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I just finished running a Borderlands Powered by the Apocalypse game that involved punching Loaders and bandits so hard they explode, failing to break open a lock twice in a row, and one-shotting two bosses within five minutes of each other. Our story starts with Vance as the Hunter with his pet Stalker Tempest (though half the time we referred to it as just the Murder Lizard), Malus as the Beserker who was basically a slightly saner Krieg sans Buzz Axe and an ex-Hyperion engineer and current Hyperion test subject, and Salome as the Siren, who despises the Maliwan corporation due to being captured and tested on extensively for the first 18 years of her life. They were currently riding a Hyperion mag-train along the coast, sharing stories and just acting like strangers on a train would. Then, a hologram of the President of Hyperion, Handsome Jack, was beamed down in front of them and announced, in no uncertain terms, that they were about to be exterminated, but they made it this far, so keep those chins up! Immediately afterwards A trio of Loaders digi-structed in the front of the train car. Vance shot one Loader dead with his Jakobs pistol, with Murder Lizard backing him up. Salome took care of the second Loader using her PhaseLore power, overloading the robot's brain with random information, and effectively shutting it down except for its right arm, which had no idea what to do so just sprayed the cabin with bullets from it's SMG, eventually accidentally throwing it at Salome who caught it with her face. Malus took quick work of the third loader by Beserking and punching it twice (and getting his only high rolls of the session), causing it to explode in his face. The train promptly exploded. Surprisingly, the trio survived, after launching towards the sea and being saved by a passing boat, which was actually crewed by bandits called the Wurmz. The three eventually ended up below the boat's deck in a cage. A bandit covered in various electrical devices named Wireboy came into the room, demanding that one of the three show him how to work the ECHO communicator he found on Malus so he could radio the Bezerker into Hyperion and collect the reward. Malus responded by luring the bandit near the cage, slamming him against the cage bars and effectively making Wireboy's face reflect a roadkilled animal. After dragging Wireboy's keys out with Vance's belt, they unlocked themselves, explored the rest of the ship's basement (a kitchen, the cabins, a warehouse, a treasure room, and the engine room), and found both guns (including a pearlescent Tediore pistol and a now-prized Vladof RPG), three sleeping Wurmz in the cabins, and Tempest's cage. Malus proceeded to fail both of his rolls to break the lock on the cage, whereas Vance caused it to shatter to pieces by hitting it with the butt of his pistol. The trio eventually found an elevator to the deck, where they were met by three bandits, two psychos wrestling, a room where the steering wheel was located (I have no idea what the correct terminology for this is), and a large Nomad named Skipper X with a minigun in lieu of a left arm sitting on a throne atop the room's roof. As Malus was the one of a three that most resembled a bandit, he established that he was taking the two to be tossed overboard. He then established his dominance by shoving one of the bandits off of the side of the boat. Salome sneaked off to the side and managed to convince the wrestling psychos to jump overboard by informing them the Ocean Mother had delicious rare orphan steaks for the two. Vance attempted to shoot a bandit leaning against the wall of the steering wheel room, but accidentally shot Skipper X. Angry, he jumped down, revved up his minigun, and was immediately turned into chunks by Salome and her RPG. The bandit that Vance was trying to hit immediately bailed off the side of the boat. After the death of Skipper, a Loader with a pirate hat, a headless corpse chained to its torso, and a third arm sprouting from the torso's neck holding a assault rifle named First Mate Lead Head burst through the steering wheel room's wall, which Vance then killed in one hit with a Jakobs sniper rifle. The third bandit, who was over in by the bow of the ship, ran over to see what was causing the commotion just in time to see Lead Head explode, and was striken with fear. Figuring that they're going to need a crew for the boat they now apparently own, Salome commanded Malus to break the bandit's legs unless he agreed to work for them. Malus failed his roll, and punched him in the face so hard it imploded and caused the unlucky dude to rocket off of the boat into the water. Vance remembered that there were three sleeping bandits below the deck, and because they really had nowhere to flee too, the banidts were pretty much theirs now. And so, the trio founded the LamPrays bandit clan with them and three strangers as members. tl;dr, my players felt like badasses, founded a new bandit clan, and I need to work on better stats for bosses. Kumaton fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Jun 21, 2014 |
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Jun 21, 2014 03:15
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I've been gaming with a group of the same or similar people for quite a long time now - some of them for years and others for months. We mostly play either Star Wars or Dark Heresy/Only War because that's what the people in the group who GM prefer to run. For this story we were playing Dark Heresy. It was the second arc of the storyline. We were all working for a very radical inquisitor whose name escapes me currently, but we didn't really know how radical. The cast of characters are: Me: A tech priest who just took the Secutor alternate rank, making me a mobile weapons platform. Also a cyber mastiff handler, but my doggie was accidentally destroyed. My character doesn't really matter so much, more my actions as a player. Jon: A Sister of Battle, order Famulous. Knowledge monkey and also not shabby in a fight. Derek: Fast talker dual pistol based scum. A new character, as his prior character died gloriously in a fight that we were supposed to run from. Unfortunately we thought we could win because someone's character managed to one hit KO the same thing we were fighting by a string of lucky rolls - Devon: Said lucky guy. Still playing the same character we started the game with, a feral world guardsman, Kanak Skull-taker. They believe in keeping trophies from enemies they defeat to honor their ancestors. Devon's a goofball who always tries to give his characters the worst possible odds of winning. His favorite weapon is a black powder pistol that he believes is blessed by Saint Macharius, a relative of a big figure in 40k lore who in our groups shared storyline was an even bigger feature. He's managed to kill demons in one hit via critical damage rolls (exploding 10s on damage dice) with the stupid flintlock. Nick: Also died earlier in the same fight. Has newly rolled up a pyro based Psyker. Jared: A Psyker as well. The reason that characters died in the last fight after he provoked perils of the warp for a reversed gravity effect. We all fell like 50 feet out of the sky. My character and Jared's would have died too but we had fate points to burn. Our last fate point. Our characters had come to Sinophia, a decaying planet on the fringe of civilization, only useful to the Empire due to its proximity to the Spinward Front where Only War takes place, tracking down a noble NPC who had deceived us in the first story arc of the game. We only learned he was lying through his teeth after he got away scott free after "assisting" us with our investigations into the demonic corruption of his House. Upon arrival we found two leads on him. One was that he had been seen meeting with a very distinctively described dude. And the second was that he had also been seen around this certain house in one of the noble districts of the main city. We met with our contact on planet, a dapper rogue DMPC cheerfully played by Tucker, our DM. Not a bad DMPC - he mostly stayed back to fill in gaps in our own expertise and to rescue us when things went tits up. Which they did after we decided to investigate the house where the dude had been seen. When we got there, we found two entrances. So we naturally split the party. 