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Kobold eBooks
Mar 5, 2007

EVERY MORNING I WAKE UP AN OPEN PALM SLAM A CARTRIDGE IN THE SUPER FAMICOM. ITS E-ZEAO AND RIGHT THEN AND THERE I START DOING THE MOVES ALONGSIDE THE MAIN CHARACTER, CORPORAL FALCOM.
It's time for a tale that may or not be of cat-piss!

R was in this game, as was a man named Monty, and a lady we came to know as EJ, but who constantly wanted us to use her made-up online handle.*

So we'd had a few bad experiences with some of R's other friends** and decided to see if we couldn't find anyone else she knew to run with us. S, another staple of our group(and whose absence was why we ran FATE last Monday) was called, and revealed he had some connections*** with a cool guy that liked to play tabletop RPGs named Monty.

Everyone's cool, Monty, R, S and myself get together and play the game Monty's brought; Scion, a game where all the players are super-powered children of gods. We all make our characters, have a brief introduction and then it's time to go until next week.

This is where EJ comes in. You see, Monty wanted to 'add a friend to the group', and while I was a bit wary, R and S assured me that things were fine, that this wasn't going to go tits-up, etc etc.

So EJ and Monty arrive, and EJ's got a character sheet, and in a brief moment during the introductions, I spy a single stat on it. Rage****. Red flags begin going up in my head. Monty begins explaining that EJ was going to be playing a character from a different ruleset, but that it's okay, he's got it all worked out. I point out that maybe her character is a little underpowered, as this is both EJ's first time role-playing at all and Scion is an extremely high-power game.

Turns out he already talked to her about that, she was cool with it, etc. EJ seemed pretty cool so we start play. First thing first we 'meet' EJ's character; an almost entirely-feral wolf-woman child of Fenrir. So immediately she starts talking poo poo about the other characters in-character and we're having a field day with some banter, when R's nerdy hacker character pipes up with something scathing, as was her wont.

EJ goes "I leap on her and try to put my teeth to her throat, there's no way my character would let her get away with a display of dominance like that."

A forest of red flags goes up in my head; I've been around the IRC role-playing block a few times. I know where this is going and hastily(R is visibly annoyed by all of this) call a pause to the game. We talk EJ through some basic role-playing etiquette and explain that usually intra-party conflict, especially in our group, is avoided and maybe there's some way she could tone it down, etc etc.

After a few minutes of dickering around "But my character would do this!"-style arguments, we seem to get through to her and she agrees that, yes, her initial character was probably not a great idea, especially since we'd probably put her down pretty violently once she attacked one of our own. We all part for the end of the session feeling good; EJ isn't turned off of our group, we've avoided a big That Person scenario, everyone's happy, right?

I wish.

So we meet for the second session and EJ mentions that she's got a new, more appropriate character now and that Monty said he'd introduce her new character in this session. So we finally get underway, chasing a corrupted Scion of Artemis that's been causing trouble. She drops some mooks on our heads and runs away, we splatter the mooks because we're all overpowered and insane and then EJ pipes up, as this is her introduction.

"You see a sheep float up to the window, loudly 'baa' in your face and then slowly hover into the room, before picking a heart up and eating it bloodily."

Everything goes still for a moment, S lets out a very forced laugh, and none of us really know what to do since this is... Well, it's far too monkey-cheese for us. We call another referendum, and by the end of it all EJ has agreed to tone-back the extreme a little bit. Not that it matters, we never played again anyway, especially after they finally unloaded the full Fetlife story on us. You see, Monty and EJ had been flirting pretty hard out-of-character, and S seemed to be in on it, which was confusing.

It turns out that EJ was Monty and S's mistress online, and that they were both 'obligated to do what she wanted', which is why Monty let things get this far in the first place. Also they were very, very devout worshippers of the Norse pantheon, which is why EJ was so keen on being a whacky-wild bloody viking werewolf-turned-sheep.

We parted on good terms, but never, ever got back together to play Scion again. They didn't offer, and we certainly didn't feel like it was going to work anyway.



*The same online handle she proudly used on FetLife. We learned a lot about those two those days.. :stare:

**I may have cat-pissed myself and ruined the climactic ending to a campaign because I was being petulent with the killer DM.

***It turned out S had met them on FetLife(though R knew Monty before hand somehow?) and it was pretty weird when this all came up at the table.

****For those who don't know, Scion uses the same system(but not the same setting) as World of Darkness. Rage is the special resource for Werewolves.

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Triskelli
Sep 27, 2011

I AM A SKELETON
WITH VERY HIGH
STANDARDS


CobiWann posted:

Sadly, the GM said we couldn’t, but my character, the Professor, is now going to talk with the Jeweler’s Guild to see if we can drill a tiny hole in a musket ball and fill it with holy water/rock salt, and the Fop is designing a “demon hunting” dress where the bottom hemline of her skirt is a complete circle of rock salt or blessed silver.

