaceship' step we ended with some kind of giant space prawn with us inhabiting it's various organs and T4145 flying alongside. I christened her Eve and decided from the character creation that my character had formed some psychic bond with 'her' upon discovering the ship. And was now in love. The game proper then started. Oxygen was running low due to the lack of like support and we needed to convince the ship to visit a planet where we could recharge our reserves. The catch being that every world nearby was blockaded and this would be dangerous. It fell to T4145 to talk to the ship since Evangio was too worried about the risk. Although the ship was intelligent we had established it didn't really speak as such. So T4145 flew around and sort of stroked it's belly gently with weak lasers, slowly building in intensity. A brief diversion on mechanics. Characters in a scene basically do free roleplay until one of the other players says the situation is 'difficult','dangerous','both' or 'hot' (as in sexy) and then the resolution mechanics kick in. So as T4145 is gently floating about using its lasers Gemma's player declares that the situation is hot. So that is how we ended roleplaying a human-living spaceship-giant battle robot love triangle.
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May 24, 2013 21:12
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My friend and his wife were playing with me. He rolled for a called shot to her "smart loving mouth," once. Crit. Not monstrous. Hilarious. God Of Paradise fucked around with this message at 03:27 on May 25, 2013 |
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May 25, 2013 00:50
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Ourp Pathfinder group ( half elf witch, dwarven rogue, human barbarian and human cleric) just washed up on a beach after our ship was attacked by water elementals. We were able o find a a city with an airship, but it wasn't leaving for awhile, so we decided to help out the local sheriff who "having trouble with bandits attacking tax caravans with guerrilla tactics". We set out in a fake caravan were almost immeddiattely attacked by a squad of Gorillas.
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May 25, 2013 02:30
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quote:Gorilla tactics Your DM has good taste Fake e: normally would post some content here to compensate for my trolling, but I haven't been in a group outside these forums since the last story I told you guys ;_;
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May 25, 2013 15:03
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I have gazed into chaotic stupid, and it is me. In my last session, we found an ancient manor and decided to investigate. The ranger spotted motion in the adjacent pond, so we all went up to have a look. After throwing rocks to try and provoke whatever's in there and getting no response, Since it's been an entire session without combat, I'm spoiling for a fight and cast Ghost Sound to play a foghorn louder than a dragon's roar. This provokes three separate encounters all at once, and the first thing that turns up is a weird-looking lovecraftian creature that permanently damages all our will saves just for looking at it. My response is to angrily curse it to look normal, which the DM interprets to mean I perceive its True Form. ...and then the game is called for the week because it's far too late to fight three combat encounters at once. My only defence for being that dumb is that I'm playing an emotionally-unstable teenageer who's suffered escalating tragedies over the course of the campaign.
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May 26, 2013 00:17
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The Death of Hayat Veren. When we first started our current Pathfinder campaign, one of the players said they "didn't want to play any Tolkien poo poo." I took it to heart, but feel like I ended up doing some Tolkien poo poo anyway- lotr exudes a too large gravity well in fantasy to escape completely. Still, I was pleased with one of the things I created - the Vereni. One of the guiding lights in any creative fiction should be the question "Is this reasonable?" It is far too easy to get carried away with a "cool" idea you feel you have without taking the motivations of the characters, human nature, your audience and logic into consideration. So, in the desert of our world I created a undead benevolent dictatorial meritocracy ruled by a lich-king jesus, called the Vereni. The story went that years ago, there were a desert people. Everyday was a fight for food, water, shelter, and protection from marauders. Many died and suffered. One of the people saw this, and sought a better way. He ventured out into the reaches of the desert and met a desert witch. She taught him the secrets of undeath, and thus how he could protect his people. The undead do not need to eat, drink, sleep, do not age, nor are they easily wounded or destroyed. After a year and a day he returned to his tribe an undead creature to teach them this new way. At first, many rejected him as an abomination, but over time with patience and charity, his tribe prospered under his guardianship. Others joined him as undead guardians of their people; and the people grew. They built roads, traded with others, dammed rivers and irrigated their crops and built settlements until they were an empire in their own right. Being undead was considered a great honor, only given to those with necessary talents, selflessness and resolve, and a humble record of service to all people. When the PCs first encountered them, they didn't quite know what to think. The PCs were put through a crucible of sorts, both for entertainment and to see if the PCs had the will & mettle to survive. They did, and were accorded a measure of respect and a private audience with Hayat Veren, the lich-king leader who had once sought a better way for his people in the far reaches of the desert. The PCs ventured out, but returned some time later, after pissing off the BBEGs (Big Bad Evil Guys) in a big way. The Vereni had a non-aggression pact and shared some mystical secrets with the BBGEs, so they couldn't help the PCs overtly- but could help them covertly with information and protection in their territories. The BBEGs, not being stupid, issued a demand to the Vereni: Hayat Veren abdicates, or they level the undead city. So Hayat Veren chose abdication, rather than witness the destruction of all he had worked for over many lifetimes. He called all of the city together at a central plaza as the BBEGs airships hovered on the periphery of the city. I played this: Warning. Perhaps  for poorly drawn album cover breasts on the front of the album, but the link starts well after that.