3 of us went in through the dammed canal which ran beside the house and had drainage pipes into the basement while 3 of us went in the front door. On the way in Devon's character ended up face to face with this giant servitor which he managed to kill in one really lucky hit. Not that the rest of us knew how lucky it was. The 3 of us who went in the front door had a short fight with some thugs who my character noticed had some rather advanced cybernetics made by the Divine Light of Sollex, who had also been our quarry's way off planet in the first part. The other three found an excavation of a nuclear space ship by dozens of these nasty nasty servitors. We are in radio contact, so when I find out whats down there I go back outside and set explosives to open the canal back up. This was a good plan, as it thwarted whatever was going on down there. Unfortunately one of the servitors made it out just behind the rest of the party which is where gravity mishaps occured, ending the fight. After several weeks of recovering from our gravity based injuries, being collected by the DMPC and put back together during that time, we decide to check out our other lead, the midget noble guy. We learn he tends to hang out in this central building which is used as a combination flea market, meeting place, etc. The Astra Telepathica (off world communications) station is here too. We buy a few things and stake the place out. Eventually he shows up with a bevy of armed guardsmen who do their best to start a fight with Devon's character, to the chagrin of their boss. Devon's not having it though, realizing how out numbered he is he backs down. Their group posts up by a fountain in the middle of the place, with a couple balconies overlooking it and staircases between the levels. We all make our way without being seen up onto the balconies when Derek has a great idea. He's going to go talk to the dude and find out where our quarry is! So he goes down there, realizes he is totally not a player who should play a talky character in Tucker's game, and ends up blustering and threatening the little guy until the dude is tired of it and orders his guys to take out the trash. Derek goes down in a hail of gunfire, deservedly so if you ask me. He also failed his social rolls along with mangling his speech. This sets off the rest of us, as one of our own has been attacked. Devon hucks a hallucination grenade down into the lot of them. 8 of them fail their toughness test even past rebreathers and end up jumping up and down in place, believing they can fly. So its just the boss man and 2 of his heavies. Its a bit of a fight but we take down one of the heavies and subdue the other. The boss man tries to run away but we outmaneuver him and the sister of battle throws him over her shoulder, and we carry out the last of the heavies. As revenge for the bodyguards' messing with his character, Devon hands the leader of the pack an explosive collar and kicks him into the big group, activating the collar. The explosion from the collar cooks off his grenades which activates the rest of the grenades, for chopped guardsmen. We high tail it back to our canal boat where we question the one we kidnapped along with his boss. In the biggest twist so far of the game, it turns out the midget dude is actually the right hand man of a Rogue Trader named Nova Novakova who we also suspected of being involved in the whole heresy we were tracking down. The thing about rogue traders though, is that they are, to a point, above the law. Those of us whose characters know this are freaking the gently caress out because holy crap we just kidnapped this guy in the most public place in the city, in front of who knows how many witnesses. We've basically hosed with her family, and now she will probably stop at nothing to destroy us. By the time we are back at home base, she has interdicted the entire planet with her ship, and has demanded the return of her crew member. The sister of battle, who had now converted to a Sister Repentia to repent for her possession of heretical knowledge (A spellbook) questions him and comes out convinced he is a heretic, along with the rogue trader herself. Soon after, he escapes his restraints and guard and leads us on a merry chase through the castle we were in. We kill him once we corner him and I find a clue on his datapad to the location of our quarry. To cover our tracks, the DMPC kills our host who he is blackmailing into maintaining a place for us in his household, and we burn the castle to the ground along with the entire staff as we take off in a boat to follow our lead. We end up finding traces of radiation which lead to a pier. Our quarry, we discover by asking around the nearby area, has taken to sea along with a cache of radioactive technology taken from the buried ship. So we get the harbourmaster to lend us a boat, and we take off after. Devon's character is driving the boat as he is the only person with the relevant skill. We manage to follow him without much trouble, and we are humming along, faster than normal due to my character's tinkering with the engine, when Jared's psyker once again provokes perils of the warp while attempting a power, and is thrown off the boat by the backlash. Devon goes back for him, but neglected to mention he was slowing down. KATHUD, we knock the psyker under the boat to be chewed up by the propeller on the other side. Oops. We leave the chummed water behind and get back into the chase. Eventually we spot the other boat. I am looking through one of the splatbooks for alternate uses of the drive skill and I find that you can use your vehicle to bring the other vehicle to a stop with a drive check. So I convince Devon to try it because, I mean, come on. How awesome would it be for him to do a PIT maneuver in a boat! Devon's on board so we tell Tucker what he is doing. Devon rolls, and gets a crit failure. 99 or something on the dice. Seeing it coming, the remaining psyker had activated a levitation power right before, rising out of the boat and being left behind. Everyone else was caught in the resultant explosion of two boats dealing their armor points to each other in damage. Anyone who failed an agility check could not jump free and would take like 32 damage from the explosion (max hp for a human is around 20? I think?). The gunslinger, and my tech priest both fail our checks and die, having exhausted our fate points. The Sister repentia and the guardman jump free and join back up with the psyker, and are eventually rescued by mine and Derek's new characters in the following session. I was reminded by the boat drawing.