Wouldn't you be melting lead for musket balls while traveling? Just add the rock salt before pouring the lead into the form. Your accuracy might suffer a bit, but muskets aren't that accurate in the first place. Beats drilling itty bitty holes.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer

CzarChasm posted:

That should also cut back on the demonic subway perverts as well.

The Midnight Meat Train will never be the same.

bathroomrage posted:

It turns out that EJ was Monty and S's mistress online, and that they were both 'obligated to do what she wanted', which is why Monty let things get this far in the first place.

Christ. This is why 'safe, sane and consensual' should implicitly extend to the people you're acting your sexytimes games out around. Making googy eyes is one thing, but turning a D&D session or visit to somewhere public into an arousing round of Freaking the Mundanes is really irresponsible.

Bieeanshee fucked around with this message at 17:18 on May 21, 2014

HebrewMagic
Jul 19, 2012

Police Assault In Progress
All these stories make me want to talk about my ongoing Shadowrun campaign, there's plenty of crazy going on there.

Kobold eBooks
Mar 5, 2007

EVERY MORNING I WAKE UP AN OPEN PALM SLAM A CARTRIDGE IN THE SUPER FAMICOM. ITS E-ZEAO AND RIGHT THEN AND THERE I START DOING THE MOVES ALONGSIDE THE MAIN CHARACTER, CORPORAL FALCOM.

HebrewMagic posted:

All these stories make me want to talk about my ongoing Shadowrun campaign, there's plenty of crazy going on there.

:justpost::justpost::justpost::justpost:


Bieeardo posted:

The Midnight Meat Train will never be the same.


Christ. This is why 'safe, sane and consensual' should implicitly extend to the people you're acting your sexytimes games out around. Making googy eyes is one thing, but turning a D&D session or visit to somewhere public into an arousing round of Freaking the Mundanes is really irresponsible.

Best I can think of is they thought we were okay with it? R had known Monty already, as had S, and my extremely crude sense of humor might have given them the wrong idea. I'm just still baffled that it ended pretty well, given all the potential for extreme That Guy behavior from EJ.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
More power to everyone involved for managing that; things definitely could have been a lot worse than aggressive newbie and monkey cheese. I've just become really grumpy about nod and wink games of grab-rear end in front of people who haven't made it clear they're cool with it, whether it be someone's SO backseat GMing, BDSM dabblers letting their freak flags peek out in line at McDonalds, or (oh god) secret, unsanctioned LARPs at SCA events.

gently caress. I'm old. :(

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!

Triskelli posted:

Wouldn't you be melting lead for musket balls while traveling? Just add the rock salt before pouring the lead into the form. Your accuracy might suffer a bit, but muskets aren't that accurate in the first place. Beats drilling itty bitty holes.

Yeah, we don’t melt our own musket balls. We either travel in one character’s INSANELY posh ship, or his INSANELY posh carriage (he has them stashed all over Theah), or by walking through HELL when we’re in a hurry.

The mixing rock salt into molten lead…that is a good idea. I went with the Jeweler’s Guild because my character has an “in” with them, but now someone has to get to know the Blacksmith’s Guild. Thanks for the tip!

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



CobiWann posted:

Yeah, we don’t melt our own musket balls. We either travel in one character’s INSANELY posh ship, or his INSANELY posh carriage (he has them stashed all over Theah), or by walking through HELL when we’re in a hurry.

The mixing rock salt into molten lead…that is a good idea. I went with the Jeweler’s Guild because my character has an “in” with them, but now someone has to get to know the Blacksmith’s Guild. Thanks for the tip!
There's probably somebody on the ship's crew who makes musket balls, it's mostly just pouring lead into a mold. Tell them to mix some salt in a few batches and see how it works.

Getting holy water in will be trickier, of course. Maybe see if you can get a priest to bless some molten lead before it's cast into balls?

Triskelli
Sep 27, 2011

I AM A SKELETON
WITH VERY HIGH
STANDARDS


Honestly, it looks like the only thing that makes holy water holy is the blessings of a priest. Theoretically, they could just bless the musket balls, and you can carve little crosses on them if you're dead set on making things more flashy.

Fake Edit: Actually, yeah it looks like the only thing really special about holy water is a sprinkling of salt and a priest/bishop/deacon/whatever sanctifying it and stating that it's only to be used for religious purposes. Which is nice when you're already adding a bit of salt to the batch anyway. Just be sure to only use the holy bullets on demons, and to respect their storage and disposal.

