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Sometimes you just roll really badly. Besides finishing the priest off was kind of a harsh thing to do, he was basically out of the fight and there were other more dangerous targets to deal with than finishing off that one guy. Considering that you state earlier in your post that you were playing them as inept as you could this just seems like extra dickishness. The guy just seemed to get a bunch of bad rolls and two bad choices, one made by himself and the other by the entire group, and you seem to have singled him out for punishment at the end which honestly seems entirely uncalled for.
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Feb 17, 2014 01:09
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Honestly, if the guy managed to have that much problems with rolling - it wouldn't hurt to aim your punches elsewhere sometimes. It's luck of the draw - I had games where even if I made all the right decisions, the dice conspire to botch. You know what my GM did? He applied the pressure on someone else that wasn't having such lousy luck. "He managed to fail several easy checks" It happens but you almost sound like you think he's doing it on purpose. It's frustrating to the player to keep botching, and it's even worse if he perceives that the GM is punishing him for something beyond his control (which is what it reads like to me). Robindaybird fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Feb 17, 2014 |
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Feb 17, 2014 01:28
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kannonfodder posted:Out of 6 encounters that the party did that night, the Warpriest managed to get knocked unconscious and be within moments of death 4 times before one of them finally did him in. I don't actually understand how he managed to gently caress things up so badly. kannonfodder posted:Then, during the goblin's next turn, I had him roll to randomly determine if he would finish off the priest, or go for a new target. He attacks the priest one last time, bringing him within 2 hp of death, while having 3 bleed damage. The party then kills the King just in time to watch the Warpriest finally take his last breath.
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Feb 17, 2014 02:19
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Botches for days is funny/frustrating on its own, but yeah, it is pretty weird to go for unconscious characters.
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Feb 17, 2014 02:21
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HiKaizer posted:Sometimes you just roll really badly. Besides finishing the priest off was kind of a harsh thing to do, he was basically out of the fight and there were other more dangerous targets to deal with than finishing off that one guy. Considering that you state earlier in your post that you were playing them as inept as you could this just seems like extra dickishness. The guy just seemed to get a bunch of bad rolls and two bad choices, one made by himself and the other by the entire group, and you seem to have singled him out for punishment at the end which honestly seems entirely uncalled for. His out-of-danger rolls are amazing, his perception and knowledges have been exemplary, along with his diplomacy. He basically talked one villain down from trying to fight the party, and in the two gaming sessions before last he was a melee powerhouse. That last game was just just not the best for him. As for the goblin deciding to kill him off, since the rest of the party was fairly far away from him, he didn't think of the party as a direct threat since none of them had actually engaged the King. So I rolled a 20 to see which party member he would go for, a 1-3 would be the priest. Rolled a 2. He was having fun with failing so hard, he's always a good sport about what happens to his characters. Also, when we started this game we had all agreed that I wouldn't be pulling any punches for this campaign, since our group tends to fudge rolls to survive things, and very little character death happens. Aside from Only War, where characters are brittle as tissue paper, or when a player purposely suicides a character because he is bored with it, its rare for a player death to occur. Robindaybird posted:Honestly, if the guy managed to have that much problems with rolling - it wouldn't hurt to aim your punches elsewhere sometimes. It's luck of the draw - I had games where even if I made all the right decisions, the dice conspire to botch. You know what my GM did? He applied the pressure on someone else that wasn't having such lousy luck. Much of the bad stuff happening to him came from never looking before leaping. Door in enemy fortress? Kick that open! Enemy? Charge without even doing a perception check first! Plus being the big armoured dude, glowing with holy light, and wielding a big sword, he tends to be the focal point for enemy attacks. I also did make a few random events hit the other party members even though they should have gone for him, and they manage to avoid the initial bad stuff, or manage to get out of the problem. I guess I never really pointed out the fact that he was the one laughing the hardest out of the group as his character continued to fail in ways we didn't think possible.
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Feb 17, 2014 02:32
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Splicer posted:and still conclude it was the Warpriest loving things up. He had a bunch of non-lethal damage on him, so none of us were really sure how much life he had left until after the king was dead. The gunslinger had started running towards him with a potion, but then he finished the math stating "oh, I guess I'm dead".
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Feb 17, 2014 02:34
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Playing a Planescape (2E) game! The party (Aasimar Paladin, human Wizard, drow Cleric, Fire Genasi Fighter (me), couple of other dudes that couldn't be there) finds themselves in Sigil's underworld, getting more-or-less recruited by the Dead to... fight Many-As One  In any case, we find ourselves in a dwarven necropolis. The wizards reads some runes in the wall, which causes dwarven undead to pop up and block our path. The Cleric and Paladin convince the dwarves to let them pass, making reference to Moradin (the Paladin is...well, a Paladin, and the Cleric is a Blacksmith). They will not less me and the wizard pass however. The wizard eventually impresses them with engineering knowledge, which leaves my character. Her profession? She is a cook. She has no goddamned idea how to solve this peacefully. She can make fire easily, however, and the Cleric sells this as the fire of the forge, and asks her to demonstrate! So she does, and the GM asks me to make a charisma check, with a bonus. I crit fail the roll. Instead of getting the dwarves angry, this actually CONVINCES them that I'm an emissary of their god sent to free them from their torment. This also wakes up the REST of the necropolis, so instead of a few dead dwarven guards we have an entire city of them. So she gets several dozen of dwarves trying to reach her... so the PCs kinda bail, chased by an entire city of undead. The Paladin finally stops the wacky chase scene, turns to the dwarves, and presents himself as my character's chosen emissary, essentially bluffing the heck out of an entire undead population. So in the end, we HAVE to help the dwarves get their redemption: a study reveals that they were tricked and weren't there for an important battle against the forces of evil, so their god cursed them. This story is contained within a huge, runed hammer. The cleric prays for guidance, which causes a portal to open. Suddenly, we are all (PCs and dwarves) elsewhere: a large plain, where two armies prepare to clash. The soldier of one army welcomes us to Acheron. Things are going to get interesting.