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Jun 21, 2014 05:42
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Kumaton posted:I just finished running a Borderlands Powered by the Apocalypse game... Do you have a specific hack/ruleset you were using that you can link to? Because that sounds like fun.
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Jun 21, 2014 06:34
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Dareon posted:Do you have a specific hack/ruleset you were using that you can link to? Because that sounds like fun. Plain Apocalypse world actually works pretty fine for it, so long as no one wants you to be providing them with randomized loot or anything. That and throwing lots of dice for combat, Apocalypse World doesn't do well if you make the combat too granular.
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Jun 21, 2014 13:21
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chitoryu12 posted:I do think that every GM should be willing to do that. I mean, he probably kept you alive just so his plans for Higgins the Ewok Savior wouldn't be derailed, but it's still not a bad thing. In my last Star Wars game I basically played Kushiban Rambo (complete with wookiee sized bowie knife), but mostly because it was hilarious imagining a child-sized rabbit thing lugging around 4 times his weight in heavy ordinance. So 'small deadly things' can be hilarious characters. But probably not when they're DMPC - Savior of the Plot and the Party (in that order).
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Jun 21, 2014 15:12
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Dareon posted:Do you have a specific hack/ruleset you were using that you can link to? Because that sounds like fun. We were using the No Rest hack, with some additions (like adding shields and grenade mods to the loot pool.) It is seriously a ton of fun and if you're a fan of the games you have no excuse not to try it out. Kumaton fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Jun 21, 2014 |
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Jun 21, 2014 15:23
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Oh, this is probably a bit lame, but here's a short blurb on how my group literally got cat-piss involved in our group's repertoire of dumb in-jokes. Actually it's not even a blurb, one of our players was playing a stereotypical drunk whose drink of choice is vodka. We had this joke going where nobody could understand his slurring, and after five minutes of arguing someone else blurts out, "For the love of god, it's just cat piss!". And from now on we have yet to call vodka vodka at the table. It's always cat-piss.
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Jun 21, 2014 15:27
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Kurieg posted:In my last Star Wars game I basically played Kushiban Rambo (complete with wookiee sized bowie knife), but mostly because it was hilarious imagining a child-sized rabbit thing lugging around 4 times his weight in heavy ordinance. So 'small deadly things' can be hilarious characters. But probably not when they're DMPC - Savior of the Plot and the Party (in that order). During my first ever tabletop game (it was Pathfinder), one of the characters was a halfling....with super long arms longer than his actual body height. They were basically giant noodley things that dragged on the ground behind him.
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Jun 21, 2014 17:23
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Played Wraith during throwback gameday. Great setting, great GM, terrible system (we spent an hour+ on creating characters despite having half filled-in pregens). In Wraith, you're ghosts brought back by unfinished business, attached to the mortal world but endlessly hosed with by the powers that be. I played a 1950s-style throwback biker who was skilled at leadership and driving, but particularly good at punching ghosts so hard they stopped existing. I teamed up with a cop who, upon finding his mother about to kill his husband, threw her out the window of his house...and onto a spiked fence. He then discovered his mother had been possessed by a dybbuk. [As the family screamed, my character punched the dybbuk out of existence.] Our third character died on the way to prom and, when negotiations broke down between character 4 (power hungry mid-level exec) and the rulers of Stygia, was almost sold into slavery. Instead, she used her ghost powers to scream down the walls of the temple of death, escaping to the curb where my biker was waiting for her.
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Jun 26, 2014 08:01
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Mr. Damage Control posted:"The Ewok blows smoke off the barrel of his gun. 'Looks like I got here just in time, friends. The name's Higgins.' Come on, this is pretty funny. It probably wasn't at the moment, being a lovely DMPC intervention in a lovely session, but in hands of a proper GM an Ewok Eastwood-ish gunslinger NPC could be a perfect mix between usefulness and comic relief.
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Jun 26, 2014 10:16
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Lichtenstein posted:Come on, this is pretty funny. It probably wasn't at the moment, being a lovely DMPC intervention in a lovely session, but in hands of a proper GM an Ewok Eastwood-ish gunslinger NPC could be a perfect mix between usefulness and comic relief. The GM would have to be: 1: remotely funny 2: using the character as anything other than overpowered DMPC in order for that to be true. What level was he again when you snuck a peek at his sheet? 8? while the party was 1? That reminds me, I was thinking of doing a story about a certain DM/player who turned out to be an honest to god rapist among other things, Mr. Damage Control, did you game with you-know-who other than the time I was there for the dungeon world game? I was going to talk about the awful Mutants and Mastermind game but I wasn't sure if you had a better intro to the guy. Ash Rose fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Jun 26, 2014 |
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Jun 26, 2014 14:00
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To make Higgins funny he would need to be less  and more like an exaggerated expy of Dirty Harry: a tiny little teddy bear who's brooding, angry, a heavy drinker, and tends to resort to murder with an excessively large blaster pistol as his first choice. From how he's written in the post, it seems like he was more about being a massive badass DMPC who just happened to be an Ewok.