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-b76yiqO1E&t=3m20s "On the shore lay Montezuma With his coca leaves and pearls In his halls he often wondered With the secrets of the worlds. And his subjects Gathered 'round him Like the leaves around a tree In their clothes of many colors For the angry gods to see. And the women all were beautiful And the men stood Straight and strong They offered life in sacrifice So that others could go on. Hate was just a legend And war was never known The people worked together And they lifted many stones. They carried them To the flatlands And they died along the way But they built up With their bare hands What we still can't do today." The BBEGs had no intention of letting Hayat Veren's treachary stand. And as he explained his decision to abdicate and stay on as an advisor to his successor, whoever that may be; the flagship of the BBEGs armada unleashed one missle which streaked towards him. The PCs were in the plaza and I had them roll perception, DC 30 (you have to roll a 30 or better on a d20 plus assorted intrinsic bonuses). One player rolled high enough to notice the missile, but only just by rolling a 30. He shouted out a warning, and seconds after he did so the calculations began forming in the PCs & Hayat Veren's minds- the BBEGs wouldn't have launched one missle, they would have launched an entire salvo from the armada; unless there was something special about that missile. And there was, I'd spent a lot of time pouring over the magical weapons rules to craft a special disruption, seeking, burst missile (I bent the rules if you're a stickler, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, it'd be like a nuclear bomb for undead folks). So whatever was coming was bad, and Hayat Veren realized this and took flight to intercept the missile. The party necromancer successfully dimension doored to his location to grab on to him. However, Hayat Veren said "No." and blasted the necromancer back down to earth. He crashed into the roof of an inn taking moderate damage as Hayat Veren met the missile & was obliterated. The ashes of Hayat Veren fell, and battle was joined. In bastardized Turkish, it means "Life Giver."
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May 26, 2013 03:14
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The only thing I could think when reading that was "Super-Man"  Great story, and quite creative. Also I might end up stealing some elements from that.
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May 26, 2013 03:26
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More Fallout! Yesterday's session was incredible. The session we had a week ago was pretty boring, all things considered, so I didn't post about it before. Basically what happened was that we went to check out the Brooklyn Bridge outpost, found out it was actually the Enclave setting up out there, talked our way in by pretending we were hired scouts, and got a job to infiltrate the local Brotherhood Of Steel HQ by pretending to be random wasters with some pre-war tech to sell (we got trader passes, and a few boxes of rare parts - a part of our job was selling this stuff and bringing half of the money to the Enclave - the other half was supposed to be our payment). Oh, yeah, and our robot, BORIS, turned out to not be a Soviet robot after all, but an American one instead - so he got rechristened to a much more fitting name of E.A.G.L.E and got a  full body paintjob, complete with the crying eagle and all. We left him at the Enclave outpost, and went to do what we were hired to do.We arrived at the HQ without any problems. The HQ itself turned out to be set in the Empire State Building, and the streets leading to it were blocked with sandbags and makeshift fortifications staffed with power armor clad BoS soldiers, so we left our car and walked the rest of the way. Inside the main hall was a heavily guarded hallway, which we figured was leading to whatever we were looking for, and a door marked "TRADERS". We decided to do the trading first - we pawned the tech and collected a pretty hefty sum of money, in bottlecaps and gear. We go out, hearing some hushed voices on our way. A literal wall of BoS soldiers is blocking the entrance to the previously already heavily guarded hallway. We start inching our way towards the exit... all of us, except our cocky driver, Schnitzel. Schnitz decides to piss off the soldiers instead. We wisely decide to run the gently caress away, only to realize... nobody can drive apart from him. So, we just sit in the car and hope for the best. Schnitzel, obviously, pisses the soldiers off. The commander tries to punch him - twice - hits him once - but Schnitzel doesn't care. Finally, he pulls out a submachine gun. Not a good move. The soldiers are about to pretty much execute Schnitzel, when a thump is heard from above. Then, a few flakes of paint and some dust fall from the ceiling. Finally, the ceiling collapses on the group of the BoS soldiers, knocking them out and their commander gets hit in the head with a soldier who falls on him from the second floor, and gets KOd as well. (this took an insane luck roll.) We don't hear any shots, so we walk back in to see what's happened. After seeing a dumbfounded Schnitzel surrounded by six unconscious guys, we decide not to ask any questions, and sneak into the hallway. At the end of it is a door, which is slightly ajar. We sneak up to it and listen. Turns out, the BoS are trying to develop and detonate a nuke in the city to stop the Commonwealth, despite the inevitable enormous civilian casualties. I ponder on busting into the room and shooting whoever said that in the head and saying "Detonate this.", but decide on not doing that. Our new party member, John Belton, an explorer/scientist with some psychic abilities and a lakelurk claw for his left arm, rummages through the closets and comes up with some cleaning supplies. We decide to have him pour them over the door and set them on fire, and after that, run the hell away. That's what we do, but before that, we loot the unconscious soldiers (netting us a few cool laser guns), and Schnitzel breaks the commander's knees and drags him to the car, figuring the Enclave would like a live prisoner to interrogate. We run out of the building, and realize we forgot that near our car is a large group of the BoS soldiers. Well gently caress. We start running