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Feb 17, 2014 16:13
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Just had our second session of SixthWorld (an Apocalypse World hack.) http://waryjack.com/sw/ I had my group meet up at the same place they always meet their Johnson, but early in the morning while the bar is just setting up. The bodyguard let them all in instead of just one of them and they got the Johnson to list off some possible jobs for them to do, and they chose one. The Johnson tried to warn them that ripping off Ares of Space tech would be some serious poo poo, but the 100k nuyen prize was to sweet for my protagonists to resist. With that they were off. The last time they worked for that Johnson, they were hired to dress up as Halloweeners and off some 86's in their hotel, sparking a gang war, but that was two weeks ago and honestly, who can even remember some dumb ganger when there is a hundred thousand nuyen on the line. Quick to get to work, Iris, our Elven Mage called up an old security friend in Renraku, who was able to tell her about his reports, (I asked her what the threat he found at the site was, and she said "nothing but lasers!"). I interpreted that to mean, "Only highly-armored combat drones, no actual combat personnel, the whole thing was very hush hush" She thanked him and hung up. Then our Human Face Hudson, hit up a hacker contact he made last game. The dude was a l337 5p3@k hacker, but drat good at his job. The hacker let it slip that he was desperately in need of some cash, so the face cut a deal. Help them get into and find this heavily guarded compound, and he'd get a piece of the money. How could the Hacker resist? He only had one stipulation, he wouldn't show up to the job in person, instead he would use a wireless drone to act as his Matrix node. The hacker ended up being able to find the place after an amazing boosted luck roll that was like 15 on a 2d6, the hacker was able to find a few likely sites for Ares to be hiding their dudes. (There were a few "black-out" spots between Seattle and the Salish-slidhe Amerindian lands.) That's when our Troll Adept, Crossbones, calls up a Yakuza Soldier, (an old friend from when he was in the mob,) to give him a ride. The Yakuza is busy and tells him to wait until midnight. After that they drive to the site and see these huge drones the size of tanks patrolling the place. Hudson decides they need to get a bit more firepower. The Face calls up an old weapon dealer bud of his and puts in his grocery list. 6 EMP Grenades, 4 Heavy Machine Guns, Heavy Combat Armor, Riot Gear, Medkits, Armor Piercing Bullets, even a set of experimental "Adept Augers" (Gloves with drills in them so the Troll could have armor piercing punches  ) Again, amazing rolls all around, but it'll take them 2 days to get their gear.When they finally get their stuff, and the wheels provided to lift all of the space tech they've noticed a bit of a problem. The number of drones has seemed to triple, before anyone could think of what to do, Iris the mage zaps one of the drones, instantly murdering it. (Lightning Bolts disable electronics.) We have a group member who tends to be an hour and a half to two hours late, but he's an ex-cop so we've just said that he stalks the group and muscles into the action once the bullets start to fly. It's at this point Machete, the Ex-Orc Cop, shows up with his special weapons "Revenge" and "Justice" and starts to blow away at the drones. At the same time Hudson (The Face) is laying down heavy fire with his heavy machine guns, and the Troll is leaping onto Drones punching them in half and tearing them apart. Except the whole time they're under fire, and a few times they almost died. Iris spent more time stitching meta-humans together then actual spell-slinging. (Every time they got hit they'd lose %50-%75 of their health, they'd rather take the health hit then the temporary stat penalty, and the guys with less damage would jump in the way of bullets for the squishier people.) It's at this point I realized that I may have vastly over-estimated my group, and if I keep going with the original amount of drones I had in mind, they'd just TPK in a really boring and unfun way. So I have the hacker turn a couple of drones against each other, making an opening for the mage to be able to go from healing to hurting, and they turned the tables and mopped up pretty quick. We ended our session with the door to the giant complex slowly opening revealing a dark lit hallway.
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Feb 18, 2014 13:07
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Well, inter-party conflict came to a head tonight and certainly qualifies as a bad gaming experience for me. To establish the scene, my DM's running an Eberron module right now that culminates in fighting some kind of massive proto-Warforged construct confined to a single room. The party consists of my character (a bulky melee Warforged), a warlock, an assassin, and a DMPC cleric. The warlock's player couldn't make it tonight, so it was me, the assassin's player, and the DM at the table. My character, Barb, has never really gotten along with the assassin, and for very good reasons. First, there's the whole good vs evil alignment difference going on. Second, he has made a point of collecting the heads of Warforged we've defeated and taunting her with them. Third, there's a decent chance that he'll off any NPCs she knocks out when she looks the other way. While I'm not that great of friends with the player, I largely saw it as an amusing roleplaying thing. Then he went and crossed the line by murdering Barb tonight. Basically, Barb had failed a few will saves in a row and was under a compulsion to do something that we were pretty sure would trigger the boss fight, and also made helpless for a round due to a spell. The assassin's player looked at the situation, looked at his character sheet, and then declared that he was going to coup de grace Barb. I like to think that character death is a thing that I can accept gracefully, but having a fort-save-or-die, with it being a fort save that she could only pass with a roll of 20, and it coming from within the party, when there were plenty of other options available? That left me seething. Doubly so when he kept claiming that it was his only possible course of action. It wound up getting retconned, but at least 20 minutes had passed at the table between Barb's death and the decision to retcon, with further actions happening in the game. Honestly, I didn't even want her death to be retconned, because several interesting methods of catharsis were dangled within my grasp in the meantime. To begin with, the assassin succeeded in killing Barb, but didn't manage to stop the boss activating. He initiated a boss fight by killing the party tank, and I was gleefully looking forward to seeing them get curb stomped. Then, when the party decided to retreat immediately, the DM decided that Barb's now vacant body would make a wonderful host for the boss and he was going to give me free reign to use her as a mini-boss. The retcon took that option away from me, just leaving me with the opportunity to make a single attack against the assassin. I'm home now and I'm still seething and can't sleep. On the one hand, gaming is for fun and I feel stupid for getting this mad over the fact that he murdered my character with a single roll. On the other hand, he casually destroyed my fun for the evening without a second thought. I know I shouldn't be getting so mad at someone ¾ my age, but gently caress it, I am. Any suggestions on how to deal with/get over this?