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Jun 26, 2014 16:04
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There's nothing "happened to be" about it, it's all about making the players answer to a silly teddy bear.
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Jun 26, 2014 16:57
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chitoryu12 posted:To make Higgins funny he would need to be less Like this chap?
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Jun 27, 2014 04:58
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I was in a game where the guy we were supposed to be escorting was actually a combat powerhouse. In fairness, the DM did this mistakenly, and after the first fight, she made an excuse to shuffle him out of the game. I actually had a really good experience last week in a D&D 4e game I DM. I had the party fighting on a boat, being attacked by a wizard who was teleporting Homunculi assassins onto the ship in waves and then, after they'd fought off the enemies, he would attack the boat directly, so I could end the session with the boat sinking and making a short plotline of chasing the wizard for revenge/answers (I might have been a little influenced by Uncharted). Except, as I had the wizard gathering power, the rogue adds that she has a ritual that lets her walk on water, and the swordmage adds that she can fly. So the two of them, with the warlord chucking them off the boat to give them extra distance, rush the wizard. Rogue's shurikens miss, but the swordmage hits with an at-will that teleports an enemy adjacent to her. So she just flies up to the boat and yanks a guy 15 feet into the air. I don't even care that it shouldn't have worked, rules as written. It was a much better end to the session.
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Jun 28, 2014 19:04
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Had a pretty terrific moment with Roger, a new player. He's playing a bard named Burt "The Boot" Reynolds. He did not enter the game with that nickname, he earned it. Burt was breaking into a local blacksmith's house in order to get proof that the blacksmith is part of a poo poo stirring rebellion. Upon entering the house, Burt encounters an old, mean looking cat lounging on the back of one of the blacksmith's couches. The cat proceeds to pay him no mind. So Burt goes through, finds the evidence he's looking for and started to exit the way he'd come. The cat starts to attack him. I immediately roll a 1, and announce that the cat lunged at him, got caught in a small throw rug and skidded into a wall where it lay, dazed. Burt: I kick it. Me: Are you sure? Burt: Yes. Me: I'm not going to make you roll to hit, but you will roll a D4. If you roll a 4, the cat dies. Two minutes later found Burt Reynolds carrying the cat's body outside, laying it in amongst the bushes attempting to simulate that the cat died of natural causes. Whenever he botches a roll it will be accompanied by a ghostly meow. This game is serious in tone, I swear to god 
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Jul 1, 2014 19:50
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To be fair, if this is a new DnD character then he's 100% justified in treating your average housecat as a ravenous hellbeast that should be put down at the earliest opportunity.
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Jul 1, 2014 19:59
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Androc posted:To be fair, if this is a new DnD character then he's 100% justified in treating your average housecat as a ravenous hellbeast that should be put down at the earliest opportunity. "They cut off the power! How can they cut off the power, man? They're animals!"
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Jul 1, 2014 22:06
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Hell, I'd turn it into a character hook. Make it so the cat was actually a Wizard familiar. Maybe the Blacksmith for some reason decided to pick up a spellbook and had just gotten the cat. Now he's going to want revenge.
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Jul 1, 2014 23:34
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Androc posted:To be fair, if this is a new DnD character then he's 100% justified in treating your average housecat as a ravenous hellbeast that should be put down at the earliest opportunity. He's an experienced player, but it was his first game with me as DM. He showed up again this week, so I must have done something right. the_steve posted:Hell, I'd turn it into a character hook. Make it so the cat was actually a Wizard familiar. Maybe the Blacksmith for some reason decided to pick up a spellbook and had just gotten the cat. Now he's going to want revenge. I was thinking I needed an extra wrinkle in the campaign. Revenge for Caramel the Cat is as good as any.