for the car and providing covering fire for Schnitz (who's trying to put the BoS commander into the trunk) at the same time, when we hear a whirring overhead. We look up and see a vertibird with a hammer and sickle painted on the side. (at the same time, our group is joined by our former GM, who also used to play a character called "Brick" in one of our current GM's campaigns. He was Russian, and managed to punch a hole in the universe, which ended the campaign.) The 'bird lands on the nearest group of soldiers, pancaking them. The door opens, and a giant bear of an obviously Russian man tells us to get in. Since that's our only option of staying alive, we do so - all except Schnitzel, who's already taken the wheel of the car and is tearing rear end out of there. Brick pulls up, deploys a magnet from underneath the vertibird (called "the plot magnet of convenience" by our GM), grabs Schnitzel's car, and gets out of there. We're flying out of there, feeling kind of relieved we somehow survived that, when another bird flies past. It's got the Brotherhood symbol painted on the side. poo poo. Many things happen at once. My character yanks open the door, holds on to the doorframe with one hand, and empties half a mag from his 1911 into the vertibird's windshield (hey, it worked once, it's bound to work twice, right?). Schnitzel sticks his MP38 out the window and starts blindfiring. Renaldo tries to throw a knife into the pursuers' rotor, for some reason. Finally, John tries to smack the enemy pilot's head into the cockpit. Nothing of that works, though John's attack causes them to almost lose control, and the cracked plexiglass windshield effectively blinds them. They spray us with a minigun, hitting a few times. Brick shoots a few rockets of his own, further damaging the enemy bird. Finally, John decides to smack the enemy pilot's head into the cockpit again. He rolls a crit. The pilot's head wrecks the controls, and a joystick goes through his eye, taking him out. In a last ditch maneuver, someone else bangs all over the buttons in the cockpit, unleashing a flurry of missiles before spectacularly crashing into the Empire State Building and landing on one of the upper floors. We're in the world of poo poo now - the panic missiles turned out to be scarily effective. While Brick's struggling to keep us in the air, Renaldo tries to finish off the wrecked vertibird - he hurls a gas tank he's been carrying around at the wreck, and then tries to blow it up with a thrown lighter. The explosion damages the vertibird's fusion engine. The fusion engine explodes, collapsing the floors above. The floors above fall on the below ones, collapsing them, and so on, basically sandwiching everything that's inside (unfortunately, we can also see a mob of BoS soldiers escape the carnage), and reducing the pre-war Art Deco masterpiece to a pile of rubble. While we're all staring awestruck at the destruction, a critical success roll on Brick's part lets him gently bring the wrecked vertibird down on a parking lot near the Freedom Fighters' compound, which is where we started the game. The first character we ever met, Will, runs up to the trashed machine and just stares at us. "What." he goes. Then he looks at the pile of rubble that used to be the Empire State, and back at us. He says "What." again, and faints.
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May 26, 2013 21:02
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While I've had to deal with some annoying people and such, the worst experience I've ever had with a tabletop game had to be the only time I've ever played 3.5e DnD. When game time rolled around, I was feeling a bit "ugh" about the whole thing and didn't really want to go. The campaign had gone a little down hill since one of the gamers was a powergamer and his character reached a point where it started to one hit encounters. Regardless, I decided to show up. One of the guys had recently gone to a military surplus store. So...he was wearing a flak jacket or something of the sort. In the front right pocket of that jacket, I could see the handle of a combat knife. When I got to the couch, there was a military style ammo box filled to brim with ammo. Did I mention he was a college student living in a college building? Not on campus, in a college apartment, but still this was probably against school regulations. Since I knew the guy to be a harmless, weapon nut, I shrugged it off as typical behavior and sat down. Minor crap happens, some arguments over levels, etc. Then, in the middle of the game, I see him pull out a grenade and start playing with the pin. Now, naturally, I freak out. Thankfully, this wasn't his attempt to murder us all, it was a dummy grenade that he decided to pull out and play with. Dummy grenades, for those who don't know, are identical to real grenades in appearance, but don't explode. At least, I think they are identical to real grenades. His response was to think I was moron. Of course, only a moron would think the guy wearing a flak jacket with a combat knife in its pocket who was sitting next to a box full of live ammunition might have a real grenade. Later on, he goes to the bathroom. On the way out, he decides to look cool by jumping out and flailing around the combat knife. Since my back was to the hallway where he jumped out, I freak out and point out how I could have been stabbed if his hand had slipped. Promptly, he calls me a pussy and sits back down. I don't know why I didn't just pick-up and leave then. The rest of the session was uneventful. But its worth noting that the weapon nut, who was the powergamer, took over the entire session and it was pretty boring for me. Covok fucked around with this message at 14:03 on May 27, 2013 |
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May 27, 2013 13:24