Real Edit: Though imagine if you started making holy cannonballs :getin:

Triskelli fucked around with this message at 18:42 on May 21, 2014

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
There are other ways to bless bullets

Triskelli
Sep 27, 2011

I AM A SKELETON
WITH VERY HIGH
STANDARDS


Actually, a better idea would be to make a holy gun, that way you can load it with blanks, shoot out the demon and leave the victim unharmed.

E: Last one and I swear I'll shut up, but what if you just cut out the middlemen and just loaded your blunderbuss with rock salt? It still loving hurts and will likely draw blood if the chunks are big enough, but not routinely fatal the way bullets would. Plus, this is a thing people actually do in the real world.

Triskelli fucked around with this message at 19:03 on May 21, 2014

goatface
Dec 5, 2007

I had a video of that when I was about 6.

I remember it being shit.


Grimey Drawer
You'd need holy ghost bullets for that.

ZorajitZorajit
Sep 15, 2013

No static at all...
Take the Harry Dresden route, get a priest to bless obscene quantities of water at a time. Like, keep a barrel of holy water.

Mr. Maltose
Feb 16, 2011

The Guffless Girlverine
Bless a lake, dunk some fools then start a tourist attraction.

The Papal Dells will have you rolling in dough, no time flat.

Phy
Jun 27, 2008



Fun Shoe
Construct a giant engine to house a hundred thousand ministers in a holy fractal array
Call it the Priest-o-tron
Bless the planet
Wait a hundred years
The water in everyone's blood is holy
Vampires die out from the posioning of their food source

Mr. Maltose
Feb 16, 2011

The Guffless Girlverine

Phy posted:

Construct a giant engine to house a hundred thousand ministers in a holy fractal array
Call it the Priest-o-tron
Bless the planet
Wait a hundred years
The water in everyone's blood is holy
Vampires die out from the posioning of their food source

That needs to be a DW style deathmove for somebody.

Moto42
Jul 14, 2006

:dukedog:
That Priestotron sounds like the origin story for the Cenobite's homeworld.

NinjaDebugger
Apr 22, 2008


Mr. Maltose posted:

That needs to be a DW style deathmove for somebody.

The Slayer should get as its death move:

Dead Man's Trigger: In one last spiteful blow to your chosen enemy, your death triggers the widespread publishing of a comprehensive manual on precisely how to go about killing a monster species of your choice. It won't be immediate, but in the long run, the complete exposure of all their dirty secrets dooms them to death as a species.

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!

Mr. Maltose posted:

Bless a lake, dunk some fools then start a tourist attraction.

Yeah, we had that via a Fae spirit - a dip in the waters cleansed corruption. Then it all went south so fast when we tried to dip someone who had Protection from Good on them and corrupted the pool.

Sadly, our GM has said she has "plans for rock salt," so I don't think we'll get too far with that aspect.

On the other hand, I'm going to ask the Paladin to bless our party's primary quantity of liquid. The Fop's perfume.

JamieTheD
Nov 4, 2011

LPer, Reviewer, Mad Welshman

(Yes, that's a self portrait)

CobiWann posted:

On the other hand, I'm going to ask the Paladin to bless our party's primary quantity of liquid. The Fop's perfume.

Man, as a GM, I'd have a whale of a time workin' that one out... Think about it, a miasma of holiness? That's like using Mace as a body-spray.

I'll have to write that one down in my "Box 'o' Cruel Tricks"

Mr. Maltose
Feb 16, 2011

The Guffless Girlverine

CobiWann posted:

Yeah, we had that via a Fae spirit - a dip in the waters cleansed corruption. Then it all went south so fast when we tried to dip someone who had Protection from Good on them and corrupted the pool.

I bet The Anti-Papal Dells looks just as good on ye olde t-shirts.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
First time I read the Priest-O-Tron I thought it was some kind of massive geosynchronous ring of priests. Though I suppose you'd need to figure out a way to get oxygen into the space cathedrals.

Zakmonster
Apr 15, 2010
So sometime last year, my friends finally bugged me to run DnD for them. We'd been friends for a long while (10 years or so) and had done all sorts of other gaming (DOTA, WoW, Rock Band, etc). However, it was only when they started playing Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep (a DnD themed DLC for Borderlands 2), was when they actually got interested in playing DnD for real.

So I decided to run 4e, as it was the system I favored. I helped them create characters and they unanimously decided to be evil or morally ambiguous characters. We had a half-orc barbarian, a drow rogue, a tiefling warlock, and a half-orc monk.

I started it simple, stating that they were all graduates from Henchmen School and were thus friends. They had just completed a simple smash-and-grab mission for a magical gem. When they met their contact to exchange the gem for their reward, they were ambushed.

I took them through a simple encounter, so they could get used to the system. Everything worked out well and they were picking up the game pretty fast.

