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Survival and fortitude checks for what? Unless you've been dumped unprepared into the desert and are trying to forced-march your way out in the middle of the day, I'm not sure why you'd need either.
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Jun 9, 2013 15:08
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goatface posted:Survival and fortitude checks for what? Unless you've been dumped unprepared into the desert and are trying to forced-march your way out in the middle of the day, I'm not sure why you'd need either.
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Jun 9, 2013 15:59
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I know. It's a setting where everybody should know how to survive in a desert, which just makes it even weirder in my opinion. edit - If it was a special desert situation, like a sand/duststorm where the players had the option of avoiding it by hunkering down but instead chose to keep moving, then maybe have them keep rolling as you ask them "are you sure?" and chip away at their health. But if they think that's necessary for any time the party move around Athas? Just silly. goatface fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Jun 9, 2013 |
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Jun 9, 2013 16:02
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God Of Paradise posted:Is Dark Sun any different if done right? Or is this just par for the course of this game? What edition are you playing? It's 3rd, right? Because in forth all that should have been one endurance check against exhaustion and maybe one endurance check against sun stroke, provided you have your supplies for the day. Even if it is third, try to get your DM to look at the 4th version of supplies for dark sun, and how they handle things like it being hotter than normal and long scale/term travel, because the old "roll 8 million constantly upgrading checks" sucked balls. If it's 3e tell him to get sandstorm and use their survival rules. It's not as easy or elegant as the survival day, but it's a hell of a lot better than what he's doing.
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Jun 9, 2013 18:07
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Either way, stopping to roll every five minutes can really disrupts the flow of the game if it's not combat. And really unless the players are outlanders who suddenly got dropped to the setting, there's no reason to make so many checks since the characters should already know to survive in such conditions. Has anyone told the GM that the constant rolling is irritating?
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Jun 9, 2013 18:31
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It sounds like he just heard that Dark Sun was about brutal deserts and horrible monsters, and went to town simulating that with brutal checks and horrible encounters.
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Jun 9, 2013 18:49
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You shouldn't make "tons of checks" anyway. Every roll should move the game forward. If it's difficult to survive, it's difficult to survive. If it steadily gets harder, then roll when things change. Only roll if the outcome can't be determined by player choice or GM giving info that the characters would know.
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Jun 9, 2013 22:32
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Played a session of Pathfinder Society yesterday: My Enemy's Enemy Spoiler alert, if you're worried about that sort of thing. Anyway, we played on the upper difficulty tier, because we are all greedy for gold and figured we could handle it (Our party average came out to 5, so we got to choose whether to go Tier 3-4 or 6-7). The party was: - Cleric of Iomadea (sp?) 5/Fighter 1 - Our de facto healer and tank. - Gnomish Bard (Not sure of level) - "Trade Princess" Katrina. Some sort of spellcasting class, not sure of the level. Didn't cast too many spells. - Pre-gen Elf Rogue 4 - and my Bladebound Magus 3 Early on, we almost wiped to the living topiary. This thing was become the Destroyer of Worlds. Even trying to pull his punches, this thing was beating us mercilessly. The Advanced descriptor made it Fire-Retardant, which I was unaware of, so I was wasting time trying to set it on Fire at first. I didn't want to get into melee because the thing had +15 to hit (My AC is 17, 21 if I cast Shield), and hit with 2 slams which were something/D6 +9, and it had Reach 10. I knew I'd have been dropped in one hit from the Attack of Opportunity before I ever got the chance to get close. Luckily, and thanks to a huge bone thrown our way, we managed to escape. Fast forward towards the end, we get to the lair of the end-boss for the module. We go through the door, and the elf is checking for Traps. Thanks to the elf-senses, he found a secret door. We go through it, and find another secret door. Next thing we know, we're sneaking into the last room of the dungeon, having circumvented the entirety of it. The boss-rogue and boss-alchemist are standing over a huge alchemy lab, making what amounted to Crystal Meth's prestige class. Our rogue downs an invisibility potion, sneaks down, and Backstabs the alchemist for a respectable amount of damage. The bard tries to cast Sleep, but it fails. I go down stairs part way, having had the Cleric hit me with Bull's Strength while I hit myself with Shield and Arcane Pointed my sword on my previous turn, ready to do the melee that I like to do. Then an idea hit me. Me: "How far am I from the alchemy table?" DM: "Uh...about 30 feet." Me: "Awesome. I cast Spark at the equipment." Everyone:  The DM does some math in his head, calls for Reflex saves and rolls a handful of d10s Somehow, the only one who took any damage at all from this was the Alchemist, who was a Tiefling. Even with resistance, he took 34 points of damage. The rest of the fight was...largely not in our favor. The alchemist was a beast, even after being blasted with Ray of Enfeeblement for the full 6. He was able to constantly give his ally flanking against Luckily, the enemy rogue could not hit for poo poo, and missed every attack. Except the one time I provoked an Attack of Opportunity, at which point the rogue manages to crit me for 17. When they weren't flanking, the tiefling was hiding in the area of darkness he cast, enjoying the benefits of Displacement that he had given himself while taking potshots at anyone standing too close to the edge of his darkness. Meanwhile, the enemy rogue took shots at us with a wand of Fireball while we tried to get into position without crossing into the darkness. Ultimately, we manage to down the rogue. I snatch up his wand and declare that I'm blasting it into the center of the darkness. And then I fail my UMD check. The tiefling drinks a potion of gaseous form, escapes, and we get credit for completing the scenario since we did ruin the meth lab and foil their plans.
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Jun 10, 2013 02:52
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Captain Walker posted:Your DM has good taste He's the best GM I've had, his story arcs are well thought out and he knows our group well enough to counter all of our crazy bullshit. So we slaughtered all the gorilla guerillas, which got us in the good graces of the local mom magistrate. He gave of us free passagoe on the next airship out of town. Unfortunately, we got attacked by a group of air elementals. We were starting to realize that maybe ransacking the Temple of Elements was a bad idea. Our ship was badly damaged, and our only options were to land in the ocean, or coast down and land on "Dragon Island". The ships navigator tells us "it's only a name that doesn't accurately represent what the island would be like". Since the last time we sailed our ship was attacked by water elementals, we decided to set down on "Dragon Island". We make camp at some caves and set out to explore the island. We then get attacked by a giant Green Dragon. We ask the navigator why he lied to us, and he says he didnt, the name is wrong, because technically Dragon Island is a penninsula. So we cripple him real quick so we have dragon bait and take off. The dragon catches up with us, and we have no real option but to fight it. We settle in for a tpk, but we actually came out ok. A paladin NPC on the ship helped us out, and got a fewcrits crits off, and the barbarian and witch end up on top of the dragon as it takes off to escape. The witch got off a bungle spell ( -20 on next d20 roll) and the barbarian manages to grapple one of the wings. The witch then casts Hold Monster, the dragon misses its will save, and starts to plummet to the ground. We featherfall to safety as the green dragon crashes into a volcano and dies. We land in a village, and hundreds of villagers pour out and start bowing to us. The village shaman tells us we killed their dragon god, which means we are their new gods. So now we have an army of dragon disciple barbarians, druids and clerics. We got a map of the penninsula, and it turns out about 40 miles away is a compound of pyramids called "The Pyramids of The Elementals". So next we either a. Make amends to the Elemental Spirits b. Double down and cruch the pyramids, then salt the remains so nothing shall ever grow again c.lead the village on raids against rival villages I think we just might lead the villagers to the pyrmaids and use them as cannon fodder to soften up the guards and priests so we can roll in and ransack the poo poo out of them.
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Jun 10, 2013 06:59
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I like your party's style. Although making amends now means you just get to surprise the elements later when you ransack the REALLY BIG temple.
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Jun 10, 2013 18:15
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"How do you say 'we lied' in water elementalese?" "How about..." 