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So when I was an undergrad I joined the campus anime club's D&D 3.5 game. That was a mistake. The first session was interminable. We all showed up roughly on time, but the building the club used for its meetings was locked. We took the game to a common room only to discover that most of the party hadn't actually finished their characters, so while we walked through that, I had to sit around doing nothing. Also they generated ability scores by rolling 1d10+10, whereas I rolled the standard 3d6. While playing a bard. I did not have enough system mastery at the time to know how gimped I was, not that it really mattered. Thirty minutes, perhaps, after we had set up in the common room, someone came by and told us we were making too much noise and disturbing classes upstairs. We trudged over half the campus and finally found a third room with really uncomfortable desk-chairs, but it was suitably private. And then the game began. Some bullshit about a power outage at a combat arena, and since I cast light on my sword, they put me in jail for using magic. Because apparently using magic was prohibited in this town. I wasn't the only one thrown in jail, so the rest of the session was a clearly unplanned slog of getting the party together through contrivance instead of just getting to the adventure. Well, the part that I was there for. I had to leave since I (and only I) lived off campus and was hungry for actual food. After I left, the game continued late into the night. The party was set upon by waargs while travelling, apparently a CR9 or more encounter that the DMs thought would kill the party. But, quadratic wizards. So when I showed up at the next session, I'm informed of all this. The waargs were allegedly worth so much XP that the party went up four levels. Except me, since I wasn't able to stay. I earned half XP because of douchebag DM. So now I'm a level seven bard with RAW ability scores, in a level nine party with all scores 11 minimum. Session Two. We had two DMs, sort of. There were actually two games run by the anime club; a high level game for people familiar with 3.X and a low level game for newbies. The DM of the high level game was a player in the low level game. Which I thought was odd. Well, in session two, we found out why. We were almost to our destination town when three hill giants ambush us. And these three are definitely above and beyond the party's level, and I'm especially useless because I'm two levels behind the party. But wait! After flailing around for three rounds unable to do a thing, the giants beat to death the level 9 character of the high level DM... and leave. For no apparent reason. So we just... leave his pasted corpse there and move on in a surreally sociopathic scene, and camp. During the night, a polar bear shows up in the camp, though it's clearly not just an animal. My character hears it, finds it, and then goes to the party leader. "Sir," I say in this mock Confederate General voice, "I do believe there's a bear in our camp." The only laughs we had that game. By the time everyone else is roused, the bear is gone. We make it to the city. Everything seems normal. I go looking for a better sword, other party members do their various things. I think the rest of the party did something that triggered an event. Or maybe it just happened, don't remember, but all of the villagers went berserk and started attacking us. My adventurer gets walloped by the damned blacksmith with a forge hammer. We're no match for a bunch of civilians, so we try to flee, though the gates to the town are shut and guarded by crazed watchmen. And then the DMPC shows up. Specifically, the new character of the high-level DM, who is a druid, and high level enough to be able to shapeshift into a T-Rex and summon fireballs from the sky. He's all "Come with me if you want to live" and we join his party. Of one. I'm already debating on whether or not I should go back when that session is over. The decision got made for me; I call the DM the following week to let them know I'll be a bit late. He answers the phone half asleep and tells me that they'd rescheduled the game to the day before. "I just thought you'd decided not to show up," he said.
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May 27, 2013 16:46
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Minor  nitpick: RAW in 3.5, you generate stats using 4d6 drop the lowest, not 3d6. And you also reroll if your total ability score mods are +1 or lower, or if your highest stat is under 14. 1d10+10 would get you roughly the same stats, but would be much more swingy (since the odds of getting an 11 or an 18 would be the same) and also give you the possibility of a 19-20. So you were even more gimped than you should have been!As far as the story, it's pretty much a guarantee that any DM who has some "magic is illegal" poo poo in D&D is going to be terrible. It's so antithetical to the assumptions the entire system makes that doing that to a character, especially a low-level PC, is just awful.
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May 27, 2013 17:50
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I used to play D&D pretty much exclusively on IRC. Forums Poster Doomykins and I go way back and he's been running games in the same universe for the better part of a decade. A lot of my characters ended up being subversive because the group of people we played with had a tendency to do constantly dumb poo poo / fall into trap situations / be willfully dense or just not show up and it gave me flexibility to A) punish the group when I wanted to from a player position and B) bail the group out by being the one evil character in the party doing evil things in character. The character in question was a lawful evil flayerspawn rogue/monk who was kind of an obviously shady murderer/assassin type. Almost everyone else in the party was somewhere on the Good spectrum. The first couple of sessions for the game went off without a hitch - we escaped a city as it was burning to the ground, and despite my shadiness I proved that I was a useful asset to the team, had a code of ethics and despite being an obviously shady murderer/assassin I was contributing to the shared goals of the party. I figured there was going to be some tension - esp. since one of the party members was a Paladin - but I also figured they'd get over it, given that we have Some rear end in a top hat playing evil poorly in literally every loving campaign - if I kept all my seriously, indisputably evil poo poo out of the sight of the party the only defense they'd have for being lovely to me was "detect evil", and gently caress, did you not notice the shota catboy behind you who inexplicably shows up every game with CHAOTIC EVIL as his alignment? So we get sent on our first assignment by our employers, which is to spy on a neighboring country - we're basically engaging in espionage, and while the two countries aren't at war there is a lot of tension there, so the first rule for our employment was: DON'T GET CAUGHT. Like, it was preferable for us to come back with dick all then for us to get caught in the act of spying on them. The idea for this session was that our face characters - Paladin, Cha rogue, etc - would ply locals for information and maintain their identity, and that our more actiony