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Jul 2, 2014 03:15
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The Good, the Chaotic and the Inevitable. So coming off our last evil campaign I decided that I would attempt to break type casting and play a straight up and down AD&D1e Paladin. So was born Curdley. Curdley included prayers about bunny rabbits in her day to day routine and started with 1 HP. Other players decided to "cooperate" by rolling a Neutral Magic User (Keith), a Chaotic Neutral cleric (Bacchus), another druid (Dave), and another other druid (Phil). The first adventure went OK and I was able to 'rescue' all the lizardmen children and use party funds to start up an orphanage (etc). I also got a party constitution signed up to and disciplined the mage for various misdemeanors. My halcyon days were not to last. Eventually the cleric obtained a wand of wonder whose command word was 'entropy'. Despite my protestations encounters usually went something like this: Cleric offers a packed bong to creature encountered. When this inevitably led to violence and the paladin was brought to bear the very next thing heard would be 'entropy'. This resulted in several of the normally serious dungeons along the giants/decent to the depths lines including scenes where a stone giant was blinded by butterflys and many instances of a 1/16 size cleric. Another staple feature was the magic user miscalculating volumes and singing the party with every second fireball cast in a confined space. Thingbeing (The mage) or her familiar died to this cause more times than all others put together. The harder I put my foot down in opposition to the use of that accursed wand and the casting of careless fireballs the more I was defied. Time passed and we all got a little more powerful and eventually we did The Lost Caverns of the Tsojcanth. Which was most notable for Daoud's Wondrous Lanthorn, which heals poison and disease to those who bask in its light, and produces spell effects like color spray, hold and flame strike depending on which prisms are used; it also (of course) curses the owner with possessiveness and paranoia. Who better to wield this than our good mage ThingBeing UnbendThinker? gently caress what a mistake. Now instead of just a crazed chaotic cleric with a wand of wonder I now had a highly unreliable magic user with suicidal tendencies and an artifact. Encounters now went like this: Cleric offers a packed bong to creature encountered. When this inevitably led to violence and the paladin was brought to bear the very next thing heard would be 'entropy'. This was followed or joined with 'I spin the lanthorn!' Spinning the lanthorn: "If a gem lens is placed in each opening of the lanthorn, and the lanthorn is then spun, all within 30' of the lanthorn, except its possessor, will be confused, as the spell. Victims within 10' of the lanthorn receive no saving throw. This effect operates at the command of the lanthorn's possessor, as do all other effects. Any combination of four gem lenses will produce this effect." So even relatively benign encounters often ended with a lightly charred confused Paladin standing amid a shower of semiprecious stones. This magic user and cursed items will feature heavily later. Various player deaths lead to the cleric's player (Bacchus) playing a ranger (CG) called Heady Meadows Bong  At last I was rid of that loving wand! Not nearly, one of the first adventures saw the ranger gain possession of a trident that had the same functions (And strangely the same command word). gently caress my elf life.Despite the above we were a highly successful party and continued in our habitual walking around the opposition tactics. We acquired a House of Zebulon at some point and the entire decent to the depths was avoided by having either our druid or our thief sneak into the dungeon with the party in the house. But AD&D1e paladins all go the same way. Our DM was wonderfully adaptive and imaginative and confronted with our particular breed of somehow hyper efficient murder hobos he designed a fabulous dungeon that centered around a magic user who had created a magical flying ship. He used only the spells available to the setting and so it was crafted from permanent walls of force and powered by permanent gusts of wind (etc.). Fighting our way into the ship was an epic adventure. The mage had made constructs that were modeled on the marching hammers from The Wall (Which had only just been released at this time). Obviously this ship was immune to our habitual use of rock to mud and so we had to do it the 'hard' way. Really none of us minded. Of all the dungeons I have ever played this is probably the best. He should publish it. Anyway we eventually found ourselves in the upper reaches of the ship. It was probably nine or ten hours into the play session and it had (due to the effects of alcohol and cannabis) become largely just me and the DM playing with the occasional rallying of otherwise comatose members for brief periods. We are confronted with a mysterious control panel. After various trial and errors it turns out that it is some mechanism for staging gladiatorial fights between fantastic exotic beasts. Since I had 'accidentally' triggered a bunch of fights and attempted to enter the arena but failed via the panel I finally remembered the going through a wall with a portable hole trick. It was at this point that the DM said making the creatures fight each other was effectively an evil act and I was now just a good looking fighter. The ranger was able to atone and regain his status. I was a little crestfallen but we soldiered on. The treasure we hauled in was such that the key to the ship was one full share and the ranger's partner (another ranger but an NPC) got it. This is an important detail. In an adventure not too much later we obtained an iron flask of Tuerny the Merciless that ended up in the Magic User's hands. Not only did it shift their alignment to NE but it contained a Night Hag. This caused many problems along the way but also signaled the DMs starting to use coercive items in an attempt to slow down the hobos from hell (and one nice girl). The druid (Dave) was then possessed at some point in a dungeon and put a geas on the ex paladin to 'Cause the party to not succeed'. We were at the time in some outer planar dimension dungeon and as it involved negotiating physical traps and platforms the party got in the house of Zebulon and had the ex paladin scale the walls etc. I figured that the only way I could fulfill the geas and not harm the party was to destroy the house, with them in it. I threw it from atop a cliff into the rock below. It failed its save. Heartbroken and full of remorse my ex paladin made for the dungeon exit. Inside the house there was pandemonium. After several calls for divine intervention finally a player's deity made the house well. A certain possessed Druid and an evil mage decided to pursue with maximum prejudice. A couple of lucky fireballs later and it was one crispy dead ex paladin lying on the sands of a distant dimension. I was hoping for a resurrection and a chance to explain. Instead I got to meet a Night Hag up close and personal and become the first ever death knight in this campaign setting. Rather than do a re-roll in a mature campaign the DM had me take over Avalon (also a ranger) Heady Meadows Bong's in game partner. After reading up on rangers I came to the following bit of the players handbook. quote:Rangers may own only those goods and treasure which they can carry on their person and/or place upon their mount; all excess must be donated to a worthy communal or institutional cause (but never to another player character). I declared the flying ship my mount. So began the illustrious career of the greediest ranger in the history of ever. As we approached higher levels our scope for encounters expanded and we eventually became involved in global politics due to an evil empire being run out of notEngland. Before we could take on the real power we had to mess with one of their puppets, notSpain. Our merry band determined that the best way to screw them over would be to cause their feudal economy to collapse. Some research led to us determining that the army was supported via the output of a silver mine and the treasury contained an entire nation's wealth in silver ingots. Using our sneak and grab tactics and our flying ship we stole that. All of it. We were having a blast and when that campaign finally came to an end we were ready for the tale I have been avoiding telling: The return to evil - Where we verily sup upon the font of cat piss, may Lolth have mercy on our souls. Cartoon fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Jul 2, 2014 |