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Jun 10, 2013 18:28
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Your Gay Uncle posted:We ask the navigator why he lied to us, and he says he didnt, the name is wrong, because technically Dragon Island is a penninsula. So we cripple him real quick so we have dragon bait and take off. Lisa Simpson: I have to join the team or I'll get an F that will haunt me for the rest of my life. [in the future, Lisa is being sworn in] Man: I now pronounce you President of these United -- Reporter: Stop the inauguration! I just discovered our President Elect got an F in second grade gym class! [crows gasps; Lisa is handcuffed] Man: In that case I sentence you to a lifetime of horror on Monster Island. [to Lisa] Don't worry, it's just a name. [Cut to Lisa and others are chased by fire-breathing monsters] Lisa: He said it was just a name! Man: What he meant is that Monster Island is actually a peninsula!
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Jun 10, 2013 18:56
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Dark Sun owns. Once the DM gets it across that it is a hot barren wasteland everywhere (think Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome or the Book of Eli) the occasional reference to the head and dry should be enough since the palyers have formed a good mental picture of the environment. For those who don't know, Dark Sun is basicalyl a campaign setting in which the main world has been corrupted and destroyed due to Defiling Magic. Basically, magic works by channeling the energy of the living world and the elements, where Preservers draw power gently from the world and Defilers cast powerful spells by draining an area of life. Thus, Druids are interested in preserving what's left of nature and are at odds with Defilers. I am playing a human Druid/Monk (although Monks aren't a playable class per se in Dark Sun) under the Pathfinder rule set and am basically playing your GreenPeace militant vegan Eco-terrorist and am having a ton of fun solo gaming this guy. The liberating part of solo gaming this guy is that I can be as Lawful rear end in a top hat Militant or Chaotic Fucktard as I want and not have to worry about other players' feelings and/or motives getting hurt. So far I've: - burned down an inn for harboring suspected Defilers - Strangled the mayor of a town in his sleep for not imposing harsh enough anti-defiler measures - ambushed a supply wagon for one of the local armies/marauder bands - created a band of "forest ranger"-like disciples from the local gang of orphans (Fagin from Oliver Twist meets Smoky the Bear) The DM and I have been playing together for ages and we both know we do this for fun: he knows how to develop a good story and mood and is flexible when I take wild tangents from the "main plot" if it looks like it'll be fun. Dark Sun owns.
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Jun 10, 2013 20:51
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Hotdog In A Hallway posted:Your GM is, in fact, awesome. Yeah, I was kicking myself pretty hard for not catching that earlier. VanSandman posted:I like your party's style. Although making amends now means you just get to surprise the elements later when you ransack the REALLY BIG temple. The thing is, our group is really loving stupid and shortsighted. The Witch has a decent INT score, but he's easily influenced by the "cool kids" so he goes along with whatever they want so they think he's cool. It tends to get us in alot of trouble. We also don't have much in the way of knowledges, either. The best example was a few months ago we were crossing a river and got attacked by some sort of Water Drake. For some reason none of our characters had a knowledge nature skill, so we didn't know this thing could breathe underwater. This wouldn't be an issue, but our grappler barbarian wanted to drown it. So he grappled it and held it underwater for almost 10 rounds before a gnome ran out of the woods and yelled "That thing can breathe underwater" and ran off. So we could try and unite all the dragon clans, make amends to the Elemtal Gods, and use this army to reclaim an elven homeland, but we'll probably end up getting chased off a cliff by angry barbarians, elementals, dragons, and kobolds while Benny Hill music plays in the background. Your Gay Uncle fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Jun 12, 2013 |
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Jun 12, 2013 23:22
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I have another story for you from our dizzying array of campaigns. Some of our players couldn't make it for the time we had scheduled to run the session, so we did some stuff that was kind of filler because we still wanted to play, and we usually give some xp to absent folks as long as they have an actual reason for not being there. We all have jobs and doctor appointments and carpets being replaced and roach-spraying-fors so we're pretty understanding and chill, but we're definitely going to play without people. I have a young rogue who is an idealistic Robin Hood style thief, one guy is playing a paladin for the first time in his lengthy trad gaming career, and the other guy aside from the DM is playing a partially insane wizard. Our personalities have all clashed a bit, never in a super serious way, but it's been a lot of fun so far. There was a festival in the city of Waterdeep celebrating the lunar eclipse. The paladin (Lylia) was new to the city, whereas my character (Robin, yes, I went there) had lived there her whole life and was accustomed to large gatherings, so she decided to warn Lylia about the dangers of the massive crowd. I said to Lylia "I know you're new around here, so I feel like I should tell you to be careful. There are those who would use a big crowd like this as cover to take advantage of other people. For instance, this-" and at this point I stole something from a random person's pocket. I held it up to her, it turned out to be a pretty well crafted dagger, "-could happen to you if you aren't careful." Lylia was aghast and demanded that I return the dagger and never do that again and blah blah blah paladin poo poo. I couldn't find the person because I wasn't really looking at them while I had my hand in thier pocket yoinking their poo poo. Well actually, I did find the person, in a way. As we were wandering around the festival, we got mugged by three dudes. Two of them flashed their daggers at us and demanded our money. One of them was patting his clothing looking for his dagger. I give Lylia a look and told her "See? This is the kind of thing that happens in big crowds!" She sighs and cuts the muggers down, and I avoid getting in trouble with her, just barely. Later our train breaks down on the way to Baldur's Gate, and we end up near a keep/town that we're free to explore for a few hours while they fix it. Robin feels her kleptomania flaring up (I roll percentile for this  ), so I dart off away from the smothering paladin and start talking to folks. The town is pretty crime free and the baron of the keep is well liked, but it turns out the captain of the guard is actually extorting the townspeople and overtaxing them, pocketing the excess. No one can prove it, and the baron is unaware of anything because everyone is afraid of the captain. I'm too young and dumb to be afraid of some stupid guy abusing his authority, so I start gathering information on where the guy lives, what his patrol routes and times are, whatever I can get. I rolled a natural 20 on the check, so I know everything. I case his house, break in, steal things, accidentally set off an acid bolt trap that fries one of his windows, you know, rogue stuff. I write "Think on your sins" on the frame of his bed, scatter some dust of tracelessness and start climbing out the ruined window, and who should be rounding the corner to watch me do this than Lylia. She demands to know what I'm doing, and I tell her the guard captain is corrupt and I'm dealing a little street justice. I happened to steal some papers that he had kept around, he was dumb enough to keep track of his illicitly gained money, so I flashed those papers to her, but then scampered off because I made the listen check (and the subsequent "what in the world could that be?" check to distract her) to hear someone coming around the corner. Turns out it's the corrupt guard captain, back a bit early from his patrol. Lylia is very obviously a paladin, her armor has religious symbols all over it, so the captain asks her if she saw what happened. She replied "I was actually just trying to find out who is deserving of judgment here." Which is not technically a lie, and she starts helping him search his house for evidence, which I left none of because I'm fairly good at what I do, or I cheat with magic items when I'm not good enough! While Lylia is hanging out with the guard captain, I start distributing packages with some gold to each house in the town, because all the money that the captain had extorted was in silver, so in this way I could fulfill the reversal of fortune without it being traced back as easily. This didn't actually matter in the end, but I was just being careful.This is where the highlight of the evening occurs. Lylia goes around town with the guard captain, trying to find enemies who would do something like this. The guard captain is apparently an incredibly skilled liar and keeps convincing her that the people they are talking to are making up stories or trying to discredit him when they accuse him of being corrupt. Lylia herself is rolling terribly on Sense Motive checks, so she's at an impasse with the captain for the better part of an hour. Finally, she gets suspicious enough to cast Detect Evil and finds out that the captain is actually lawful evil, so she gets enough circumstantial bonuses to see through the captain's lies. She confronts him with sword drawn and demands his surrender, but the captain isn't giving up so easily. It's worth noting that the wizard wandered into the proceedings during the investigation, because he had been my lookout while I was burglarizing the house, and caught up to Lylia. He had heard from me that the captain was corrupt, but wasn't sure it was true and was content to let the paladin handle investigations. Lylia tells Artemis (the wizard's name) "I'm going to try to take him alive so we can bring him to the baron." and Artemis replies, "Well that is where you and I differ, because I have every intention of lighting this man on fire." We all erupt in laughter at this point because the delivery was so perfect. After composing ourselves (five minutes later) the captain is taken down, after being lit on fire by the wizard, but they do manage to only knock him unconscious and not outright kill him. So they take him to the baron after Lylia healed him, insisting he be fully conscious and able to speak for himself. When they get there, the baron is actually reading the ledger, because I had a courier deliver it (I like to operate anonymously) with a note stating what was going on. So the captain is dealt with and we get on our way. And that, kids, is the story of how a rogue and a paladin can get along without the paladin throwing the rogue in jail or the rogue backstabbing the poo poo out of the paladin for being a fun-squashing drama queen! Nucular Carmul fucked around with this message at 13:14 on Jun 13, 2013 |
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Jun 13, 2013 13:11
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That mugging attempt is basically the perfect DM solution to that particular argument. Well done, DM.