characters (myself included) would hang out on the outskirts of town, rough up some thugs or sneak around and find out information that way. Pretty much the second we get off the cart, the Paladin is loving glued to me. Again, we've established at this point that she has no reason to suspect my character of anything except that I'm evil (and not even the destructive kind of evil), and I'm not even the only evil character in the group. Of course, I do the obvious thing - this is why I have stealth abilities maxed out, and an item that boosts stealth abilities, and high dexterity. So I'm pulling 20s+ in Hide/Move Silently. Rather than just accept that she's not going to be able to follow me, she decides that because I'm a party member she knows where I am, and just starts following behind me. In her full plate armor. With a dexterity of 10. And no ranks in hide or move silently. Oh, also: We're basically in the king's forest, a few miles away from a castle, while the local military are doing training exercises in said forest. We all knew this was going on! Figuring out that she's not going to be able to hide when a patrol inevitably shows up, she flags the local military down and takes the Lawful Stupid approach of basically directly asking them what we had come there to find out in the first place. My character, who is predator camoing in the bushes, can't act because it would blow her cover and there's no clean way to get to the guards. Needless to say, she was immediately arrested and dragged back to the guard camp. So I have to go back, round up the party, explain what happened, and formulate a rescue/cleansing plan. At this point the only way we don't cause an international war is by wiping out the entire camp and getting rid of the bodies. My character is the only one who is OK with the idea, but it's indisputable at this point that this is what needs to be done. We get the drop on the guards in the camp, and my character who is pretty much built for sneak attack alpha strikes instagibs two of them, disables some others with a Thunderstone, and we wipe out the camp. We then go to free the dumbass Paladin who got us into the mess, and she proceeds to attack my character (and lose, badly) while all-capsing at me in OOC about how I left her no choice but to follow me because of how shady/evil/etc my character was. I've had drama explode a game I was in before, but I think this was the first and only time I had a Paladin Lawful Stupid everything in the worst way imaginable a mere two sessions into the campaign. With her character dead, a camp full of guards, and a party of stunned, emotionally exhausted players, the game ended on the spot.
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May 27, 2013 18:17
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I think before you play a Paladin, the GM should ask you a few questions. (Hopefully all GMs ask players about their characters, but these Qs should set off alarm bells that can be heard in space). 1. Who are your characters friends? What do they spend their downtime doing? 2. When was the last time you had to compromise to get what you wanted? 3. How does your character relate to non-believers? 4. Where do they go when they want to keep a low profile? --- The same thing can be asked of stab-happy rogues.
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May 27, 2013 20:39
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Just had a great turn of Twilight Imperium. I was playing Hacan, and managed to gather 16 trade resources. One player(1) hit me with "Privateers", which would take half my trade goods, then throw the other half out. I needed this gone, so I put out to people with Sabotage cards. Player 2 decided to help me for 5 trade goods. Player 3 decided to help me for 4. Player 1 paid Player 3 4 trade goods NOT to stop that action, so I couldn't even consider it. I paid Player 2, and he cancelled it. Player 1 then played his own Sabotage, stopping the Sabotage. Player 4(!) told me he would be willing to use his own Agent if I gave him two action cards (Hacan are the only race that can trade action cards). I jumped on that, and he popped his agent to Sabotage the Sabotage that Sabotaged Privateers. Player 1 then popped HIS agent to cancel THAT agent. Player 2 told me that for 3 more dollars, he would stop THAT action from happening(he didn't break his agreement, he just decided to help on a different action). I handed him 3 bucks, and he did. Player 5(!!) at this point was feeling left out, and he threatened to pop his guy out of spite if he didn't get paid. I needed my remaining 8 dollars for a tech, so I offered to re-arrange trades next turn with him. He was ok, and let the action resolve. So, in finality: A Sabotage card canceled an Agent that canceled an Agent to cancel a Sabotage that canceled a Sabotage that canceled a Privateer. Me: +8 Dollars, -2 action cards, re-arrange Trade (Would have lost 16, actions were worthless, and the trade agreements were helpful) Player 1: -2 action cards, -4 dollars, -1 Agent leader Player 2: +5 dollars Player 3: +7 dollars Player 4: +2 action cards, -1 agent Player 5: Re-arrange Trades
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May 27, 2013 20:40
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Mirthless posted:A smorgasbord of awful behavior. I never cease to be amazed at how little communication goes on over IRC. A chaotic evil catboy child. Someone who self-admittedly plays against the party to punish other players. A GM who lets the paladin powerpose their way into wrecking the adventure, the player of which was almost certainly operating with a grudge. Nobody in this story comes out smelling like roses. Actually, I'll rephrase that. I never cease to be amazed at how little communication goes on around gaming tables, period. Even people I know who are closing on forty and have been gaming since the start of high school, got all passive-aggressive when a player who Skyped into game was blatantly cheating on every last one of his rolls. One night in late 2012 the GM kept track of all this guy's rolls (none of which dipped below a 15 on a d20, across fifty different checks), but instead of calling him out in private the GM made a big, insinuating to-do that made the next session's first ten minutes feel like an hour.
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May 27, 2013 22:16
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sansuki posted:I sure had fun Cool, but what does any of that mean? Not trolling, it sounds like you enjoyed yourself and I want to know how/why.