When the smoke cleared, their contact was dead, the gem and their reward money was gone. Thoroughly pissed, they tracked down the people that had ambushed them, which involved a couple more encounters. The barbarian had his chance to shine when he killed two people with a Crit+Rampage Crit+Swift Charge combo. The monk also one-shotted someone with a crit on Open The Gates of Battle. At the end of the session, they had retrieved the gem and the reward money, but had no idea who this third party was.

The session ended with everyone quite excited and happy and looking forward to the next session.

The second session saw the barbarian leave, as the player was busy with work. He was replaced by an Executioner Assassin, played by an experienced player (the guy who actually introduced me to DnD).

The assassin was also a fellow graduate of Henchmen School, but had went off with another adventuring party. His party was contracted to retrieve a sceptre of dubious magical power and was likewise ambushed. He was the only survivor. He met up with the rest of the party at their hideout (a tavern owned by the Henchmen School). While they were making plans to leave the city and figure out what to do next, they saw smoke outside the tavern.

The Rogue rushes out and promptly gets laid low by a club to the face. He sees their wagon, horses and supplies are all on fire, a bugbear in a dapper suit, bowler hat and walking stick, as well as four thugs with crossbows. He scrambles back inside.

The bugbear demands the gem and the sceptre, and the party isn't too keen on giving up without a fight. They roll initiative, win and promptly close and lock the front door.

Two of the crossbowmen start firing through the windows, until the windows are also closed and locked. The bugbear spends a couple of rounds ineffectually trying to bust down the door. The other two crossbowmen climb up to the second floor of the tavern and try to backstab the party.

Unfortunately, the assassin has been lying in wait and he strangles one crossbowman to death. The Warlock gets a lucky Perception roll, spots the second crossbowman and sets the dude on fire. The warlock and the monk spend a couple of round chasing the poor dude around the tavern, eventually pinning him to the floor with a table and roasting him to a crisp.

The assassin and the rogue proceed upstairs to try to snipe the bugbear and the remaining two crossbowmen from the second-floor windows. As they get there, they see the two crossbowmen climb through. Cue a 3 round ninja battle between two Lurkers and two stealth-based classes, with both players putting their Arkham City and Dishonored experience to good use.

Back downstairs, the bugbear has finally managed to get through the door by throwing the flaming carcass of one of the horses through it. The monk and the Warlock engage him, with the Warlock cackling gleefully every time he uses Hellish Rebuke.

The fight ends with the party victorious and still laughing about the flaming horse missile.

There are other stories involving this band of rogues and gangsters, including ambushing a bunch of military-types, prize fighting, and stealing a ship to become pirates. As this post is getting pretty long as it is, I'll type up the rest later.

Tsilkani
Jul 28, 2013

You are a good GM.

Ambi
Dec 30, 2011

Leave it to me

NinjaDebugger posted:

The Slayer should get as its death move:

Dead Man's Trigger: In one last spiteful blow to your chosen enemy, your death triggers the widespread publishing of a comprehensive manual on precisely how to go about killing a monster species of your choice. It won't be immediate, but in the long run, the complete exposure of all their dirty secrets dooms them to death as a species.

No no, "Stoker's Revenge".

EDIT;

Zakmonster posted:

hells yeah Good DMing

That sounds like a great game for all involved, nice!

Ambi fucked around with this message at 17:33 on May 22, 2014

Ambi
Dec 30, 2011

Leave it to me
Adding a Great gaming experience here, double-posting due to size;
After hearing about Great Ork Gods :orks101: in the Fatal & Friends thread, I printed out and laminated some god cards, and made up some business card sized character sheets, using a standard business card template on word. Since only 3 of my players could show up to my regular game, due to exam season, I decided to give it a shot rather than playing a board game or cards.

Everybody rolled up characters, and picked the Gods they wanted. I think I ended up with;
Vomit Dead Parrot, whose Patron gods were that of Strength and Movement
Tuff as heck, follower of the gods of Sneaking and Death
Urg Rah, follower of the gods of War and "The Talky Thing"
I took the remaining God of Artefacts/Objects since no-one wanted it.

GoG is a pretty simple system, for each of the Seven gods you have a Hate score between 2 and 5. Whenever something challenging comes up, decide which God is most appropriate, and the Player of that god sets the difficulty; Easy (1d10), Medium (2d10), or Hard (3d10). If any of the dice come up equal or less than your Hate score for that god, you fail. Any god can spend spite to make the roll harder, rolling another d10 for each point spent. You gain spite by Orks succeeding against your gods, or from shows of favouritism. Any tasks appropriate to gods you play is automatically easy, but everybody else gets Spite if you succeed. The aim of the game is to accumulate Oog, a measure of Badassitude and Orkiness, which also attracts Goblins, incompetent servants that can be sacrificed on a roll to remove a dice, 1:1.