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Jun 13, 2013 16:38
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I wish I had players as awesome as your group(all my players are new to tabletop games and still learning to be awesome).
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Jun 13, 2013 16:48
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I've been following this thread from the beginning and all the stories make me wish I had gotten into tabletop gaming years ago. I know there are PbP games on the forums and everything, but is there a place for people that haven't ever played a game before to start from or is that something that should be done with a group that meets up in real life?
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Jun 13, 2013 18:10
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mmj posted:I've been following this thread from the beginning and all the stories make me wish I had gotten into tabletop gaming years ago. I know there are PbP games on the forums and everything, but is there a place for people that haven't ever played a game before to start from or is that something that should be done with a group that meets up in real life? One possibility is to see if any place near you does D&D Encounters. There are short adventures every Wednesday night that are designed so that new people can jump in. I'd recommend reading the quick start rules before showing up to a session, but whoever's there should be able to teach you what you need to know, and there should be some pre-generated characters for you to use. The main problem with this is that you'll probably end up playing with a random selection of strangers, which could end up great or terrible depending on who games in your area. I got my start through this and ran it at my local store until recently when it kind of fell apart, and while we had one guy most people found annoying for a little while, I generally liked who I played with.
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Jun 13, 2013 18:32
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mmj posted:I've been following this thread from the beginning and all the stories make me wish I had gotten into tabletop gaming years ago. I know there are PbP games on the forums and everything, but is there a place for people that haven't ever played a game before to start from or is that something that should be done with a group that meets up in real life? Do you ever go on IRC? I will totally run a one-shot for you if you want. Rookies are awesome. On the subject of the thread: So, my group is currently in a pirate game. A Pathfinder module, actually. Not usually a fan of Pathfinder, but our current GM is a drat good GM, so I'll suck up some rules not to my tastes if it means getting to listen to his funny voices and crazy plots for a few hours. We've been pressganged onto a pirate ship, which it turns out is not very fun at all. For the PCs. We the players are having a blast. Anyways, one of our PCs is trying to seduce one of the lady pirates. This is...Not going well for him. This last session, though, he managed to sweet-talk her up into the crow's nest with a natural 20. Where there was a lookout. I joked he'd be getting a natural 1 on his next diplomacy check. You can imagine what happened. Natural 1, baby. So the lookout could not be convinced to vacate the crow's nest, and instead our PC gets to sit there and listen to the lookout talk about his boils, all while the lady pirate heads back down. The poor player doesn't hear that part, though. So after a few checks, he finally gets the crow's nest to himself,spins around to where the lady pirate was. Aaand she's gone. He's stuck alone in the crow's nest, in the middle of the night, waiting for the next watch to come up. It was hilarious, though the player didn't think so as much. But then, his PC's been getting picked on on and off the entire time. While another PC managed to fall over the previous day, crack his head, pass out, and got whipped for it. We're only four days into the journey. I shudder to think how bad off we'll be by the time we actually try to be pirates.
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Jun 13, 2013 20:32
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Yalborap posted:Do you ever go on IRC? I will totally run a one-shot for you if you want. Rookies are awesome. Do you have PMs or an email address? I'd be really excited to try something like this but I'm not kidding about never having played a game before so I'd probably need to do some preliminary work to set something like this up.
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Jun 13, 2013 20:57
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mmj posted:Do you have PMs or an email address? I'd be really excited to try something like this but I'm not kidding about never having played a game before so I'd probably need to do some preliminary work to set something like this up. It's my username at the gmails. Throw me an email and we'll work out the details.
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Jun 13, 2013 21:10
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Yalborap ran me through a one-off set in the mass effect universe and it was a really good first experience. He helped me out with character creation, gave me a fun mission to play through and was really good with helping me to understand the whole thing. He also made it easy for me to get into character a bit and play around in the world. It was a lot of fun and I'm definitely going to try and find a group I can play with now. So yeah, thanks for a great first experience Yalborap!
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Jun 14, 2013 06:37
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mmj posted:Yalborap ran me through a one-off set in the mass effect universe and it was a really good first experience. He helped me out with character creation, gave me a fun mission to play through and was really good with helping me to understand the whole thing. He also made it easy for me to get into character a bit and play around in the world. It was a lot of fun and I'm definitely going to try and find a group I can play with now. It's hard to get mad about the cranky grogs I'm stuck with when reading stories like these 
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Jun 14, 2013 15:17
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A key to get players involved in the game is recurring enemies. Now, they can be innocuous (an old high school friend who works at a museum, and swears revenge when the players smash the museum and get her fired). They may be incidental (the slumlord the players see once at a party and absolutely loathe.) But they should be recurring. In my Dungeon World game, the players entered a tournament. Their chief competition were dark mirrors of themselves, most competently The Professor. The Professor opposed our storm/star mage, Andromeda. He wore an armored raincoat, a plague mask, and attacked with syringes. He was also near-impossible to kill. During a spectator event, he slid up behind Andromeda and stuck her with a syringe. The paladin tried to interpose but almost fell unconcious. The ranger tried to defend her but was intercepted by another of his allies. When Andromeda regained her footing, he was gone. He appeared again and again; in magical disguise to arrest the party, as the trainer of a "Containment" team, and on a pirate ship. Now, the pirate ship was different; Andromeda was holding her own. Unfortunately, she decided to use a Forceful attack, dropping him to 1 HP...and sending him into the cannonade of the enemy ship. He begged the kind Ranger for help, and she (not knowing who he was) came closer. He stabbed her with a poison of friendship; she healed him and he slipped the noose again. A few sessions later, the mage got a love letter. It told her to meet at The Frozen Kipper, an iced-cream parlor in town. When she got there, the city guard were fighting off a deader infestation that would leave most of the party crippled. There was also one person, sitting shyly at a table, waving to her. While she knocked the undead through the restaurant, she found herself with a syringe in her chest. The Professor knocked her across the room, into a smoothie machine (which, combined with the attacks of the unliving, left her on the brink of death). Despite the party's efforts to defend her, the Professor stepped...slowly...over. He was stabbed. He was on fire. He was unstoppable. In her last desperate action, Andromeda summoned him into a black hole, banishing him from the known universe. She then fainted from the exertion. A key to good villains is having good characters. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Apr 18, 2018 |
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Jun 14, 2013 20:25
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mmj posted:Yalborap ran me through a one-off set in the mass effect universe and it was a really good first experience. He helped me out with character creation, gave me a fun mission to play through and was really good with helping me to understand the whole thing. He also made it easy for me to get into character a bit and play around in the world. It was a lot of fun and I'm definitely going to try and find a group I can play with now. That's awesome man, I'm a relatively new player myself (been playing with a Pathfinder/3.5 group I met at work for almost 2 years)and it's great to see someone else pick it up. I really do wish I had picked it up earlier, it quickly became one of my favorite hobbies. I might suggest finding a Pathfinder Society Group in your area, some people may dislike PF (can you believe it? people disagreeing about editions and rule sets?). Not just to play Pathfinder, but to find an established group to hang out with. The group I am currently playing with started out playing Rifts about 10 years ago. You can easily find other games to go to meeting new players you hit it off with. I started with my main group, and I also have a bi monthly WH40k group and a Game of Thrones boardgame group that meets whenever we have six people with 9 hours to kill. So last night our group entered the Pyramids of the Elementals. We entered the first pyramid we saw, which was on a small island surrounded by a moat. We assumed it was the Water Pyramid, but it was actually the Fire Pyramid. On Fire Island. Another in a proud tradition of stupid and immature names. (Google Fire Island, results may be NFSW). So we get in, and the door slams behind up and a voice screams out REPENT. REPENT.REPENT. So things started off great! We