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Jul 2, 2014 03:52
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I just had some of the best/weirdest/funniest/most creative gaming with my wife and one of our best friends. I normally play 4e, but we had a long, boring car ride so I told em' we'd be playing 'Dungeons and Dragons' (close enough), freeform style. I told them to give me their names, races, and classes: my wife was Hiawatha the Mystical Gnome Witch and her friend was Celestie the ??? Lightning Mage (her character was covered in robes and floated so we didn't know what she was). I started off with a tavern scene and asked them what they wanted to do - as their first actions they IMMEDIATELY started buying eachother drinks and flirting. Not the start I was expecting, but suddenly 3 men walk in bleeding and screaming about Orc attacks. Hiawatha and Celestie leap into action, with the former lighting all drinks in the bar on 'electric fire' and the latter rousing the folk in the tavern into a raving mob. Duly impressed, the mob and the heroes head outside to face three orcs mounted on wolves. One orc draws an arrow and aims at Hiawatha, who causes the arrow to split into two snakes that tear out his throat (jesus). The other orcs are scared, and the heroes direct the mob to tear down and bind the surviving orcs and their mounts. Meanwhile, Celestie examines the orc's body - here, my wife jumps in and says there's also a long silver hair growing out of his head (as they get more confident, they took more and more control in the narrative)- and cuts the hair off, wearing it around her neck and attaching to it a silver key she pulled off the body of one of the 3 wounded men from earlier. They also find a note written in a strange tongue (written ON a strange tongue)- they then look in the orc's mouth, finding the key to the code on HIS tongue. They cut that out too. They then both decide that the corpse should be butchered and fried for supper. Afterwards, they try to convince the other orcs to join forces with them - one accepts, the other does not (this one, I am informed, has a long golden hair on his head, and when he refuses, Hiawatha brutally rips it out of his skull and beheads him - on one end of the hair is a golden key). The strange code in a strange tongue ON a strange tongue tells the heroes that the orcs were sent by (here I asked for an animal, body part and adjective, giving me) King Huskyelbow the Slimy, the dark king of Kukule (who is a wishing troll, I am informed). The heroes decide to enter a quest to go end his wicked life, with their new Orc friend/servant Stefan Wuleta (I asked for his specialty: Gay Interior Decorator - I'm informed that that's not offensive, it just means he's a higher level than regular interior decorator). The folk in the bar are also game to help - 20 men and women wish to go with them. So naturally they have them come along - after secretly feeding the women poisonous candy that makes them dissolve so that they don't tempt either of the heroes(?) to stray from their love for one another. ----------------------------------- Next up: The Forest of Fire-breathing Grion Toads
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Jul 2, 2014 05:16
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Cartoon posted:wand of wonder Oh god the wand of wonder. In one of the first campaigns I ever DM'ed, the setting book I was using had this place where a bunch of imps had taken over an old magical factory, which continuously produced wands of wonder out of thin air. The wands themselves, though, were defective: Every time they were damaged by an area effect, they had a 5% chance of exploding and releasing every effect at once. Upon learning this, the team's Artificer promptly broke out his notepad and calculated the number of wands needed to ensure that, when hit by a fireball, enough wands would be set off that a chain reaction would happen with 99% probability. After they took over the factory he built a number of these Wonder Nukes, which the group used to great effect on several of the tougher bosses in the campaign, vastly increasing the rhino population of the region in the process.
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Jul 2, 2014 10:59
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My Pathfinder group just had the most awesome random encounter ever. We’re wandering around a barren desert when suddenly an ember storm kicks up (random encounter # 1). Think a hurricane force dust storm that’s also on fire. There’s not really any shelter and we’re kind of in a hurry so we decide to just press on through it. The way these storms work is that they also trigger other encounters in addition to bad weather so our DM rolls up another ember storm specific random encounter. I should mention that our DM doesn’t pull punches, he goes with whatever the dice say. Rolling a percentile results in 100, meaning we get … an adult red dragon(random encounter #2). Which is CR 15. Have I mentioned that our group is level 8? Of course we realize that this thing will kill all of us if we don’t immediately flee but it turns out dragons are a lot faster than we are so running is out of the question. The dragon breathes fire on us resulting in nearly every member of the party dropping to quarter health or lower and that was with the dragon rolling 6 ones on twelve dice. We start to despair at this random TPK, when our wizard pipes up that he wants to make knowledge checks to see if he knows anything about this particular dragon. A knowledge (history) of 40 later we know this dragon’s name, his tactics, and some other trivia. This still doesn’t help and the dragon has started taunting us. Finally we decide that maybe we can bribe him to let us go but we didn’t hold much hope considering we’re pretty poor and the dragon could just murder us for loot anyway. Our DM rolls on a random treasure table for the dragon’s preferred loot and the following exchange took place. DM: Do you have any fire opals? Us: No DM: Yellow topaz? Us: No DM: What about masterpiece paintings? Us: No Rogue: I HAVE SOME! Turns out literally 4 months ago our rogue had specified that he cut several expensive paintings out of their frames in a zombie infested mansion. He hadn’t sold them yet because we had forgotten all about them until now, but they were still written down on his sheet. So he whips out the paintings from his bag of holding and prostrates himself in front of the dragon and bluffs that we came out into this storm to personally deliver these works of art to this dragon. Dragon rolled a 1 on his sense motive. So the dragon is super impressed by these mortal servants who braved a firestorm to give him a gift and he decides to spare our lives for such devotion. He calms the storm (to preserve the artwork) and shows us the way out. Along the way, I tell him all about the campaigns current villain, who is a dead blue dragon and also manage to get a nat 20 on a diplomacy roll to convince the red dragon to help out (by promising him most of the city treasury that I may control after overthrowing the queen). At the end of our random encounter we not only survived, we managed to recruit a red dragon as an ally in our main quest. And we did it all on legitimate, if incredibly lucky rolls.