I played through the sample adventure from the book; the players are sent to pillage a town for their Troll leader, and bring back the mayor's 3 daughters. The town is protected by an Elven archer, a dwarfish warrior, and a halfling thief. Killing them, the mayor, or the daughters nets them an Oog each, as does each building razed, and bringing the daughters to the troll nets 2 oog.

Everything goes pretty neatly, and the players cooperate well enough to raze some buildings, kill the defenders, and Tuff captures the daughters. Dead Parrot has his fist split in half by the dwarf's axe, but continued on to use it as a weapon via Axe-Fist. He later did a neater job, and replaced the hand remains with the axe. Then I remind them they don't need to cooperate, in fact, killing an Ork with more Oog than you gives you Oog, and since only Tuff has the daughters he would get 3 total if he killed them, instead of returning them. Naturally, everything turns into a rough scramble to either kill the daughters, or each other, and it ends up with each Ork claiming a corpse and 1 Oog each.

At this point they return, tribute some shiny loot to their Troll leader, and set off to pillage a bigger target, a city. Since I had ran the sample adventure, I couldn't think of anything much more Orky than doing the same but bigger. Tuff, being a follower of the Sneaky God, sneaks in quite nicely. Urg Rah attempts to sneak in, fails to do so, and then fails his roll against Death as he is hit by a cannon.

Of course, everyone has a substantial following of goblins by now, so Urg's player tries to bargain with Tuff's player, as the God of Death, to resurrect him in exchange for the sacrifice of his retinue of goblins. It is approved, and Tuff opens the gate for the other two Orks to charge in and begin massacring. Urg immediately goes to destroy and/or capture the cannons which killed him, and Dead Parrot makes his way into the upper reaches of the city, looking to loot the treasury or kill the mayor. Along the way he loses a fistfight against a Civilised City Troll ("Ya idiot, trolls don't have nads!"), who knocks him through a house and kills him. He too, bargains with Death to be resurrected in exchange for sacrifice, and goes on to kill the troll with his axe-hand, find the mayor, busts through a wall and beat him to death with a table while interrogating him on how to open the treasury.

Tuff attempts to use one of the cannons as a hand-held weapon, fails to load it correctly, and dies as it explodes the first time he tries to fire it. Being Death's follower, he of course allows himself to be resurrected, and leaves the cannons to go after the treasury too. Upon finding Dead Parrot gloating over mountains of shiny loot, he sneaks up behind him and kills him, taking the loot for himself and gloating in the brief moments before Urg destroys the building he is in with a captured cannon. Being Death's favourite, and having earned a few more goblins to sacrifice, he resurrects again and is remade into a golem-like abomination with the melted treasure.

Tuff steps outside and flips off Urg with a giant golden fist, and Urg does the only rational thing and attempts to kill him again with the cannon. Tuff sprints down to the wall, sneaks inside it, and demolishes the floor beneath Urg with his goldfist. A brief fistfight ensues, which Urg loses and has his head crushed in. He tries to plead for resurrection, but since Tuff/Death God are the same player and they have been dicking each other over with Spite this whole time, his pleas fall on deaf (heh) ears. Tuff is then crushed under the collapsing wall, and due to massive Spite expenditure, dies as well.

Everybody had fun, I got to run a cool new game, and it was the best received TPK I've ever been a part of. The only downside was it absolutely wrecked my throat trying to do proper Orky voices :orks101:

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer

Ambi posted:

Of course, everyone has a substantial following of goblins by now, so Urg's player tries to bargain with Tuff's player, as the God of Death, to resurrect him in exchange for the sacrifice of his retinue of goblins. It is approved, and Tuff opens the gate for the other two Orks to charge in and begin massacring.

For a second I misread this to mean he held open the gates of death and the others took a side trip to gently caress up the afterlife.

Ambi
Dec 30, 2011

Leave it to me

Bieeardo posted:

For a second I misread this to mean he held open the gates of death and the others took a side trip to gently caress up the afterlife.

If I get round to running a second game of GoG, I'll probably use that because that sounds like another great and :black101: idea.

Zakmonster
Apr 15, 2010
Continuing the adventures of my merry band of rogues. At this time, they have hit level 8 and have been joined by a pixie mad scientist and a kenku (birdman) con artist. The half-orc barbarian has rejoined the game, but has changed his class to a blackguard. Through their shenanigans, they have gotten themselves trapped in a mental construct, a white featureless room with only one door.

A simple Arcana check tells them that this place is known as the Amygdala, a mental prison used by the ancient tiefling empire (and the secrets of the ritual was thought to be long gone). It basically traps the target in his own mind, forcing him to fight against his own mental defenses until he eventually goes insane or dies of system shock. However, the prison is supposed to be solitary, yet the PCs are all in the same mental construct. They are not entirely sure why.

The pixie theorizes (correctly), that they would probably have to bypass the various mental defenses of each party member. Left with no other choice, they party decides to brave the maze of the Amygdala and see what happens.