started scouting out , and didn't find anything for about 30 minutes. We find a long, narrow bridge over a giant lake of lava. We cross the bridge and find a massive armory being tended by some kobold smiths, with a massive Brass Golem in the far back. The Kobold Foreman(Forkobold?) walks up and asks us who we were and what we were doing there. Witch makes a bluff and says that we are the quality assurance supervisors here to inspect the forge for OSHA violations. I made the check, and the Forekobold walks us over to the a pile of magical weapons. The second the rogue touched one, the Brass Golem wakes up, screams REPENT THIEFS UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS and comes to life. Now, Brass Golems are no joke. CR 14. We are level 9-11. We were in a tight spot! we had no room to maneuver in a small room, everyone was almost in reach of it's breath weapon, it was immune to mind effects, so the witche's hexes were useless,DR/15 adamantium, and we had one adamantite dagge between us, etc. So we decide to just run. We go back to the bridge and get an idea. The Golem was still chasing up, but it had to squeeze through the door we had a little time to prepare. Sorceror got off a cold spell, which acted like "slow" on a brass golem. The bridge was 15 feet across, and very sturdy, and it would be in impossible to grapple or throw it off the bridge. So I cast my fly hex and hide underneath the bridge. The druid casts "stone to flesh" on the section of the bridge I was under, and the sorcerer cast "silent image" over the fleshy part of the stone bridge so it looked completely normal. The witch prepared an action for when the golem was standing on the fleshy bridge section. So the Golem charges through and rushes for the Barbarian who was standing in the middle of the bridge with the fleshy part between them, holding up a handmade sign saying "Golims suk". As soon as the Golem walked onto the fleshy bridge, and my readied action went off. The fleshy bridge started to sag and tear, but didn't break, so I cast fireball on it, and just incinereated the flesh bridge and the Golem falls 150 feet into a pit of lava. we start celebrating until we see it swimming in lava, apparently taking no damage. So I started flying above him, just pestering him with spells to slow him down a tad. What I didn't know is that while cold spells would effectly be like casting a slow spell on him, anytime he took fire damage the slow status was dispelled. So we can't get down to fight him down there, and we can't really fight him when he's up on the bridge, so we decided to just drop poo poo on his head. So the Barbrian get's fly and bull's strength on him, so he flies over the gap into the armory and start's gathering anvils up. With his strength score, he could hold about 8 anvils. he ties them together and flies out. He then goes up another 50 feet above the golem and dropped them on his head while he was swimming in lava. little did we know they were adamantite anvils! So the falling double damage was 58d6. He ended up doing around 184 points of damage, killing it in one shot. So we killed a CR 14 golem in about 5 rounds without taking a single point of damage. We walk back into the forge and say " well your Golem was obviously malfunction, and that is a major OSHA violation. It also attacked union officials in the course of their duty, while interfering with an official inspection. This whole Pyramid is going to get shut down! Your families will starve and the sky will turn to dust beore we ok this site for re-opening!...unless of course our report says it was a faulty bridge, and there were no violations...of course for that too happen we'd have to say...get our pick of the finest weapons here...and we'd have to inventory your gold and gem room..understand?" Nat loving 20 bluff roll vs. an 11 Sense Motive. We walked out with a Holy Avenger, Scabbard of Keen, 200 adamantite arrows, a +3 Warhammer of something(can't recall of the top of my head, but it does massive damage to undead) a Boulder Head mace(once a day can creat a large boulder that does 4d8 damage), and around 3,000 worth of gold, gems and spell components. Not bad for a day's work. Back in the lobby, 4 stone golems fell from the ceiling and screamed REPENT REPENT REPENT. So we said gently caress that, dim doored out went back to our village where we had a heroes feast and all got laid. All in all a good day.
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Jun 15, 2013 03:23
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Order of Magnitude: Creepy Vampire Bromance Kind of dipped out of posting, trying to get back on track. Okay, so the OoM is playing through the Whispers of the Vampire's Blade and have just survived an airship collision (which was part of the adventure's plot) and one of the players had just used Command Undead on the vampire antagonist (which the adventure's plot definitely did not account for). As a result he's been half-rescued/half-kidnapped by the vampire Lucan. Lucan and Jack, the Order's Sorcerer, fly into the night away from the crashing airships and the rest of the Order. After a dozen or so miles Lucan finds a cave where he and Jack can shelter until dawn. Lucan is completely under Jack's spell...but he's also still being influenced by the Soul Blade he carries and the undercurrent of command from his vampiric creator. So at this point he's extremely unstable. Fortunately the player in question is my wife, so I'm allowed to be extra creepy. Lucan's brief conversation with Jack is filled with wild mood swings, obvious hunger and subtle homoerotic tension. Although Lucan is friends with Jack the Soul Blade won't allow him to spill the beans on what's really going on, so he feeds Jack the same lie he did to Grilsha: Lucan was infected with vampirism and he's heading to Karnath to try and find a cure. The sword is a valuable Karnathi war-relic so he's stolen it from the black lanterns hoping to use it to barter for the Karnathi's necromantic expertise. Jack starts trying to convince Lucan that the rest of the party can help him, but their conversation is cut short by one of Lucan's wilder moments. To calm him down Jack allows Lucan to feed on a small amount of his blood. The two both konk out shortly after dawn. Jack is exceptionally exhausted after the full night and the blood loss so he sleeps through the day and wakes up to a "breakfast" of two bloodless rabbits lucan has snagged. The two then decide to travel to the nearest town where Lucan believes he can get a train bound for Karnath (the airship crashed just over Thrane). Jack's command undead spell will last two more days but he's got an extra scroll so he figures he'll be able to renew it at some point. Jack manages to convince Lucan to wait a day or so to see if the rest of the Order shows up and to allow them all to come to Karnath with him and see if they can help. Lucan is naturally suspicious of the others but Jack has exceptional Bluff skills and manages to sway him. Fortunately I manage to play up Lucan's creepiness and instability enough that even when they take a room at an inn together (with Lucan sleeping under the bed during the day), Jack is too off balance to realize that he could simply open up all the windows and set the bed on fire or even just stake Lucan in his sleep. Fortunately the rest of the Order arrive to the small town soon and are spotted by Jack who fills them in on the details of the arrangement he's made with Lucan. So, the Order buys some lightning rail tickets. They're cheap so they take seats in the steerage while Lucan pays for him and Jack to have a private cabin together. They're off and no one really is sure what they'll do next...that's when the gnomes attack. Normally, this is the part of the adventure where the train is attacked by warforged with halfling mercenaries. However, I've decided that it would work better if the attackers were gnomes from Tolanport, led by the commander with a grudge against Lucan. With the help of the diviner that the Order shook down earlier in the adventure and some hair taken from Shara's cell they've tracked the Order and Lucan to Thrane and attack the train hoping to capture Lucan. The Order manages to fight off the bulk of the attack on the steerage compartment, but another group of gnomes breaks in at the front of the train and encounters Jack and Lucan. At first they manage to hold their own, but the gnome commander has discovered Lucan's vampiric nature and has a spell prepared to capture him: Command Undead. The gnome commander busts out his compulsion spell and Lucan of course fails his Will Save. It turns out the maximum number of competing commands his tiny mind can contain at once is four: Jack's command spell, the gnome's, the sword and his master. Lucan freaks out, killing the gnome commander and leaping from the train (fortunately it's just before dawn). In wolf form he flees across the plain towards a conveniently nearby goblin ruin. The gnomes retreat in disarray after a few more rounds of fighting and the Order manages to convince the conductor to slow the lightning rail enough for them to hop off and pursue Lucan. By this time the sun is breaking and Lucan is trapped in the ruin. He's also completely himself for the moment but he knows that won't last long so his only wish at this point is to go down fighting. As the Order enters the ruin his voice echoes through the ancient building, challenging them to come and face him if they're brave enough. They step into a large chamber, an ancient temple covered in goblin statues and dripping with water. The Soul Blade is driven into the altar and lounging across the throne is Lucan, an enemy who the Order has so far been completely unable to defeat in battle. His damage reduction, incredible AC, fast healing and energy drain are all devastating to a relatively low-level group of PCs. This fight could easily end in a complete defeat. Then magnus pulls out a scroll of hold undead he prepared earlier, casts it and paralyzes Lucan completely. The Order surrounds him, holds him down and drives a stake through his heart. So much for that boss fight... There's a bit more of a fuss when Magnus grabs the Soul Blade and fails his roll to avoid being taken over and fights the party until the monk, Nolan, disarms him. Then Magnus says "let me try that again" and picks it back up. This time they just beat him into unconsciousness. They wrap Lucan's body in cloth to keep out the sun and contact the Black Lanterns to arrange for transport back into Breland with their prize. Back in Sharn they turn Lucan and the Soul Blade in and repair Magnus now that there's no temptations.