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May 27, 2013 22:39
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Bieeardo posted:I never cease to be amazed at how little communication goes on over IRC. A chaotic evil catboy child. Someone who self-admittedly plays against the party to punish other players. A GM who lets the paladin powerpose their way into wrecking the adventure, the player of which was almost certainly operating with a grudge. Nobody in this story comes out smelling like roses. (I'm sure you're aware of that, but that story just really illustrates how a "Hey man, you're kinda screwing up the game doing that, is that what you want to do?" could have stopped the problem before it started.) A funny story I just remembered: I accidentally derailed a friend's game I was observing on IRC. I had jumped in just after a battle, and they were going to cross some river when they're accosted by a Naiad, a female water spirit. After the GM's lovingly detailed description of her physique and how she reacted to my friend (a social character), I messaged him on AIM that I thought it was kind of weird; all I could think about was a bunch of sweaty dudes sitting around their computers hanging onto this description of the sultry Naiad. Shortly afterward, my friend's character knifes her in the side until water starts pouring out! When the other players express their shock and anger, he just said, "Oh come on, you know she was just trying to mind control me!"
DarkHorse fucked around with this message at 22:51 on May 27, 2013 |
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May 27, 2013 22:46
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Cool, but what does any of that mean? Not trolling, it sounds like you enjoyed yourself and I want to know how/why. Basically, trade goods are your money in the game. He had a card that would have taken ALL my money away, and given him half of it. This is a game that only allows there to ever be $40 on the table, and I had $16. My race needed it to do drat near everything. The sabotage card lets you stop any action. The agent is a spy that can be destroyed to act like a sabotage card. You get one action card a turn generally, and they are random event cards. Through a large amount of wheeling and dealing at the table (which almost NEVER happens in Twilight Imperium), not only did I save half my money, I made 3 more allys and cost an enemy all his money, two cards, and his only agent leader.
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May 27, 2013 23:22
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Golden Bee posted:I think before you play a Paladin, the GM should ask you a few questions. (Hopefully all GMs ask players about their characters, but these Qs should set off alarm bells that can be heard in space). These are smart questions. I got in an argument in another TG thread over paladins falling (I personally don't mind the mechanic, though I've never used it), but I'm probably spoiled by having played with the same dudes for like 30 years and they're all p cool. So if they have a paladin do some nasty poo poo it's because they're happy to take that route and see where it leads.
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May 28, 2013 00:09
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Bieeardo posted:I never cease to be amazed at how little communication goes on over IRC. A chaotic evil catboy child. Someone who self-admittedly plays against the party to punish other players. A GM who lets the paladin powerpose their way into wrecking the adventure, the player of which was almost certainly operating with a grudge. Nobody in this story comes out smelling like roses. A little conflict in the party is a good thing and we made it a habit of playing with people who tended to do whatever was the most anime at the moment. The paladin didn't have a grudge, she was actually my friend out of the game, she just was playing the role of a paladin way too literally. What's the GM supposed to do, say 'no, you can't do that?' She just roleplayed it as 'walking into the jungle in the direction we saw the rogue/monk go'. Golden Bee posted:I think before you play a Paladin, the GM should ask you a few questions. (Hopefully all GMs ask players about their characters, but these Qs should set off alarm bells that can be heard in space). I think people don't realize how hard it is to play a Paladin character until they're actually playing it, and then they play it out how they imagine a paladin would be, without considering the actual motivations behind the character. The instant interpretation of a paladin seems to be 'religious zealot'. This is why I prefer to play Paladin characters that don't source their powers to a deity, but source their powers to an ideal, like Freedom or Justice or, gently caress, Facism for the evil ones. It makes it a lot easier to make a more well-rounded character that isn't just operating on the field of 'OPPOSITE ALIGNMENT == BAD, TIME TO WBC THIS GUY'. Mirthless fucked around with this message at 00:18 on May 28, 2013 |
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May 28, 2013 00:14
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The key thing to remember for a Paladin is that good Paladins (notice I'm using the lowercase "g" for good) don't maraud. They evangelize. Playing someone with a rod up their rear end is fun, but playing someone who knows that their deity is the One True Way, and is bound and determined to save everyone's souls whether they like it or not is pretty drat fun. Just remember, pallies, if you kill a heathen, that's a lost soul. But if you bribe, cajole, or schmooze someone into praying to your god, that's a big win.
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May 28, 2013 00:34
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sansuki posted:Just had a great turn of Twilight Imperium. I was playing Hacan, and managed to gather 16 trade resources. One player(1) hit me with "Privateers", which would take half my trade goods, then throw the other half out. That's classic Twilight Imperium right there. That "privateers" card has caused more wars and general chaos in my group than any other thing in the entire game. Small thing though, unless you houseruled it, it's explicitly stated in the game that you can't Sabotage a Sabotage card. Even an agent can't Sabotage a Sabotage card, and a Sabotage card can't cancel an Agent's Sabotage, either. In my group we houseruled it so that Agents can cancel Sabotages, but that's it.