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Jul 3, 2014 06:28
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Verily and forsooth: The dice taketh away and then they giveth.
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Jul 3, 2014 23:18
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Kulebri posted:wand of wonder One second, let me just dig out what turned up in our DW game...  We ended up using it to short-circuit a magical vortex, and luckily it was destroyed in the process. Or at least, it's away from the Chaos Mage, and that's the important thing. Notice the marks on the 'charges' part.
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Jul 4, 2014 04:05
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petrol blue posted:One second, let me just dig out what turned up in our DW game... Years ago, 2nd edition era, we spent a couple of weeks coming up with a wand of wonder with 100 different possible outcomes. The original 2nd ed one, before the advent of the wild mage, had 15-20 possible spell effects. My mates and I took those and expanded on them until we had 100 good ones for rolling on percentile dice. It was a hell of a debate, too, as we actually had the temerity to bring up "game balance" for an item like this. I wish that I still had the notes about that, but lost to the mists of time. When we put it into a campaign, it had infinite charges as it was designed to be for flavour/add a touch of chaos rather than being a straight up beneficial item like a wand of healing or a wand of lightning. One function we added of which I was particularly fond was that it turned the target into stone, but only from the knee down. Another was inspired by a Skittles advert and the victim was pelted by hundreds of tiny multicoloured stones which led to minor damage and temporary blindness from "tasting the rainbow."
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Jul 4, 2014 17:24
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Wasn't there a second item very similar, something like the wand of incredible wonder? Sadly too many imitators now to find it with google.
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Jul 4, 2014 22:30
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I remember the Wand of A Wonder, from the Temple of Elemental Evil. There were a few variants in an old Dragon too, as I recall.
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Jul 4, 2014 22:43
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Bieeardo posted:I remember the Wand of A Wonder, from the Temple of Elemental Evil. There were a few variants in an old Dragon too, as I recall. For the real trove, seek out a complete archive of the Living City modules. Mod authors often unofficially competed to get new "of Wonders" gear certed in their mods, in addition to the more memorable competition to see who could find an item of clothing players would not wear for the bonuses. Bunny Slippers of Speed? Check. Crushing Corset? Fine. Bustier of Many Things? Wonderful. Brassiere of Holding? No problem.
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Jul 4, 2014 23:47
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NinjaDebugger posted:For the real trove, seek out a complete archive of the Living City modules. Mod authors often unofficially competed to get new "of Wonders" gear certed in their mods, in addition to the more memorable competition to see who could find an item of clothing players would not wear for the bonuses. I would wear the Bunny Slippers all drat day and probably to bed as well. As for the bra, to be fair they are designed to hold things anyway... usually just two things at once, but you get my point.
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Jul 5, 2014 18:55
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So I just finished my third session running Black Crusade today and the players continue to amuse me with their antics. Cast:  World Eaters berserker (I forget his name so he's "Angus" for now) with approximately equal skill with his powerfist and silver tongue. Hates psykers because he likes Khorne. Renegade Space Wolf Devastator (Lorgrim) who's probably the most level-headed of the party, at least so far as Heretics go. Also hates psykers because he likes Khorne. Heretek (Jet) who absolutely adores anything to do with technology/lore/lasweapons. Really crazy, to the point that she publicly claims to be a psyker. (She isn't. Yet.)The one unfortunate thing about this group is that I've only GM'd for two people per session, given that the known players have unpredictable schedules. It's also been an uphill battle convincing a fourth to join (sometimes he does communication like John McCain without the excuse of nerve damage). But I digress. The first session only featured the Khornates (because Jet had not yet been rolled up) as mercenaries working for a local warlord on some backwater planet in the Screaming Vortex. They'd done admirably the day before...but said warlord had died and so the army was kinda SOL. (I was aping Xenophon's The March of the Ten Thousand here.) At this point I figured they'd either run for it to save their own hides (hey, Chaos) or personally assault the enemy army in the name of glory.* Instead Angus decided that he'd continue aping Xenophon and gave a rousing inspirational speech about how they could all survive together so long as they moved out efficiently and prudently. I was somewhat surprised but figured I'd keep winging things based on what the players decided to do. Continuing his comrade's train of thought, Lorgrim decided to round up some explosives to slow down the incoming army. Just a few strategic melta-bombs and a grenade-trapped safe, but enough to slow down the enemy warlord (Tisiphernes) and piss him off at the same time. (The safe was rigged with three frag grenades and ended up wounding said warlord's pride with the off-camera damage he took.) So with the army up and moving, they decided they'd set out for the nearest starport and make it offworld before Tisiphernes could corner them. At this point I abstracted the overland journey by rolling some Fate dice and seeing whether good or bad results came out. Most of the time things were slightly good (they managed to ally with a Word Bearer and a Heretek by promising each some favors), but the one time I rolled poorly things were...interesting. See, I have a tendency to play cautiously in tradgames, and as a GM that usually means I'll lowball encounter strengths a bit. The party (of two) had to deal with two Guard-equivalent hordes, a bounty hunter, and a psyker, surely this shouldn't have been a joke? Well, for reasons of comedy it was. Lorgrim's first instinct, upon seeing someone "with a staff", was to open fire on the (correctly) presumed psyker with his autocannon. I'd expected said NPC to perhaps live longer, but he ended up going all the way to the