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Jun 16, 2013 19:41
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oriongates posted:There's a bit more of a fuss when Magnus grabs the Soul Blade and fails his roll to avoid being taken over and fights the party until the monk, Nolan, disarms him. Then Magnus says "let me try that again" and picks it back up. This time they just beat him into unconsciousness. They wrap Lucan's body in cloth to keep out the sun and contact the Black Lanterns to arrange for transport back into Breland with their prize. Back in Sharn they turn Lucan and the Soul Blade in and repair Magnus now that there's no temptations.
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Jun 16, 2013 22:59
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oriongates posted:There's a bit more of a fuss when Magnus grabs the Soul Blade and fails his roll to avoid being taken over and fights the party until the monk, Nolan, disarms him. Then Magnus says "let me try that again" and picks it back up. Magnus is awesome
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Jun 16, 2013 23:32
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Yesterday's Dungeon World session was terrific. Because it was Father's Day, a lot of my players were unavailable, so I brought in a ringer from the Netherlands. We attached speakers to one of the player's cell phones so we could Skype him in. It was a great choice. Our party was Casmir The Slayer Andromeda the Mage Watson the Artificer We started where last session left off, with the party escaping a crime scene. Andromeda gave an addled testimony (having nearly died), and Watson simply pushed past the investigators. In the market, they ran into Casmir! A victim of Duke Yarlborough's magical manipulations, he escaped when the party blew up the lab he was stored in, wandered the wilderness and became an adventurer. We found out that Andromeda got drunk a few years ago and beat up Casmir; the latter was only a commoner at the time. They got a letter from an Adventurer's Guild messenger, telling Andromeda, Watson and Co to go back to Rosebluff and restart a guild branch. Casmir was invited (especially since he claimed to owe Watson a life debt). The group sought out Carraldo Fritz for use, again, of his steam ship. Due to the group's lack of smooth talking (which included the phrase "You're right! You shouldn't trust us.",) they agree to put down a huge deposit, which'll be returned if the boat safely arrives. Luckily, it does, around 5 in the morning. The players decide to use the town's inn, not pushing their luck by staying on the boat any longer than needed. When they visit the Mayor's House, the find that he's been kidnapped. They also find Silk Keldar, Thief, pestering the Butler, convinced that the house is still a boudoir. (It isn't). The group investigates the mayor's bedroom and follow the path of destruction to an odd well on the edge of the property. 15 feet wide, shooting up air, and filled with runes repeating the elven word for "Control", they lower the slayer in on a rope. He hears shadowwings, giant demon birds that eat souls instead of food. The party jumps in. Watson is immediately grabbed and slammed against a wall, his holding apparatus battered and scraping against the sides of the well, throwing up sparks. Silk perfectly dives in, daggers in front of him, managing to stab his way through a shadow wing and emerging on the other side covered in its blood. Casmir joins the fight, and he and Andromeda try to rip the wings off the creature so they can slow their own descent. Watson puts his boots to the creature he's fighting, barely managing not to slam Casmir (clinging to the creature's back) into the wall. By this point, everyone's reached terminal velocity. Andromeda uses wind control to blast two monsters away from Silk. The creatures knock him about. Casmir finally rips off the creatures wings, and uses his resourcefulness to dive after Silk and save him. Casmir uses his mutagenic toughness to absorb the creature's attacks without complaint. This leaves Watson alone again. Below the group, Silk saw a pulpy membrane made of mushrooms and throws one of his daggers at it. He retreats upwards, opening his cloak. The gas disoriented the remaining souleaters. The creatures emerged in the middle of the procession, and Andromeda dove down at them with her staff. She mistimed it, though, and tumbled. Casmir threw the thief upwards and grabbed Andromeda. Watson slew a Nightwing and wore it as a carapace. With 70 feet to the bottom of the cavern, Andromeda pulled out a massive spell, plucking everyone out of the air and placing them down in the entrance of a dungeon. --- A few yards into the dungeon, they found a ripped up MAYOR sash near a section of wall colored a grisly red-brown. Silk's caution alerted the group that the floor turned into wall-mashers, and that whatever messy bit of bone was left was probably the Pathmaker thugs. But then, who had captured the Mayor? Silk soon found a book on purification of evil spaces. Apparently, a prayer could send the book and its assorted artifacts wherever it was most needed, but it could only be used by the pure hearted. After making their way through some trap-filled hallways (and using shadowwing entrails to map a maze), they came to a dark shrine. It was dedicated to the Purple Armored undead, as well as Howard the Necromancer. The group pilfered the ritual daggers then hid...only to realize the Mayor was tied above the altar! As Casmir released him, fierce mohrgs attacked. (Mohrgs, as you probably know, are tortured souls who died in tragic conflict with their ideals. They carry around nooses made of their own guts. The players were suitably disgusted). Mohrgs attacked from all directions! Watson closed to melee with one of them, but was savagely stabbed in the gut. Silk blasted it with a flurry of sneaky blows, covering Watson in the creatures putrid guts. Meanwhile, Casmir slashed one with his bastard sword, using the altar to gain a height advantage. The party was in dire straits, however, as the Mohrgs kept coming and the dark altar granted them strength! The defeated creatures lashed on to 'living' ones, creating dual-sworded crabwalk creatures that squirted blood and ichor. Casmir chose between protecting Watson and the Mayor. He chose Watson; the mayor was stabbed from stem to stern. Silk, in an act of pure chutzpah, approached the altar. Wearing holy artifacts and being of fluid moral code, he smashed the evil icons. With Andromeda's help, he purified the altar. Waves of holy light sent the Mohrg fleeing, restored the mayor, and caused the shrine to rise. Andromeda and Watson worked together to clear the temple ceiling before everyone was crushed; the group emerged on a shrine, smashing through one of the mayor's pagodas and creating a new site of worship. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Jun 18, 2013 |
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Jun 17, 2013 20:43
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Golden Bee posted:Yesterday's Dungeon World session was terrific. That missing word before "up" is driving me nuts.