I had a simple mechanic for the maze. Every corridor leads to a junction and History roll lets them pick the correct path to the exit. Each door they encountered represented the unconscious defense for a single party member, which meant combat. The party could bypass the combat by rolling Insight against that specific party member's passive Intimidate (Intimidate score + 10). At least half the party needed to roll successes in order to bypass the encounter. To increase the difficulty, every extended rest the party took increased the DCs by 4, to represent the mental defenses getting increasingly hostile.

The Assassin's encounter is a prison full of shadows and jailers trying to strangle everyone. It represented his fear of imprisonment and authority figures. The Assassin was also the main target of Team Monster, because he was the self-loathing type. This encounter involved a lot of lanterns and sunrods, and the pixie basically won the encounter with a single daily (Punishing Eye).

The Warlock's encounter was an arena, ringed by a wall of fire. A more devilish looking version of the Warlock stood on a balcony, watching things get burned, representing his desire to see the world set aflame. The Warlock was also the main target of the Team Monster, because he was the self-destructive type. This encounter involved a lot of running on ropes, climbing on pillars and running on walls.

The Rogue's encounter involved the party in a cathedral to Lolth, fighting the rogue's mother, two sisters, 3 dead brothers and some spiders (he's a drow, they have a hosed-up family structure). The Matron is decidedly powerful, representing the Rogue's fear of the Matriarchy. The encounter begins with a suitably disturbing conversation with between the Rogue and his mother, with the pixie trying to remind him that this was all in his mind. The Rogue punctuates the encounter by saying, "And this is why I left home!"

Zakmonster
Apr 15, 2010
The Blackguard's encounter is a military camp, populated by barbarians and hunting dogs, representing his military training under the Church of Bane, and his upbringing in a barbarian tribe. This fight saw everybody being all macho, instead of their usual cautious tactics. The Rogue fails his roll to climb up to the ramparts twice, says gently caress it and just opens fire. The Blackguard picks up a water trough and throws it onto the biggest concentration of enemies. The Warlock complains because damp things aren't as combustible.

The Monk's encounter was easily bypassed, despite the Monk having the highest Intimidate score in the party (everyone rolled very high). It was supposed to be a Huge version of the monk atop a mountain and they'd basically play King of the Hill.

The Kenku's encounter was in a featureless grey space filled with floating rocks of various sizes. They had to fight weird chaos beasts (because the Kenku was a chaos sorc), and the party realized that they could manipulate the terrain with any Charisma-based skill, or Arcana. The rogue and the Warlock started setting up walls, and the Assassin made floating rocks in the middle of nowhere, so he could stealth. When the floor literally disappeared beneath their feet, they realized that this entire place was cyclical - instead of falling into an endless abyss, they'd fall onto a random rock within the area and take some falling damage. The monk, of course, realizes that this is a great offensive tactic and starts throwing enemies off rocks. The Assassin uses this knowledge to travel from one rock to another (jumping off, using Arcana to aim his fall, and Acrobatics to minimize the damage).

The Pixie's mental defenses wasn't his own. Because the Pixie had basically sold his soul to Baba Yaga, his mental defense was Baba Yaga's house (the implications of which made the Pixie's player quite disturbed). This encounter was supposed to be the most annoying, as the house would start walking and everyone would start sliding about, and they'd fight a lot of flying furniture and assorted bric-a-brac. However, the Pixie decides instead to call for Baba Yaga herself and ask for a favor. She demands that they entertain her while she makes a decision, and the party immediately begin describing all sorts of acrobatics, off-tune harmonica playing, and shadow puppets. Everything is in counterpoint to the Blackguard snoring in a corner.

In the end, Baba Yaga is pleased by their enthusiasm, and sets them free from the Amygdala, and the party rejoices.

My original plan was for them to find their way out of the maze the hard way (it wasn't terribly hard, because they had pretty good History scores), and they might have to fight some of the encounters more than once. But the pixie took charge with a risky play (calling Baba Yaga), which the Assassin was warning against (because fickle Arch Fey are bad). I had to give them the win after their description of their carnival antics, however.

Zakmonster
Apr 15, 2010

Tsilkani posted:

You are a good GM.

Ambi posted:

That sounds like a great game for all involved, nice!


Aww, thanks goons.

That campaign lasted all the way up till level 15, after which I got sorta burned out and requested for a break (this was earlier this year). I was planning to run another campaign starting next month, but the Drow Rogue's player pre-empted me and declared his own campaign. The player has some experience running combats and I've talked at length about encounter design and balance to the group as a whole. He also roped in each player to help develop and flesh out the different parts of the world our characters come from, which ended up in him drawing a full-on map of the world. It was impressive as gently caress.