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May 28, 2013 01:09
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Captain Bravo posted:The key thing to remember for a Paladin is that good Paladins (notice I'm using the lowercase "g" for good) don't maraud. They evangelize. Playing someone with a rod up their rear end is fun, but playing someone who knows that their deity is the One True Way, and is bound and determined to save everyone's souls whether they like it or not is pretty drat fun. Just remember, pallies, if you kill a heathen, that's a lost soul. But if you bribe, cajole, or schmooze someone into praying to your god, that's a big win. This. THIS. One of the best times I ever had in a gaming group as a youngster was playing in an Evil PCs Campaign - we were all in our early teens, so marauding and pillaging and being EEEEEEVIL was, like, the coolest, man - when one of the older guys in the gaming store asked if he could join the game as a Paladin. He didn't approve of our Evil. He didn't participate in it. He didn't get in our way, either - he just took every opportunity to tell us that there was a better way, a smarter way, a wiser way. He pushed the group into being 'the evil that fights a greater evil' - cajoling us into opposing the Big Bad Necromancer - first by getting us to realize that we would only be disposable pawns to the Big Bad, and later by showing us that we had, no matter our motivations, been doing good all along. By the end of that (sadly brief) campaign half the party had shifted alignments, not because he forced anyone, but because he showed us that doing good could be kind of awesome. You don't have to slaughter a village to get their stuff, after all; if you save the village, not only will they give you stuff, but they will love you and you'll get loyalty out of it as well as gold. So we turned into good guys, because one paladin looked at us and said "their souls can be saved, and that is the most righteous struggle I can imagine." It was fuckin' glorious.
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May 28, 2013 01:20
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Kulebri posted:That's classic Twilight Imperium right there. That "privateers" card has caused more wars and general chaos in my group than any other thing in the entire game. This game has so damned many rules. I have never seen a sabotage card, does it say on the card it cannot do that?
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May 28, 2013 01:21
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The best thing about that story that I can fathom is that the winning player, when faced with a losing player that had Aspirations, managed to turn all of the losing players against him, gained an advantage with another losing player, and still came out of the deal ahead of everyone else at the table. It's like Politics: The Game!
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May 28, 2013 02:07
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:This. THIS. I had a long-running Rolemaster game where this happened too, but my character (assassin/librarian) and his sort of rubbed off on each other so he got a bit more worldly and mine got a bit more moral. I found myself escaping scenes without murdering everyone in my path. He ended up leaving the church. It all ended up with a big fight and then the city fell into the sea  roleplaying.
sebmojo fucked around with this message at 03:31 on May 28, 2013 |
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May 28, 2013 03:24
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Captain Bravo posted:The best thing about that story that I can fathom is that the winning player, when faced with a losing player that had Aspirations, managed to turn all of the losing players against him, gained an advantage with another losing player, and still came out of the deal ahead of everyone else at the table. I've only played one game of Twilight Imperium, and even that was a memorable experience. It's been a while and I'm probably misremembering most of the details, but to make a long story short someone proposed a vote at the Galactic UN to limit fighter and destroyer deployments to 2 per tile, while destroying all existing units that were already bunched up. Since this crippled me, the person sitting next to me, and the person sitting next to him, we decided to form an Ad-hoc alliance to destroy everyone who had voted for the resolution (Effectively everyone else). It turned into a massive galactic civil war, and it was absolutely amazing (Especially since we had all been planning to backstab each other before the vote had taken place). Man, I really need to play Twilight Imperium again.
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May 28, 2013 05:12
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Mirthless posted:A little conflict in the party is a good thing and we made it a habit of playing with people who tended to do whatever was the most anime at the moment. The paladin didn't have a grudge, she was actually my friend out of the game, she just was playing the role of a paladin way too literally. What's the GM supposed to do, say 'no, you can't do that?' She just roleplayed it as 'walking into the jungle in the direction we saw the rogue/monk go'. You were the one going on about being all 'predator cloaked' and she was all metagamey glued to your rear end. That doesn't exactly read like a situation where you wanted to be followed, nor one where she should have been able to. And dude, you were the one describing themselves as intentionally punishing the group. That's not in-character conflict, that's being a douchebag. Frankly, it sounds like you were in good company.
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May 28, 2013 05:44
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sansuki posted:This game has so damned many rules. I have never seen a sabotage card, does it say on the card it cannot do that? I don't have my copy of the game handy at the moment, but I remember that being the case, and a quick google search seems to back that up. The agent also cannot be canceled because it is not a card, even though it has the same effects as one. But yeah, I don't blame you: the game is complex to a ridiculous degree, if you factor in the base rulebook, the errata, the 2 expansion rulebooks and the errata for those. My group must have played it close to a hundred times and we're still finding out new stuff almost every game.
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May 28, 2013 11:30
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:This. THIS. I'm pretty certain that you and your friends are the best drat role players and guys to game with on the planet. Keep the stories rolling.
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May 28, 2013 11:41
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God Of Paradise posted:I'm pretty certain that you and your friends are the best drat role players and guys to game with on the planet. Keep the stories rolling. We're terrible to game with, because we have too many in-jokes and things that only make sense to us. But thanks!  I will be telling more Star Wars stories once we can ever get together to game again, in case anyone was wondering. It looks like I'm going to have to sit down and write a new Galactic Constitution. ...I'm not actually joking, I'm going to end up writing at least a thumbnail sketch of one. Turns out we can't use any of the old ones, so.... someone's gotta do it, right?