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Jun 18, 2013 14:50
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The missing word is "beat". Being a drunk mage, Andromeda unleashed a whallop of magic onto poor, poor Casimir way back then. But being as he still owed that lifedebt to Watson for getting him out of the Duke's laboratory, he put up with Andromeda for the duration of the session and even saved her from falling to her untimely demise in the shadow-wing well/cave. (I was Casimir, it was a great loving game)
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Jun 18, 2013 14:58
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Speaking of the *World games, I GMed my first game ever this weekend with Apocalypse World, and luckily I had an awesome group of players to help. The guidebook for the game stresses not to plan anything for the first session, and man was it right - things turned out way crazier and better than the vague imaginings I had. The cast: Pockets the Maestro D' - owner of Deep Pockets Casino and general apocalyptic confidante. Clover the Operator - greeter at the casino and moonlighter of various shady jobs to pay for her male to female transition. Gritch the Brainer - creepy weird psychic southern gentleman that efficiently gets the deadbeat patrons to pay up. Scarlett Shadow the Battlebabe - exactly what she sounds like. Kills and/or fucks for money and loves it. Max the Gunlugger - occasional security for the casino, traveling companion and occasional lesbian partner to Scarlett. Our grim adventure opens up at Deep Pockets Casino, an incandescent haven in the harsh landscape, where those looking to lighten their pockets and forget their troubles (of which there are many here in Apocalypse World) often find themselves. Pockets, on his usual stroll along the casino floor, spots Camo, a regular but obnoxious patron, stumbling through the casino front. Clover intercepts the obviously drunk Camo, while Max approaches from the corner, sniper rifle strapped to her back and Magnum ready in hand. Gritch watches from his glass observation booth up above, swirling an unnamed red liquid in his goblet which might be made from the top of a human skull. Calling over a drink while Clover calms down the distraught Camo, Pockets learns of some gruesome goings on at the abandoned airport to the west. A large plume of purple smoke rises from the landmark. Gritch wakes up Scarlett Shadow, sleeping off another profitable night of killing and/or loving and alerts her to the situation. The party assembles in Camo’s bucket of a Camry and first drives to a nearby outpost for some more information. Gritch, eager to know more about Buddha, the owner of the trading outpost, uses his mini-implant syringe on the base of his ring and grabs Buddha’s bare arm, while Gritch’s violation glove opens up the poor fat man’s mind to the Brainer. (Gritch's player picked up on the Brainer right away - normally Brainer moves need "time and intimacy, mutual or otherwise" to work, but his violation glove lets simple physical contact count as "time and intimacy". The implant syringe makes people more vulnerable to his Brainer moves.) Perhaps feeling slightly remorseful for his bold brain violation, Gritch drops a handful of gold teeth on the counter in exchange for a dusty monocle. Other goods and services are exchanged, brains are opened to the psychic maelstrom, and information is learned, so the party heads the rest of the way to the airport on foot, looking for more information on the mysterious Clone Army that Buddha had heard rumors of. Pockets peels back the broken chain fence of the airport while Scarlett peers through her own sniper rifle, perhaps to match her “battle buddy” Max’s. Firing off an exploratory shot at the windows of the control tower, Scarlett sees a white-faced, red-haired and nosed individual peer out and radio for backup. Turns out the art of clowning wasn’t completely lost to the apocalypse. Gritch ducks inside the terminal alone, while Max’s experience as a hard motherfucker tells her the last in a row of airplane husks across the tarmac seems like the most defended area. Pockets and Clover make their way towards the last airplane, looking to reason with whoever’s in charge here, while Gritch is nearly ambushed by a clown. Gripping the clown’s mouth with his violation glove, Gritch silently melts his would-be-opponent’s brain. Meanwhile Pockets and Clover hear laughing from the second-to-last plane, and are approached by a couple of sloppy, sad, and armed clowns. Moments before Pockets is sliced into by the crazed clown’s machete, Max and Scarlett fire of a couple of shots from their sniper rifles by the fence and blast apart the faces of the two, no longer laughing, comedy duo. Gritch extends alone, crouched behind the airline counter inside the terminal, searching his first victim while three more armed clowns approach. Silently dispatching the last man through the door, he’s caught in a bind and is flanked by the two remaining assailants. Gritch’s luck runs out as his clavicle is sliced into by a machete before he can confirm his second kill. The third opponent quickly approaches, stabs Gritch in the shoulders with kitchen knives and slugs him unconscious for good measure. Unfazed by the faceless corpses and brain matter of a few clowns, oblivious to their barely-trusted companion’s misfortune inside the terminal, Pockets, Clover, Max and Scarlett continue towards the final aircraft and dispatch a few more clowns along the way. Taking the slain clowns’ clothing and makeup, the party attracts three more clowns from the last airplane with amusing circus singing and dancing. Finally finding the source of the purple smoke, Clover invites a clown to dance with her by the makeshift fire pit, strewn with multi-colored bones lightly smoldering in the afternoon sun. Her back turned, she unfortunately doesn’t see the clown take the suggestion more literally and pull out a Molotov cocktail. Scarlett cooly saunters into action, ripping off the ridiculous clown outfit to again reveal her battle “outfit”, a complicated series of thin leather strips and bondage chains. This, of course, gives her MORE armor, because again, this is Apocalypse World. In one fluid motion, she unravels the chain from her body and whips it towards the clown’s outstretched arm while the chain’s tip flips out mean blade. The clown drops the just-lit Molotov as her blade cuts into his bicep, and suddenly there is one more screaming, bleeding, aflame clown in their midst. Gritch wakes up alone, tied to a chair in some kind of storage room. Nudging out one of his many hidden knives, he only is able to cut through a few of his bonds before the door opens and he’s confronted by a clown with a shotgun and two more, each with large and well-used blunt instruments. Gritch wisely agrees to meet Grimaldi, the apparent leader of the clowns, and is lead up to an observation tower next to the control. Face to face, Gritch stares down Grimaldi, an impeccably made-up clown nearly as dapper as himself, and recognizes through the psychic maelstrom that this man is the center of the recent madness. Grimaldi shares his plan of absorbing Gritch into his circus of merry slaughter, and ever-obliging, Gritch reaches out his hand to graciously accept. Piercing Grimaldi’s hand with the ring’s implant syringe and tearing into his psyche, Gritch takes cover behind the foaming and bleeding clown leader (yes, this is the point where Gritch's player insta-kills the BBEG I had vaguely outlined). Goldfish and Chumps, the leader’s guards approach with sledgehammer and baseball bat while the third levels his shotgun. The now-dead clown’s body slumps against Gritch and a psychotic psyche that won’t stop laughing or singing calliope music takes up residence inside Gritch’s brain (this is the point where someone jokingly said, "Grimaldi's in his brain now, right?" after an ambiguous dice roll, and I pretend it was my plan all along). Taking advantage of this weird occurrence, Gritch searches his new other half’s thoughts to successfully command two of Grimaldi’s thugs and brain-scramble the third. Using his newfound abilities open his brain to the maelstrom and heal himself, Gritch returns back down to the terminal to see Goldfish and Chumps gleefully watching the violence outside. Max shoots down the flaming, screaming clown before it can reach and embrace her in a scalding hug, and quick-fires her Magnum into the second clown’s chest. Pockets leaps into action and stabs the nearest clown with his cane-sword through the heart. Inside the terminal, Gritch approaches the too-trusting clowns from the back and sends Chumps into a seizure but gets cracked in the head by Goldfish’s baseball bat. Missing a shotgun blast and unused to actual close combat, Gritch gets cracked again and panics, losing both his violation glove and gun. Hearing the commotion inside, Clover runs up to the terminal door and shoots down the clown from behind with her 9mm. After sniper-shotting one last clown with the audacity to open up with automatic weapon fire (the lady-gunners were all rolling really well), the party heads up to the control tower. Always on the safe side, Clover tosses one of Max’s handy grenades to blast away the door, only to come up slightly short and merely dent it in. Fed up with this poo poo, Max kicks open the door only to arm a booby trap. Max and Clover are blasted back down the spiral stairs as the control tower center explodes apart in a fireball and Gritch emerges from a nearby door, completely healed, to find out what all the commotion is. For the next game, I'm giving Gritch a custom move for whenever he opens his brain to the psychic maelstrom (which is a lot for him), he runs the risk of the Grimaldi personality taking over.