The first introductory session was last week and it went well, a couple of easy combats to get us used to the game again, and some good roleplaying between all involved. Next session is on Sunday and I'm looking forward to it.

Daetrin
Mar 21, 2013
At the beginning of this session (ship-to-ship chase scene and combat) someone made a joke about throwing Odrak at the other ship.

An hour in and I'm having to figure out how to roll for them shooting Odrak out of a jury-rigged Purple People Launcher. (Odrak is purple)

Excelsiortothemax
Sep 9, 2006
I would say attribute(Dexterity or Perception) + Firearms/Ranged Weapon/Thrown skill -Odraks Stamina/Consitution and they have to equal to or exceed the other ships pilots perception roll. If the pilot sees it coming then he gets to dodge Odrak. If he fails then Odrak flies over to menace the other ship unimpeded.

Please note I don't know FATE mechanics so plug them in as you see fit.

Daetrin
Mar 21, 2013

Excelsiortothemax posted:

I would say attribute(Dexterity or Perception) + Firearms/Ranged Weapon/Thrown skill -Odraks Stamina/Consitution and they have to equal to or exceed the other ships pilots perception roll. If the pilot sees it coming then he gets to dodge Odrak. If he fails then Odrak flies over to menace the other ship unimpeded.

Please note I don't know FATE mechanics so plug them in as you see fit.

I made it an Overcome action. They'd already rolled to make the Purple People Launcher.

And then he got an attack action from the Fastball Special and got five shifts of success. So of course he shattered the upper deck into metal splinters when he landed.
Player: "I'm envisioning Odrak flying towards the ship like Ralph when he's falling and saying the bad guy affirmation."
Other Player: "I CAST FIST!"

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers

Zakmonster posted:

basically won the encounter with a single daily (Punishing Eye).

Ah, artificer, let me count the ways I love you... Belching clouds of combat drugs and lobbing bombs, good times.

Whybird
Aug 2, 2009

Phaiston have long avoided the tightly competetive defence sector, but the IRDA Act 2052 has given us the freedom we need to bring out something really special.

https://team-robostar.itch.io/robostar


Nap Ghost

petrol blue posted:

Ah, artificer, let me count the ways I love you... Belching clouds of combat drugs and lobbing bombs, good times.

Let's not forget the way you reskinned your healing powers to be a flying, intelligent syringe full of potion.

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!
Another one from “7th Sea.” One of the schools of magic is called Porte, which focuses on teleportation. The mage rips a hole in reality, steps into Hell, walks through with his eyes closed the whole way (the distance walked is MUCH shorter than the actual journey, a week’s trip might only take a few hours), and steps back out at his destination. Opening your eyes in Hell is akin to ending up like the kid at the end of Stephen King’s short story The Jaunt.

After fighting and killing a whole bunch of cultists, we were talking about how to dispose of the bodies to avoid drawing the attention of the police, when the fop of our party casually asks “why don’t we just open a Porte hole and throw the bodies into Hell?”

There’s a five second pause.

Then the paladin speaks up. “NO! No, we are not using Hell as dead body storage! That’s how you get zombies! Or worse, demon-possessed zombies!”

CobiWann fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Jan 20, 2015

Samizdata
May 14, 2007

Error 404 posted:

That reminds me of an exchange I saw in a comic once.

A magical cop is fighting some tentacled horror and calls for backup, the backup being a big dude in swat armor.

The backup hands the cop a gun and charges at the monster saying to be careful because good parts are hard to find.

The cops asks him "Zombie?" And he replies "I prefer the term Undead American."

Also, there's this - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0465517/ and another one I don't remember the name of.

Found it - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765430/

The second one is better on the "factual" bits.

Samizdata fucked around with this message at 17:56 on May 27, 2014

Samizdata
May 14, 2007
A couple of my favorite PnP moments -

As a player...

When beta testing a game system one of our DMs was working on, during one of the campaigns, I had created a Ferrin (ratman) thief named Twitch Baldtail, whose major traits were hyperactivity, eating just about anything not nailed down and mind blistering greed. He palled around with a cat centaur named Char Abrams who weighed about half a ton and was amazing damage machine, even if he could handily lose an argument with a box of rocks. Both Char and I had fun speaking in our characters voices (Twitch sounded a good bit like Peter Lorre overdosing on amphetamines and Char sounded like the height of dumb jock times infinity).

The part finds a chest which Twitch handily picks. Insides are round objects covered with a cloth. Twitch, thinking bags of treasure, leaps into the chest (he was rather small). The DM proceeds to mention the round objects were (non-harmful) chattering dwarf skulls. Twitch thinks a moment, shoves a paw into where the spinal column would go, and ducks below the edge of the chest, making the skulls dance along the edge of the chest. At this point, pretty much everyone is having a WTF moment, when Char's character looks down and says (in his amazingly dim voice)...