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Feb 19, 2014 07:32
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Honestly, I think you do have the right to be mad - the player didn't consider that his actions pretty much would've forced you to sit on your hands while everyone else plays - and I'm surprised the DM didn't at least said the 'are you sure you want to that?' to Assassin's player because that ain't cool if the game wasn't angled to be PvP. And having the potentially cool stuff taken away is just makes it sting. As for cooling down - just do something else, and talked to your DM once you're calm enough not to blow up at them about this.
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Feb 19, 2014 07:43
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Robindaybird posted:I'm surprised the DM didn't at least said the 'are you sure you want to that?' to Assassin's player because that ain't cool if the game wasn't angled to be PvP. Yeah, he got a "you're sure?" which was responded to with yet another, "But it's the only option I haaaave." I was throwing alternatives his way, but he was rejecting them because they weren't nearly as likely to succeed. It was really obvious that we were intended to fight the boss, but he was acting like it activating would be an automatic TPK. The closest the game's ever come to PvP was one point where the assassin was taunting her with yet another trophy while Barb was raging. So, I said she took a swing at him, intending a single hit, and he countered by throwing a Confusion her way, resulting in her killing a bunch of friendly NPCs and attacking the one party member she actually likes while the assassin hid. The only reason it didn't go further than that was because Barb couldn't figure out what had happened. I honestly found the entire situation hilarious and was able to get a bit of character development out of it because A.) She had no loving clue what had come over her and B.) She felt extremely bad about the deaths, as she doesn't even deal lethal damage to enemies. I think the only "kill" she had made up to that point was dropping on top of a nearly dead character when she was KO'd. From my perspective, the retcon occurred less for my sake (I actually voted against it), and more because he had some greatly delayed guilt and the DM doesn't like character deaths or inter-party conflict. As for cooling down, I luckily don't see him for a week, but next time we interact it's going to be me as the GM in a different system (alternating weeks). I probably won't be nearly as angry in a week, but that's definitely not the best situation.
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Feb 19, 2014 08:00
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I'd recommend just forgetting about it for a week. Yeah, it sucks, but approaching it by getting angry is going to do dick all for helping the situation. That said, the guy probably just got overzealous and you're in the right, but don't treat it like that. Just, when you get the chance, talk to him and ask him to try and not do that sort of stuff in general in the future.
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Feb 19, 2014 08:08
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Clearly the retcon was a premonition from some sort of Good-aligned deity about why what the assassin is doing is a bad idea, gathering his Warforged head collection and all that.
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Feb 19, 2014 12:45
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I have been working my way though this thread on and off for a few weeks, and hope to pay back some of the entertainment that you have all provided me with this wall of text. I have been rolling dice here and there for about 20 years now and one of the worst experiences I ever had was not too long ago when I was invited over to a friend of a friend's friend's house to play some 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons. I had met this girl once or twice before, she showed up at a party and hung out and seemed nice. Her husband was stationed overseas in the Army and from what I understood she didn't have a lot of friends and it was mostly just her and their pets. As I was invited blind to a game full of people that I didn't know, I was a bit apprehensive but as the game was set to start on a Sunday afternoon after she got home from church, I figured what was the worst that could happen? She gave me the email of the DM and settled on a rogue as there wasn't one in the party. DM rolled the stats for me and told me I could place them how I wanted, 18 18 18 16 14 12 and gave me 300,000 gold to work with, as a level 5 character. I politely asked the DM if that wasn't overly powerful at such a low level, but he assured me that it was ok as I was starting out a few levels lower than the other PCs. I pitched a fairly generic backstory which the DM accepted, but when I asked about possible hooks for why I would be joining the group, I was told was that I was actually the henchman of an epic level party who was mostly along up until this point just to carry their gear. I thought he was joking but he was 100% serious about it. Since I had nothing better to do and I was genuinely curious about this game I decided to go along with it. I showed up about half an hour early to make sure I found the place and perhaps to get a last few character quirks ironed out, and was greeted at the door by the woman and her 6 dogs. This pack of beasts were all mutts in the finest sense of the word, ranging from what looked like a basset hound/chiwawa to a monster that looked that at least half of it was horse. She smiled politely and got the hellhounds under control and I assume locked in the basement before opening the door while I waited outside. When she opened the door I was knocked back by the stench of what must have been year’s worth of dog piss and God himself knows what. I grew up on a farm, and the smell of ammonia was bad enough to bring tears to my eyes still standing on the porch. I should have run but she seemed very happy to see me and invited me in where the rest of the group was already assembled, and as I was the new guy, she introduced me to her friends who were seated around the living room. The DM, Gary who had to weigh at least 450 pounds was wearing a Pokemon shirt so tight that I would have thought it was a clever tattoo except for the fact that it had half dollar sized holes in it. Gary had the cloying aroma of rotten fruit that I have always associated with a bad case of untreated type two diabetes. I took a few steps forward to shake his hand, but thought better of it as he was busy devouring a 2 pound bag of M&Ms while watching intently what was happening on the couch. A pair of writhing early 20s gamers were going at it like they had overdosed on X at a rave and it was the last night on earth. They were introduced as Bo and Joe, and to this day I don’t know the gender of either, but