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Jun 18, 2013 21:55
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Starwars part 2: The Dickest Life Debt, Crime Alley and running (or dying) like a bitch Zador and Baird wake up in an alley with just regular clothes on, and no equipment. They begin walking back to the guild but periodically fall and suffer from flashbacks of traumatic experiences from their past. They eventually make it back to the guild, and see the doctor who takes blood samples to see what tests were done on them. After this, they try to get some equipment from Shrii, who sells Baird a rifle and instead of selling Zador a rifle he starts the argument that if he is to give him anything then Zador will owe him a life-debt because he just left him to get shot in the bar. That's right. A life debt for a rifle. Zaek and I return in the middle of the argument and just stand there and watch for a while. I try to talk Shrii out of forcing him into a life-debt but I can't. Eventually Zador gives up and says "Fine. I owe you a life debt." The rest of this session went into planning how to start a gang war between the Yellows and the Reds, and began a general feeling of animosity towards Shrii. For the next session my brother (Shrii) was absent, so the rest of the party and I decided to go with the "Dress up as yellows, kill reds" plan to spark the gang war. We all put on disguises and Started walking around looking for red guys to kill. Right before we find them we pass two yellow guys standing outside of an alleyway, and can hear a sort of static coming from down the alley. Ignoring it, we continue down the street and the next alleyway down we find two red guys standing outside an alleyway, with a hulking shadow at the end of it. We make a plan to 'breach' the alleyway: Baird and I dump in frags, Zaek and Zador mop up the guards. Then we deal with whatever is at the end. The first part of this goes off beautifully, and the mooks drop like nothing. Baird enters the alleyway, and is met with a raging Wookiee, who misses his attack but still does a flat 12 damage (I'm not sure how this was. It was explained but I can't remember it for the life of me.) Upon realizing what we're faced with, I sprint back towards the yellow guys to ask for their help. Me: Hey guys, I know you're busy guarding and stuff but we really need your help. There's a big, black wookiee down there and he's trying to kill us. Guard: A Black Wookiee, you said? Me: Yeah. Guard: [turns down the alley] We got him! [back to me] Alright, let's go. We start moving back towards the other alleyway where the wookiee is already out in the street and completely wailing on Zador. Just after Zador gets knocked out, the yellow guy exits the alleyway and comes into sight. It's Firefly. He moves his speed which, unluckily, puts him right next to me. I figured I could get away with not being noticed if I did as little talking as possible. Ha, fat chance.  : What's going on, why did he start attacking? : I dunno. The guards attacked us and then he came out when they died.: [he studies me for a bit] That doesn't make sense... Oh well.Firefly starts walking towards the Wookiee who, once realizing who is coming at him, practically shits himself and runs. Firefly turns to me after the Wookiee is gone, and tells me to come with him down one of the alleyways. I comply, and try to keep my cool. Zaek runs off towards the green base. (Tl;dr at the end, it's a long converstaion) : Who are you? Who's your commander? What squad are you in? Did they really attack you?: Squad? I don't know, and we may have thrown a grenade first. : Why the absolute gently caress did you do that?: I don't know, some guy gave me a yellow armband and told me I'd be paid for any reds I killed. They seemed easy targets.: "some guy" gave you a yellow armband? Who was he? Who's your commander? What squad are you in?: I don't have a squad, or commander. Some guy gave me an armband. and-: They don't just "give out armbands" and tell people to start poo poo. [he levels his flamethrower at my face] Who are you. Take off that mask. : [I take off the mask] So, what will it take for me to walk away with my life?: Tell me who you are. Tell me what you were doing here.: I'm Tyrall Storm. I left the green guild because they weren't paying me nearly enough for the suicidal missions they were sending me on. Notably, trying to take you out.: So you thought the best way to join our guild was to dress up like us, and kill some red guys? Not such a great idea. : Maybe not, but you can't argue that it got me noticed.: [laughs] I guess it did, but not really in the best way. So you want to join? Why should we allow this? What skills do you offer.: Well, I'm an engineer, mechanic and pilot. And I'm not that bad of a shot.: [thinks for a minute, leans in to whisper and says] Meet me at dock 64.23 in two hours.tl;dr: Firefly finds out it's me, finds out I want to join the yellow gang. Telling me to meet him at a dock. I go and meet him two hours later and he's standing there with two other yellow guys. He drags out a guy with a bag on his head and a red armband on. He takes off his mask and hands me a regular ballistic pistol. "Time to prove how serious you are." He says and pushes my arm to level the gun at his forehead. "Me. Or him." He takes the bag off of the red guy's head, it's just a nondescript human. I sigh and tell him that I'd rather not kill anyone, but since I don't have a choice I move the gun to the red guy's head and execute him. Firefly smiles and hands me an armband, telling me he'll be in touch. Next Time: Easy mission? Assume trap. Edit: There was a part of the conversation with Firefly where he tells me that I ended up in "Crime Alley", where people are brought to be executed. I can't remember at all when it was, though. Cant Ride A Bus fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Jun 19, 2013 |
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Jun 19, 2013 06:00
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Suleman posted:Savage Worlds - Lego Pirates Of The Spanish Main The Battle Of Snake-Eye Island, or the fall of two frenchmen As we were returning to the island of Cozumel to retrieve the last of the treasure we discovered earlier, the GM rolled two ones on the random encounter table. We discovered an island that wasn't featured on any of the maps! We decided to name it the Snake-Eye Island. Upon exploring the island, we saw something very interesting: A solitary galleon anchored next to a wooden fortress. Being the greedy pirates that we are, we decided to assault it and steal the galleon for ourselves. For the record, the galleon is one of the most powerful ships of the time, and its in-game stats are appropriately huge as well. For reference:  Our three-master would be no match for it in direct combat. But... what if we stormed it in the middle of the night, before they can even raise their anchors? Once we have control of the upper deck, the ship will be as good as ours, since the sleepy sailors would just be cut down one by one as they emerged from below. Right? So that is what we did. In the middle of the dark, rainy night, we slid next to the galleon (which Nana thought had a familiar-sounding name, but couldn't quite place it) and almost caught the crew entirely by surprise. With only two guards and their captain on deck, we had the situation under control. The plan went well, we managed to corner the captain and his guards. The ship actually had gunholes that the crew could safely shoot from, but Marius thought quickly and rolled a barrel in front of them. Marius was supposed to watch the hatch leading to the lower decks, since his chosen Edges made him an effective meatgrinder. With First Strike and Riposte, he could make melee attacks against anyone that came close to him or attacked him. The situation seemed to be under control, so Marius left a handful of men in charge of watching the hatch and instead charged the captain's guards. He missed. And missed again. Meanwhile, immediately after he left the hatch, six men emerged from it. How six men could get up the ladder within the six seconds that a turn supposedly represents is a giant loving mystery, but that's how it goes. As this was happening, our captain and gunslinger Morrison had entered a sort of duel with the opposing captain. They would try to shoot each other and somehow manage to survive by spending several Bennies (which are a dramatic resource in Savage Worlds). Morrison seemed to have the advantage, simply because his arsenal of pistols was far bigger. However, as one of the opposing captain's guards was shot down, the captain quickly grabbed the falling man's flintlock and shot Morrison, who had just run out of Bennies. The shot did 26 damage, which would have been enough to kill many characters outright, Bennies or no. Morrison fell, in slow motion. As he struck the ground, it became immediately clear that he wouldn't be getting up anymore. We had lost our captain. In Pirates Of The Spanish Main, losing your officer forces you to roll a Morale Roll to see if your character becomes Shaken or not. What this effectively means is whether or not