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May 28, 2013 11:58
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Hey DCB, do you, or your Gm have the house rules your group uses for your Star Wars Campaign? I was inspired to run a game after your thread full of stories and you mentioned that you had some house rules that made it a bit more flowing in the rules department
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May 28, 2013 15:47
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It always amazes me how short sighted people can be, especially when playing evil characters. I had previously wrote a half experience about a campaign I was in which ended up being the first campaign my group has ever finished. We went through a couple iterations of people playing until we had myself, the DM and two close friends, who we'll call Jake and Harris. Harris took it upon himself to invite another person, Carl, into the group without the DM's knowledge. He was inoffensive enough, at least at first. The group consisted of: Myself, playing Darion Silverhand, the Cleric/Prestige Paladin. Lawful Good, was basically a filler character to finish off the campaign after my previous character broke her back during a previous mission. Jake, playing Rufus Lasioul the Warmage. He was given the nickname "Rufus the Doofus" thanks to his many completely silly escapades throughout the campaign that ended up succeeding all too well. Harris, playing Halen the Warlock. He was playing a trickster who used invisibility and copies of himself to make himself impossible to find. He was quiet for the most part, letting me and Jake take the party face roles, but he always had something to chime in with, and was always two steps ahead of the rest of the party. And lastly, Carl, playing the Drow Anti-Paladin. He pretty much always kept to himself and didn't contribute much to the RP. His character wanted revenge on the main villain, King Marconius the Third, for killing his friends in the king's army. The last mission of the campaign was the final assault on the capital city of Badur, where Marconius was hiding out. While the ground troops were trying to fight the King's massive army on the battlefield, our party was to get into the city via the Dwarven Airship that we had helped construct throughout the campaign. Once inside, we were to strike directly into the heart of the army: At the king himself. If we could take him out, the already low moral of the army would be broken, and hopefully the soldiers would surrender. Honestly, the mission itself wasn't too spectacular. It was kind of generic fantasy fluff, but it was a suitable ending. What makes it noteworthy was the actions of Carl after the final battle. We slayed the king, the moral was broken, and the Badurian threat was finally finished. So, now the question became, what do we do with the Badurian nation and its people? The Dwarven general wanted to punish them for all the atrocities they had committed. Rufus suggested instead that we give the throne over to the Elven Archmage: Darion Silverhand (no relation to my character, it's a long story), who was the defacto leader of the Elven clans. The Elven Clans had been forced out of their homes by the Badurian war machine, so it was only fair that they get their land back. There was general agreement to this, so it was decided: Badur was to be the land of the Elves. Arch Mage Silverhand took his seat on the throne. Talks of party started, and while everyone was busy, Carl approached the Archmage. He offered his hand out in congratulations, and as soon as their hands shook, Carl announced, "I'm using Poison Touch, make the DC or die." The entire party went silent. He had no grudge against this character, he had expressed no outward hatred of the elves before this. We were all shocked, especially since in the room there was myself, Rufus, Halen, the Dwarven General, a human arch mage, and the human rebellion leader, along with some of the army's elite troops. Needless to say, he was gibed on the spot after Silverhand failed his save. I asked Carl why he did it afterwards, since he seemed visibly upset at the outcome, and he said that he wanted the title of King. That's it. I asked him why he didn't just offer to become the adviser to the king and corrupt him to his ways, effectively making himself in control of the country. He said no, I wanted to be King. I wanted the title. I was dumbfounded. It was the most brazen example of shortsighted stupidity that I've ever seen. Carl went on to be one of the main reasons why the next campaign we ran, which was taking place in the same setting 300 years later, fell apart after a single mission.
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May 28, 2013 19:41
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| # ? May 21, 2024 23:00 |
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My Paladin in one of our 3.5 campaigns has a house in the town the whole campaign has been set in (The name of the town is Tha'darsh, which is draconic for "Pillage," wonderful little joke on an old dragon's part) It turns out that the gang of vampires that have been antagonizing the town actually used to live at the same address I do. A little background of something that happened earlier: Someone summoned a Hound Archon to help us at one point, and for whatever reason the spell hosed up, and the hound archon appeared a mile up in the air and fell, crashing through my kitchen, creating a hole in the basement, which after some investigation later we realize is connected to the old house which has magically been sunk into the ground. We explore the house, no vampires are there at the moment, but we find notes all over the place, apparently a few vampires do still use the house, but they are never there at the same time and basically leave each other notes to communicate. These vampires are part of a homebrew system of lycans and vampires that includes several different breeds with various powers and abilities, and it's known to us that these in particular are the ones that can teleport by stepping into shadows, so we know that they probably come and go regularly and we wouldn't know because of their shadow dance crap. After gathering this information and learning some important things about future plans, my character has an idea. We quietly gather every cleric and paladin in town and use hundreds of Create Pure Water spells to flood the sunken house, then we Bless Water to make it all holy water, and for good measure we consecrate the ground of my actual house's basement and start a cleric rotation to keep watch and keep the ground holy. The session ended before we could figure out the results of this plan, but I got some sweet bonus experience for coming up with it. Oh and by the way we have a gnome who is using magic and limited technological advances to make Iron Man suits, and he unveiled the suit he made for my paladin at the end, he's going to start calling me his War Machine
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May 29, 2013 23:54
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