Joe was going to have a hickey big enough on their neck that no scarf would cover it. When introduced, they separated long enough to sheepishly grin and say, “oh great, we have someone to finally play Jacob for us.” Last, but not least was Ace. Who lived with Gary and from what I understood, pretty much took care of him. Drove him to game and work, and basically enabled this land whale of a person so that he could DM for him. Ace was wearing a very nice suit and looked like he had just gotten back from church, but was drinking what was either sangria or cherry soda from pimp cup that would have made Little Wayne jealous. Being introduced to a pair of men named Gary and Ace only brought one thing to mind, but I tried to be an adult for once and work past it. I settled down into my own chair and got my character sheet out and asked the DM if he wanted to look at it. My host settled onto the couch and started knitting while the two on the couch started going at it again. While the DM was reading my character sheet I noticed the pile of books at his feet. Pretty standard stuff for the most part, DMG, Monster Manuals, a few splat books, Book of Vile Darkness, Erotic Players Guide…wait oh God no… Gary oks my build and magic items and goes into DM mode, “OK about 6 months ago Jacob was caught breaking into the temple of Joe’s and Bo’s character’s Goddess, the Overlord of Pain. Given the choice of either death or servitude, you have been employed as their henchman. After 6 months of being subjected to every demeaning and perverse act of sexual defilement, they have decided to allow you to become a free person. They have graciously given you a choice selection of armor and weapons and want you to continue on as a party member.” At this point Ace is looking at me expectantly over the lip of his golden chalice, Joe/Bo are grinning at me, my host is obliviously knitting, and all I can hear is the barking of the hellhounds from their basement prison... My phone rings, I glance at it, and it is my wife. I excuse myself and wander into what I can only assume was once a kitchen. It is now a garbage dump where I would feel bad for any raccoon unfortunate enough to call this a home. I am now sweating, and honestly a bit scared. I have been robbed, stabbed, and worked in a profession where violence was possible on a daily basis. I have worked with the violently mentally ill and with coked up strippers, and I don’t know what to do. I start yelling into the phone about how I get one day off a week and how the hell am I expected to take care of a broken server at 2 PM on a Sunday afternoon? What, you need me to come in now? For gently caress’s sake I will be in, but I am going to be charging you triple time for this. I go back into the living room and I think Jo and Bo are rounding 3rd base at this point, and blurt out some excuses about work. Ace nods understandingly, my host says we do this every week on Sunday afternoon and I am more then welcome anytime, Gary cracks open a can of Monster the size of which should be illegal, and Bo says “good luck at work Jacob!” I grab my gear and head home. On the way home I buy my wife some roses, but the first thing she says when I hug her is, “Why do you smell like piss?” Nissir fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 19, 2014 16:10
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...  I think Cat Piss Guy has been trumped.
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Feb 19, 2014 16:14
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Holy. poo poo.
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Feb 19, 2014 16:37
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Some small part of my brain wants to laugh, the rest of it just wants to  I can't begin to imagine how you get to the point where someone comes back from your home and the first thing someone says to them is “Why do you smell like piss?” Even if you do live in such squalor, how do you not have the idea that maybe inviting people to come to your house is a terrible idea? Holy poo poo. I can only feel sympathy for you, I can't begin to imagine how I'd react in that situation.
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Feb 19, 2014 16:46
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I used to game and work with a guy who's entire apartment/wardrobe smelled like Ammonia. He was a perfectly nice enough guy, but it wasn't pleasant going over to his desk and entering the radius of cat-piss smell.
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Feb 19, 2014 17:04
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 Go back. With a gas can. No jury of your peers will convict.
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Feb 19, 2014 17:43
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... I feel like I need a bath very badly now. e: Ego Trip posted:Go back. With a gas can. No jury of your peers will convict.
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Feb 19, 2014 17:50
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Makes me glad I play in a gaming club where they have standards (then again, they do let me in).
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Feb 19, 2014 17:57
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Few other things stood out: This woman's husband was overseas, was the house that bad before he left, or is he going to come home to a nasty surprise? Springing sexual content on a stranger is not cool, and I'm almost sure they expected you to be a Gorean-like submissive judging from their background for "Jacob". Not to mention expecting someone to play a specific thing without checking with them first is rude.
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Feb 19, 2014 17:58
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Robindaybird posted:Few other things stood out: It seemed - to me I guess, who the hell knows - that they were prepared for him to bail. Everybody just nodded like it was totally reasonable for a guy to bail after 30 seconds of being in that house. The question is, were you the first 'Jacob' or were you the latest in a string of jettisoned would-be man-servants?
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Feb 19, 2014 18:07
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forkboy84 posted:I can't begin to imagine how you get to the point where someone comes back from your home and the first thing someone says to them is “Why do you smell like piss?” Even if you do live in such squalor, how do you not have the idea that maybe inviting people to come to your house is a terrible idea? I just wonder what happens when that lady's husband comes back home.
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Feb 19, 2014 20:15
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Yeah, I game in some pretty questionable houses at times. Mostly they're fine, but I've been to some dodgy ones. When I'm hosting I usually clean up a bit first. It's a good excuse to hoover.