you can immediately act afterwards. Several of our men, Marius included, were Shaken, and the emerging enemies took the opportunity to incapacitate many of our men, including Capellan. The opposing captain turned to Marius and offered him a chance to surrender. As he spoke Marius realized who they were facing. It was actually Jack Hawkins, the legendary pirate hero, who is effectively the biggest name in the whole setting. This guy:  We had stumbled upon his hideout by accident. This is a guy who could overcome the odds just by himself, and this time the odds were on his side to begin with! As the most senior officer left standing, Marius had to make a decision: Surrender or keep fighting? He took the third option. He threw Roy off the stairs back down to our ship and told her- Uh, yeah. Roy is actually a woman. This was a secret Marius found out when treating her and swore to keep to himself. As a big momma's boy, Marius became rather protective of her. -anyway, he told her:  : "Go! Take the ship and go!"This actually started a small social battle where we had to convince our mercenaries to continue following us rather than betray us to Hawkins. We succeeded thanks to Roy's charisma and Hawkins's cluelessness. So, the remaining crew started retreating and disentangling the ships while Marius drew the enemies' fire and miraculously dodged it all. He climbed a mast and cut the ropes holding one of the sails to slow down the ship and ease our escape. Feeling invincible, he jumped down to the deck to secure the crew's escape... and landed badly, putting him off-balance just long enough for him to be surrounded and overwhelmed by the enemy crew. As he was holding off five men single-handedly (thanks to some really bad rolls on the DM's part), Hawkins took the time to get a bead on him and said:  : "I did offer to let you surrender."It was a headshot, and I had no Bennies left. I rolled on the injury table. A permanent injury. Huh. Marius wasn't dead yet. However, the headshot meant that the injury would either be a permanent scar or the loss of an eye. At this point, I said: "Marius is already one-eyed. If this is an eye injury, it's gonna be amazing." Lo and behold, it was. As per the rules, it defaulted to his remaining eye. Marius, my character, the ship's navigator, is now blind. There is no way around it, he simply doesn't have any eyes anymore. Marius stumbled a bit and fell over. However, thanks to how he had delayed the enemy, the crew had managed to disengage the ships. Before they left, though, they fought off the enemy just so they could retrieve Marius and Morrison's body. This was where the session ended. I have never been happier about losing a character. It was just a perfectly dramatic way to go. I'll probably get to send him off in the next session somehow, provided we can actually escape from Hawkins's faster ship without our captain. Suleman fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Jun 20, 2013 |
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Jun 20, 2013 14:10
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I recently ran a game of Paranoia using Fate Accelerated. I absolutely love this game- what other setting would allow me to hold the player characters accountable for losing a non-existent invisible train? Watching them squirm, betray, and backstab each other always leads to the best gaming stories.
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Jun 20, 2013 21:35
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BinaryDoubts posted:I recently ran a game of Paranoia using Fate Accelerated. I absolutely love this game- what other setting would allow me to hold the player characters accountable for losing a non-existent invisible train? Watching them squirm, betray, and backstab each other always leads to the best gaming stories. Please tell me you had the classic debriefing "I speak without fear of contradiction..." with all the other players playing the interrogators.
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Jun 20, 2013 22:10
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So my campaign I've talked about earlier with the dozens of Nicolas Cages running around came around again, and something amazing happened. One of the players is playing a Warforged who is essentially Protoman from the Mega Man series, and I let him have a gun hand which he can upgrade by defeating other Warforged and eating their power cores. The rest of the party has the ability to fly by some means or another, so I had him fight a robot named Anti-Grav Man, and after killing him, Protoman gained the Gravity Gun from Half Life 2, which gives him the ability to fly if he points it at himself. The player playing the captain of the crew had a phone call, so while he was doing that, he decided to test out his new cannon upgrade. Skalhor, the incredibly mean and very crazy fighter/barbarian went with him because he was bored. It should be noted at this point that Skalhor has always had his ranks in Handle Animal maximized per level, and has rolled natural 20s to tame a wild bear, and a halfling's dire wolf mount. So Protoman and Skalhor are hanging out by the port near the party's ship, and Protoman starts grabbing random poo poo and messing with it, floating things around with the Gravity Gun and just having fun. He decides to see if he can fish with it, and ends up grabbing a swordfish out of the ocean. Skalhor asks for it, and MacGuyvers up a javelin. Then later a couple of throwing knives out of other fish bones from things Protoman keeps catching. At this point I decided to mess with them, and I had Protoman pull a shark out of the water. Skalhor decides to try to grab it and bite it in the gills because Skalhor is loving stupid, but hilarious. He fumbles on his attack roll, so I told the players that Skalhor had just stuck his head inside the shark's mouth, which then clamped down. Protoman was just observing and wasn't really sure what Skalhor was doing, so he just said "Skalhor, what are you doing, you are not a fish, get out of there." in this super monotone voice which really enhanced the hilarity of what he was saying. Skalhor gets it into his head to run into the water while punching the shark, still clamped around his head, in the gills, and rolls a check to tame the shark, and of course his rear end rolls a natural 20 again. So he now has a pet shark, which they put a thin layer of mithril armor on, and used some leather and a dragon tooth to make a helmet with a horn on it, at which point Skalhor christened his new pet gently caress YEAH SEAKING. There were other things that happened that night, but nothing compares even remotely.
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Jun 22, 2013 04:24
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Nucular Carmul posted:Protoman was just observing and wasn't really sure what Skalhor was doing, so he just said "Skalhor, what are you doing, you are not a fish, get out of there." in this super monotone voice which really enhanced the hilarity of what he was saying. Monotone warforged are the best warforged.
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Jun 22, 2013 05:25
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| # ? May 14, 2024 15:48 |
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My Favoured Weapon Is Van! So, I just kicked off a goon Shadowrun game with some buddies of mine over skype. It has not had the beginning I was expecting. Although it is partly my fault for being an evil GM. The mission was meant to be an infiltration mission into a Knight Errant facility (for reasons... I know they read this thread). They had done moderately well disabling the cameras, but had alerted security to their presence in the meatworld. Then Uguu the Troll (he's an anime, and played by TheMightyBiscuit) has a smart idea... eat some 'pocky', drive past guards while yelling, and lead them away, or otherwise confuse them. Unfortunately, Biscuit's "Pocky" is in fact his mild addiction to the combat drug K-10 (Kamikaze-10). He naturally went beserk, ran over two guards who had gotten outside the walls of the facility, spun the van through the gates into another two, and then leapt out with his katana, sliced two people into beef jerky, and promptly conked out. Luckily, despite only having an Edge of 1, he didn't go permanently beserk. Keep in mind, Uguu is meant to be a Technomancer. Meanwhile, Bork Lazer the Physical Adept, played by Manic Misanthrope, is taking full advantage of the broken-ness that is the physical adept, surfing on top of the van while it spins out, leaping off into two guards, disarming one, and pulling a chun-li on both... to death. He will also most likely conk out once he turns off his abilities. Amusingly, this is still technically discreet. After all, the comms out are permanently ruined by Uguu's hacking (somehow, despite terrible rolls), the cameras also don't work... ...Still, the client asked for discretion, and I have no idea whether they'll actually get the bonus or not, considering the lack of witnesses...
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Jun 24, 2013 02:12
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