"Puuuppets. Heeeeeee's makin' puuuuuppets!"

Everyone loses it.

As a DM...

We had just finished a campaign someone else in the regular group had run and everyone was sitting around trying to figure out what to do. I had recently gotten a book of one session oneshots for just such a purpose. I had also been working on some alternate character class stuff to amuse my girlfriend. So, we decide to spin the oneshot into a Gaelic inspired campaign.

We end up with a cleric of Bridget, a druid, a thief and a Celtic Berserker (based on Chucullain if he could die normally) and a hedge wizard (that weird dude that lives alone outside town/hedge wizard type). I also gave them each a +1 weapon that had some sort of utility power of a non-combatish nature.

The thief came in later, so, whilst Bellicon the Born-Again is fighting on the roof of a tavern, he critically fumbles and throws his axe, Woundrender (aka Bellicon's Bitching Battleaxe Woundrender (it said so on the character sheet)) off the roof. He barely finishes off this opponents barehanded and the cloudy skies finally open up and start raining. He finally snaps out of his warp spasm and realizes Woundrender is lost. Woundrender's utility power is to return to it's owner (flying waist high at a harmless walking speed) when it's name is called. It can not, however, do anything like travelling up staircases or ladders or such.

Meanwhile the thief is moping around town, mourning his loss of cash, when he sees this really cool axe in the road. Happily anticipating a party tonight, he picks it up and starts heading to the merchant/fence in town.

Bellicon staggers downstairs (despite his frequently great rolls, Bellicon spent about 75% of his game time at near-critical damage. Lest people say I was being adversarial, the player admitted to me this was sort of the concept the player had, based on my class descriptions, which is pretty much what I had in mind too) and outside. Looking around he sees no Woundrender, so he calls it's name. The thief fails a DEX check and gets his hand entangled on the loop on the end of the handle when the axe starts to move and falls. He is slowly and inexorably dragged around the edge of the building where he meets Bellicon, who promptly realizes this person -

A] doesn't want to die, and
B] the party could use a burglar,

So, at pain of death, he extracts an oath from the rogue to aid and assist the party or die, also allowing said rogue a fair share of any adventuring loot. (For some reasons, most of the parties I used to run tended to circle around Chaotic Good-ish style play).

Later on, the rogue and Bellicon meet up with the rest of the party (I am not going to mention the backstory as this is wall of text enough already and not as amusing).

They end up hearing about the local bailiff offering a bounty as a large number of local young women have been going missing. They decide to take the job.

(This is basically where the oneshot begins.)

They track the culprits (basically two inbred hillbillyish brothers) to an abandoned winery. They end up killing the brothers during a spooky search through the winery (to add some creep factor, but not too much, it turned out the brothers were cannibals and the girls were their hunting trips). The battle ends up with one of the brothers jumping out a window, Bellicon pursuing and Bellicon making some insane rolls to land on his feet, lose the warp fury, and end up with Woundrender in the back of the remaining brother killing him. He then looks up at the town members who congregated around when the ruckus went up and bloodily (1 hp bloodily) and snarls at the town members "Who's next?"

First night is done. The next game night, the players decide they want to continue, which I am cool with as everyone seems to be having fun. Whilst everyone is setting up and grabbing refreshments and snacks (and I joke about making sacrifices to the gods so someone will bring me a soda), I quickly sketch out what I think might be a good general path for the night. The next game day, the party proceeds to start looting the winery. Not too much is found, but they do find one of the magical cauldrons that create nourishing gruel. (I like some touches of reality in my D&D campaigns, but I am NOT making them track iron rations usage.) The druid goes out to hunt with her sling and drops two giant elk (with good rolls). She drags it back to the winery and they start dressing it out. The cleric has an idea and visits the town's cleric to offer the meat to feed the poor. The town's cleric thanks her and arranges to stop by later with a cart to pick up the meat. When he does, the thief sneaks the cauldron onto the cart (it was a party idea) with a note on what it is.

So, bam, good terms with the local church.

A game day or so later, the town chieftain decides to auction off the winery, with the proceeds to go to the town treasury. The druid mentions how helpful she could be if this was to become an actual winery, so the party attends. There they run into the richest landlord in town, who becomes interested in the party. During the auction, things are not going well for the party as they really don't have that much actual cash. The wizard proceeds to win the auction for the party by using cantrips in a hilariously non-lethal fashion on the landlord to screw up his bidding (and later making him run out of the auction in embarrassment).

The campaign ended with the party happily roleplaying out their first pressing.

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Samizdata
May 14, 2007
Also, as per adversarial DM's, do I mention Randy and the weekly headshots on my character that were so reliable, the FLGS would put HEAD SHOT! in the Quotes of the Week section in every issue of their newsletter?

(Not sure as my above post was a bit wall of texty...)

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