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Feb 19, 2014 20:23
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edit: nevermind. piss talk is just gross
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Feb 19, 2014 20:45
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Two players still new to rping made our last session rock for me by doing all the stuff you aren't supposed to do (weird sexual stuff, animal mutilation, derailing, murder-hoboing) and doing it so well that we are still laughing about it a few days later  I think I talked about our campaign (homebrewed setting and system) earlier but brief run down: We are caught up in the troubles of a mining town bothered by the outbreak of plague and mechanical horrors spreading from the mines in the mountains. While investigating we discovered the involvement of strange diplomatic beings capable of shifting looks and bodies and venerated by the faith of our group's leader. These beings, the Azad, nicknamed "face-dancers", turned out to be fighting the mechanical horrors with a total war approach, to which end they were conspiring to turn the plagued townsfolk into zombies and use them as cannon-fodder against the looming threat in the mountains. We still don't know who caused the actual plague, but the military is coming in one day to purge the town, unless we have a better plan. I am playing Sahib, a vagabond outcaste kinslayer from a nomadic northern people, I am also a hedge-mage and a powerful telepath, but I won't admit to it or even acknowledge it IC, I just assume I am better at understanding people and manipulating them, without thinking too much about it. Everyone knows what other people are thinking sometimes, I just do it more often and well. The rest of the party is: Kalaris: Noblewoman and bearer of Imperial authority. Something of a spendthrift and compulsive gambler. Moral backbone of the party. She began the campaign and her very first experience with rping in a horse archery shoot-out with a traitor, won, and crumbled under the guilt and strain of murdering a person. This came full circle in the last session, so keep it in mind. Darius the Defiant: Warrior-priest with a murky (and heretical) past. This session a bunch of his backstory baggage became an issue and the next session looks like it will start with a duel between him and a noble paladin. Darius mostly stayed on track with the group's plans, unlike Kalaris and the last character in our little rogue's gallery: Abar-toth, mad hermit and radical heresiarch of Morg, the already militant and xenophobic southern wolf god. A little note about Abar-toth: the guy playing him is a kind, gentle and deeply polite person. The sort of human being who would apologize for being in your way if you bumped into him. Conversely, Abar-toth is a belligerent, misanthropic old man whose traits include the flaws "racist" and "pathetic" and who acts accordingly. The player is new to rping and new to rping with structural limits (he played fiasco before) so his trump has been repeated use of what is effectively a level 1 Animal Summoning spell he has dubbed "Bird Song" to attempt increasingly improbably tasks. We began the session deep in a moral quandary. We just rescued the Deputy of the town for the kind and despondent Sheriff, freeing him from the unwholesome influence emanating from the mountains through a combination of heavy drinking, mind magic and apples (long story). The Sheriff is nearly giving up hope of surviving the situation. The town is emptied by people fleeing and dying of plague. The face-dancers are officially our allies and really, *really* want to turn the dying townies into the walking dead, because it is the pragmatic action given the threat we face. They are giving us all manner of arcane and practical support, but with strings attached. The military is waiting for Kalaris' orders, but it is obvious that they expect these orders to be "purge everything". We decide to spend our last day investigating to see if some solution doesn't turn up and rallying support in town. Darius and I take turns investigating (he goes to Church and his issues from the past come up in the form of an angry Paladin hunting him, while I hit the tavern and have an unpleasant conversation with a smuggler). This is where the hilarious derailing begins. Kalaris says that she "has to do something", but also "has to wait until we are done with our investigations" It is about at this point that Abar-toth says he will perform an augury. For Abar-toth this always involves using "Bird Song" to summon a bird of prey and sacrificing it bloodily to interpret its' entrails. Then he interprets the mysterious descriptions the DM gives him, at times wildly, and makes insane predictions we habitually ignore. Abar-toth stands in town square, in broad view of the people we are trying to rally. He wildly succeeds in the pre-augury summoning, procuring a turkey vulture along with a cloud of smaller birds. Then Abar-toth suddenly decides that his auguries are unhelpful at this moment and declares his intention to help the party for once by not alienating anyone and investigating instead. We breathe a collective sigh of relief, since his propensity for performing bloody rites in inopportune circumstances, has previously made us all roleplay smoothing things over in a panic: Darius making up religious justifications etc. He then says that he kills the vulture anyway and wears him as a cloak. He also keeps the cloud of summoned small birds with him, spending half his daily mana to sustain the "Bird Song" almost indefinitely. Abar-toth proceeds to the home of the recently rescued deputy and attempts to interrogate him for further information. Since Abar-toth is by no means the party face, he fails the first check and scares the guy (the DM points out that he is wearing a turkey vulture as a cloak and is surrounded by a swarm of birds who followed him inside) Abar-toth decides that the failed check is an indication of a foul influence on the man and spends the rest of his daily mana on a powerful curing spell he delivers by suddenly grabbing the poor deputy with both hands. The spell is successful and the DM assures Abar-toth that the deputy is cured if he was still infected by the malignancy. This where poo poo gets weird. Abar-toth says that he is still holding the deputy and whispers to him that he is pretty good looking for a "member of a thrall race" (remember the racist trait). The Dm asks if Abar-toth is, in fact, trying to seduce the deputy, to which Abar-toth says that he is just trying to pump him for information. The Dm points out, once more, the dead turkey vulture and bird swarm, indicating that they will act as penalties on the social challenge. Abartoth points out his "pathetic" trait as a mitigating factor and so the old hermit pleads with the stunned deputy saying that "Where I come from people thank people who help them out" and "It has been so long since I felt a human touch". At this point, the rest of the group and myself, who didn't expect Abar-toth to be so proactive and certainly not in this fashion, were falling over laughing. Abar-toth failed the roll for the social challenge by quite a margin and the thoroughly derailed but amused Dm shifted the scene to Kalaris, our moral pillar and group leader. Kalaris, who broke down and desperately tried to resuscitate the first person she killed in the middle of combat. Little did we know Kalaris was about to go murderhobo on us. I mentioned the face-changing, semi-immortal beings trying to talk us into zombifying the town. These same beings were offering to teach me more mind magic and helped Darius procure some sort of (heretical) manuscript whose Chekhov's gun function has not yet kicked in. They were problematic allies, but still allies in a desperate situation and quite reasonable and amiable (even apologetic after initially trying to kill us). As such it came a surprise to all of us, especially the DM, when Kalaris politely asked to consult with their leader and proceeded to murder him. It wasn't even a particularly clean kill. She finished speaking with him in the gentlest way possible, stood up and began firing arrows at it at close range, like the conclusion of the opening scene of Pulp Fiction, but with a bow. It took two or three rounds of shooting, while the Azad didn't even bother to defend itself, it just looked pained and shocked. It was the right thing to do, she said OC, they would desecrate the town dead, even if we told them not to. I was raised to venerate these things and they don't live up to my ideals. I can't believe in their sacredness anymore and this has to be done. IC she told us nothing. This twist was unexpected enough to constitute a cliff hanger, the DM tied off the session soon after with Darius' impending duel (also it was 2am) so I guess we will see what happens next. thegoatgod_pan fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 19, 2014 20:47
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Ego Trip posted:
At the very least, the neighbors would applaud you. In all seriousness, I would call the humane society or whichever animal cruelty people you have locally to go investigate the house.
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Feb 19, 2014 22:48
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Dirk the Average posted:At the very least, the neighbors would applaud you. This. A lot of places have limits on number of dogs allowed in one house before you need a special licence. So you'd at least be doing the dogs a favour by getting them out of that disaster.
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Feb 19, 2014 22:50
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and generally if they let their house get that bad, it's a sign that the lady might not be able to look after herself.
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Feb 19, 2014 22:57
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Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Demons. A British gangster film in Demon: The Fallen I read Shadows of the UK a little while ago - it's a World of Darkness sourcebook aimed at Americans about how to run a horror campaign in Britain. One thing stuck out at me. It said that, by and large, in American horror the characters are in a bad situation but expect to succeed. By grit and skill and sheer determination, the characters will suffer and go through great trauma but will triumph. In British horror, however, the characters know they are hosed. They don't expect to make it out of this alive or resolve the situation at all. People are generally presented more realistically and less heroically, with all the swearing that accompanies. What this book didn't say is that British horror is loving hilarious. I played a session of oWoD's Demon: The Fallen the other day. For those of you who don't know, World of Darkness is set in the modern day in roughly the real world but where everything is really awful and vampires run everything and you'll probably be murdered by a junkie when you leave the house. It's supposed to be a horror game. Demon, with the possible exception of Mummy, is far and away the gameline where you play the most powerful characters. You are angels from the beginning of existence, you fought against God and the Legions of Heaven and survived. You lost, but you survived. Millennia later, you've escaped Hell and found yourself in a human host back on earth. You can click your fingers and blow up vampires and werewolves with your mind. So when, a few hours into the session, we were four demons in the back of a minivan, driving away from a crime scene with thirty kilograms of heroine, a hundred grand in cash and a load of unlicensed firearms and were yelling at each other that this was a disaster, the idea that the characters think they are hosed becomes clearer. A recap: The session began at George Daniels' gun shop. George was the shadiest gun dealer in London and had a good sideline in reactivating weapons for the Mob. He had also been possessed by Shadar Angra Mainyu, a demon from the pit, a few days ago. Demon possession is a little weird and creates a kind of mashup combo persona of the human and the demon. The human memories tend to win out - having all your demon memories is a trait you buy with xp. George was very confused and had mainly kept to his normal routine out of intertia while his memories sorted themselves out. When one of his mob contacts came in and was also demonically possessed, that was a shock. When a bunch of friendly mobsters, some with bullet wounds, came in and told the pair that the police were hitting Mob properties all over the city and that they needed a place to hide, that was also a shock. When two of the "specialists" the mobsters called in to help were also demonically possessed, George needed to sit down. The four demons went aside to get all the cards on the table. They were: George Daniels, shady gun dealer possessed by Shadar Angra Mainyu, a Malefactor of some rank who specialised in angelic armaments. Steve Wilson, a veteran of Afghanistan possessed by Nuriel, a Devourer who distinguished himself as a front line fighter in the War of Heaven. Bob Davidson, a youth worker and black book accountant possessed by Belhamroth, a Devil who had uncommon mastery of the Lore of Flames. Hannah, a medical prodigy who, pre-possession, was a homeless schizophrenic who was occasionally called in by criminals to patch them up. Possessed by Hadriel, a Scourge who was in charge of medical care for an entire division of the Crimson Legion. After establishing their identities, that nobody was loyal to Heaven, nobody had made contact with any other demons and that they had all surfaced a few days ago with very little memory, the group made the decision that they must have been sent to the surface as a team. They had no idea what their task was or if there were any others, so they made the decision to sort out the current situation so their mortal hosts were in a secure position. They needed time and space before they could begin to work out what was going on. One of the mobsters gave them a list of tasks that needed doing. It was the emergency backup plan in case something like this happened. Mainly money and assets that needed putting in a secure place. None of the mobsters were in a position to be getting up from the sofas they were lying on, thanks to bullet wounds and being actively hunted by the police, so the group needed to do it. This was fine for the demons, because they could probably skim a lot off the top to set their own operation up and not get found out in the chaos. They tooled up and set out. The first item was "Go to [address] and pick up the stuff from Terrence (30 kilos heroine in the bathroom)". [Address] was a scummy tenement block in Brixton. The demons were driving George's middle class minivan in a neighbourhood where people were walking around openly armed. Two blokes in suits, a young woman and a black man in a boiler suit in a van about to go pick up a third of a million pounds worth of heroine. It was at that point that the demons broke out into fatalism. Out of character, we were laughing hysterically. This was a hilariously hosed up situation out of a Guy Ritchie movie. There were four completely unprepared people in a Ford Galaxy with sawed off shotguns, about to go pick up huge amounts of heroine from gangsters like it was the beginning of Pulp Fiction or something. George was just repeatedly insisting that this whole situation was nuts. Bob was pointing out every movie that something like this had happened in and how all the characters had ended up dead. Steve was just swearing and checking his weapons, trying to keep Post-Traumatic Stress from making him wig out. Hannah just had her head in her hands. This was a Guy Ritchie movie with demons. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Satans. gently caress it, game on. Inside the tenement, the demons found themselves confronted by unfriendly men with handguns. They insisted they were here for the "items", that everything was cool and that the men should go get 'Terrence'. At this point, a few things should be noted. Demon: The Fallen is a very, very high powered game. Demon Lores would have let us set these people on fire, make them sink into the earth or drop into cancer-riddled comas among other things. If we really needed to, Demons have something called an Apocalyptic Form which is exactly as dangerous as it sounds. Two gangbangers with revolvers is not a challenge for four rebellious angels from Hell. Even better, Demons have no equivalent of the Masquerade that the other gamelines have. Generally, World of Darkness games limit your ability to fire lasers out of your dick on city streets with the idea that your species' society frowns on that sort of thing, or with something like Mage's Paradox that means Muggles make your spells explode if they see them. No such thing in Demon, you can make yourself a superhero and nobody can do a drat thing about it. In character, nobody wanted a loving gunfight. Our human personalities were winning out and we were not ready to deal with this kind of poo poo today, thanks. We were let up to see Terrence and found a bathtub full of packs of heroine, with a locked steel grate over it. Terrence said we should have a key if we were here to take it. We had no such thing. Bob decided to ring the mobsters to see if they'd just forgotten to give us a key. He tried hard not to freak out when the guy at the other end of the phone told him that we must have been given the wrong list - 30 kilos of heroine was on the list of competitors. The mobster started freaking out when Bob told him we were standing in front of Terrence with the heroine right now. This was a really, hilariously bad situation. This was somebody else's loving heroine. We'd just blagged our way in front of hundreds of thousands of dollars of somebody else's money. Somebody with lots of guns. Who was giving us very unhappy looks right now. This is where being a demon comes in handy. Bob rang George, who was making sure the car wasn't stolen while the heroine was retrieved and told him very deliberately to bring up the key for the padlock he was standing in front of that he didn't have the key for right now. George understood and with a little bit of the Lore of the Forge, turned his car keys into a Skeleton key that would open any lock. He brought that up and things got very tense when the gangsters recognised who he was and that he was affiliated with their rivals. George tried to remain calm, insisting he was freelance and that if he had the correct key, he must be here from the right people. They tried the key and, thank gently caress, it worked. Unfortunately while we were bagging the heroine Terrence decided to call his boss to double check this was kosher. After panicking and nearly drawing guns on them, Bob quickly used demon magic to make the phone battery explode. We got the gently caress out of there with the drugs. On the way out, Steve decided to give them a parting gift considering we were stealing all their drugs. He used Lore of Plants on their marijuana farm and rolled something utterly ludicrous. Eleven cubic yards of ganja grew out of those plants, blowing out the windows, carrying the gangsters out of the room and seriously threatening the structural integrity of the building. We drove off really really fast. We started wrapping off the session there but not before returning to the gun shop and screaming at the mobsters for giving us the wrong loving list and nearly getting us killed. They were amazed we made it out alive, never mind with all the heroine. Of course, we had the bigger problem that we have thirty kilos of heroine sitting on the table while the police hunt us, the gangsters know exactly who George is and therefore where he works and are going to figure out any minute that we stole their drugs. This was a loving disaster. And that was how we managed to play through a Guy Ritchie movie in Demon: The Fallen with four overpowered monsters who hate their lives. Doodmons fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Feb 21, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 16:07
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Doodmons posted:Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Demons. A British gangster film in Demon: The Fallen Well that's not quite true: all your powers get more difficult when nonbelievers are near or can see you and going apocalyptic in front of a crowd is a nearly impossible roll. However, you can always spend a point of faith for an automatic success. Which is really the other big hamper: vampires keep up a masquerade to make feeding easy. Demons need people to believe in them, much like Tinkerbell when she is poisoned in Peter Pan and getting people to believe in you is a lot harder that dazing them with vampire magic and drinking their blood. This would totally matter if lores below level 4 cost faith, but I'm betting you all got through the session without a point spent,
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Feb 20, 2014 19:19
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I want to play in that game.
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Feb 21, 2014 04:15
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thegoatgod_pan posted:Well that's not quite true: all your powers get more difficult when nonbelievers are near or can see you and going apocalyptic in front of a crowd is a nearly impossible roll. However, you can always spend a point of faith for an automatic success. You bet we did. The only one of us with a Lore at 4 is the guy with Holocaust and, funny story, we didn't have to crack out the godslaying power to deal with some gangsters.
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Feb 21, 2014 07:08
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Whybird posted:The session of Dungeon World last night featured the players getting into a cook-off against an undead chef who was being kept alive by a Lovecraftian beast of insatiable appetite so that he could keep on finding it new and exciting flavours. I absolutely love this! I've put it up on the Dungeon World Google plus group, hope you don't mind. I'm still finishing Pirate World: I'd love to include this in the one-off short adventures in the book, would that be cool? The Supreme Court fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Feb 21, 2014 |
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Feb 21, 2014 15:30
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thegoatgod_pan posted:Abar-Toth and Kalaris. These were good stories. Here's hoping you'll have some more for us soon.
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Feb 22, 2014 00:55
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The Supreme Court posted:I absolutely love this! I've put it up on the Dungeon World Google plus group, hope you don't mind. I'm still finishing Pirate World: I'd love to include this in the one-off short adventures in the book, would that be cool? Totally, although it wasn't specifically a Pirate World adventure as such -- I think the only bit of Pirate World that we're using is the Brute playbook. But sure, feel free to take whatever you like!
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Feb 23, 2014 19:52
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Why Trolls Make Terrible Adventuring Partners So we started new Dungeon World's campaign DMed by Nevermore214 that features myself as Willem the human Bard, Teonis as More-Gruff the Brute Troll and Teonis's wife as Lorelei the elven Druid. Us three were brought together to collect a bounty on Gard, a thief with a thick accent and curly mustache. After establishing the campaign goal and setting, one of the first things the DM does is establish to More-Gruff that he's standing front of a meat stand. Obviously, More-Gruff went up to the merchant demanding free meat, responding to the rejection by placing a skull on the counter. Upon seeing the skull, the merchant calls the city guards. After Willem failed to defuse the situation, Lorelei transformed into a boa constrictor and started choking out one of the two guards. Distracted by his comrade being strangled, Willem stole some keys off the second guard and ran to an inn he claimed by squatters rights. More-Gruff and Lorelei followed suit, along with another squad of guards. Surrounded, our best bet was hide out in concealable room that was on the second floor. When we got to the second floor, we had one guard coming in from the balcony, blocking where we needed to go, and two more coming from the rear. After More-Gruff nonchalantly takes a crossbow bolt from the guard in front of us, Willem charges him and tackles the guard to the ground, disarming him and loosing his rapier in the process. Willem was able to grab the dagger the guard was reaching for, but was subsequently punched in the face. While this was happening, Lorelei turned from a boa into a cheetah and went after the two guard tailing us. After making quick work of both the guards by clawing the poo poo out of them, she transforms back into an elf. She starts running towards us when she sees two more guards coming up the stairs and hears some windows breaking where we were. After eating the meat he took from the stand, More-Gruff decided to help Willem fight. He did so by picking him up off the ground and trying to use him as a weapon while Willem is flailing the dagger around begging to be put down. I say tries to because More-Gruff loses grip of Willem while swinging him and throws him out the window. Thanks to this, Willem landed flat on his back at the feet of the guard he stole the keys from, surrendering the second he realizes this. After flattening the guard with a single swing of his club, More-Gruff tried making up for what he did by bringing Willem back his "metal toothpick" and belly-flopping onto the guard standing above him. Again, I say tried to because he ends landing squarely onto Willem, which causes the guard to run away in a confused panic. To top it all off, I rolled a successful parley right before More-Gruff decided to "help" Willem, which I choose to interpret as Willem successfully defusing the situation only for More-Gruff to go an ruin the whole thing. The session ended with Lorelei catching a glimpse of a man who at least looks like the guy we are hunting down. She decides to jump out the window while transforming into a cardinal and starts to tail him. After More-Gruff finally got off of Willem, we both ran to the other side of the building in time to spot Lorelei. I gotta say, I never thought I'd enjoy watching my character getting hosed over in worsening ways as much as I did. MizPiz fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Feb 24, 2014 |
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Feb 24, 2014 05:28
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Played a game of Iron Edda, the Norse Kaiju vs Mecha game. (What is it? During Ragnarok, the Norse bond to the bones of dead frost giants to fight giant dwarven constructs). Two players were "Rune-touched", representatives of Norse concepts. We had speed and truth/secrecy. Think the Flash teaming up with Altair. The third was a kinslayer blacksmith bound to a giant spear-wielding abomination. Of course, every time we would get in position on an enemy creature (or our own teammate), they'd get knocked down, thrown in a river, or driven through a copse of trees. The first encounter went well. We destroyed giant skulls blocking a river and freed the river serpent. Of course, the serpent was angry, but, by running up the entire length of its body into its ears, our Raidho-infused messenger talked it down. The second battle was rougher. We were ambushed in a primeval forest by lumber-cutting giant dwarfbots. While our giant fought one, the Secret Keeper and the speedster struggled against the 40-foot-tall monsters that did a different tier of damage. Despite nearly breaking a wrist and getting trapped in a cage of dark magic, we found a shortcut through the creature's feet. ...And the tables turned. The three dwarven operators were at normal scale. The messenger took one, prayed to Raidho, and blessed the creature's travels...as it plummeted to the Earth. As he tossed out another, the Secret Keeper whispered into the last one's ears. The dwarf, who was trying to toss out the Viking interlopers, went bone white, lost all motor control, and tumbled out of the cabin. Awesome. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Nov 9, 2023 |
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Feb 24, 2014 09:29
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Golden Bee posted:Played a of IronEda, the norse Kaiju vs Mecha game. What is it? During Ragnarok, the norse bond to the bones of dead front giants to fight giant dwarven constructs). I tried to do some google searching to find out more about this and found nothing, which is terrible because this sounds crazy awesome.
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Feb 25, 2014 04:11
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