bottom of the critical damage charts and died in spectacular fashion. And by "spectacular fashion" I mean that his ammunition exploded, putting a big chunk in one of the hordes and stunning the bounty hunter. After this ignominious circumstance the two of them managed to cow/shoot everyone else into submission - not implausible when the leader went down in a single shot. (I feel that at this point I should define what "critical damage" means in the context of 40K RPGs. See, characters normally have some number of wounds - HP, really - and if you take damage in excess of those wounds then you start taking critical damage. Each point of critical damage means that you take some rapidly worsening result on an appropriate ten-entry chart, based on hit location/damage type. When you get down to 8 or 9, you're dead. But, should you manage to hit 10+, you're dead in some particularly gruesome way that tends to inflict collateral damage on those who are still standing.) Anyway, the party ended up outside the starport with their pet army in tow, but unfortunately the starport itself was walled and held by forces loyal to Tisiphernes/hostile to the party. This might have been a problem had the party not had the foresight to trade for a lascutter, so in short order they managed to sneak in through the sewer grates (expertly rewelded when they figured they should cover their tracks), shamble up to the guard tower, and deceive the guards into opening the gates. By this point taking control of the starport was easy (just add army), but as insurance and to fulfill a favor the group decided to leave the Word Bearer (Jord) in charge. And here the session ended with the bulk of the army off to trade for materiel on Forge Castir. Given how fast the group is collecting Infamy I'm wondering if I should slow down, but at the same time they have an immense capacity for darkly comedic shenanigans and I feel I shouldn't discourage that. (Plus we've had three sessions in two months.) *The overarching goal in a Black Crusade game is to amass enough glory - called Infamy - to impress the Chaos Gods, whereupon you get turned into a Daemon Prince. Snazzy if you're competent enough to do so without dying too much. Next: Hey Wait, Why Are BC's Vehicle Rules So Limited?
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Jul 6, 2014 06:03
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That sounds awesome, I reckon you'd be mad to slow down. Live fast, die young, and leave a horribly mutated corpse.
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Jul 6, 2014 13:32
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If your players are gaining Infamy fast, it means they are doing amazing things, which is basically what they're supposed to be doing. Gods don't impress themselves!
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Jul 6, 2014 15:52
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The return of Evil What were we thinking? After the murder hobos in space campaign wound up we started the process of rolling up new 1st level characters in a new setting. I think we had moved into largely 2nd edition at this point and Comeliness was a thing. Being the bunch of rules twisting monsters we where I pondered the use of low comeliness which was described (if I remember rightly) as Awe. People would actually run away from you in fear. That sounded like a pretty good free ability! I think if I am to be 100% honest with myself I harboured some spiteful feelings of vengeance from the fate of my Paladin in the previous campaign. So this time my character was an Evil Gnome Priest of the God of disease, Talona http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talona. That meant I could also wield a dagger. The other players rolled up various somewhat complementary characters of a generally evil bent, well accept for Dave who rolled a Druid. Yes this is the same Dave that always rolled a Druid and has been noted before for his turning into a tree, lame Geas and general worthlessness. Much time was spent explaining to him that in a world filled with heroes and doers of good it was effectively incumbent upon him to assist us in doing evil. How else can the balance be maintained? And do evil we did. We started out as generic murder hobos and killed stuff for money without any real direction but once we had enough power we started thinking in political terms for our scope. Soundly reasoning that if we were to be openly evil it would bring the do-gooders (And tree huggers  ) down on us we began on the fringes of society. This campaign's equivalent of keep on the borderlands was approached and I commenced my convert or die crusade. If you couldn't be bribed or otherwise coerced you were killed. We burned down their churches and built ours on the ruble. Word apparently spread and while we were doing some standard dungeon crawling for loot we returned to find an inconvenient army had retaken our conquests. An army lead by a paladin. A paladin called Guthorman. Narrowly escaping getting our arses handed to us we fled.Some time later and in a different part of the land I (we) recommenced our crusade. Things were going OK and I was becoming a powerful cleric. Every time I built a church though a certain loving paladin and his mates would show up and run me (us) out of town. Guthorman was particularly annoying to me because Paladins are immune to diseases. As our fortunes were being routinely reversed by this fucker my stakes in the party (especially with certain druids) started to plummet. Why should they be doing what I said? Where had it gotten us? Valid and fair concerns all. I sought solace in prayer. This is where the weird started. It's like we were icy pops of cat piss. Cool on first impressions but foul to the core and unworthy of even a small lick. In all our rat summoning evil of the past, the murder, crime and prostitution was all done at a reasonably abstract level. The whole concept of rape hadn't/didn't come up and yet our evil was not found lacking. Talona is a female deity. For some reason our DM decided that having us all summoned to her plane and visited with the temptations of pleasure might keep the flock in line. The various party members were all feted and charmed as was necessary to obtain their ongoing fealty. We are stripped and ritually bathed. As part of my obeisance I am found worthy of a kiss. With no further thought I kiss my very god. Perhaps with no further thought, the DM informs me that I have spontaneously ejaculated. Is this a part of the god's abilities and description? I do not know. Doing my best  I question the mechanics. I was after all, a gnome. She had, apparently picked me up to give me the kiss. I ponder this and point out that I must have just cum on her tits. Apparently this wasn't an issue....Moving right along. We gain in power some more and I foolishly must have expressed my enthusiasm for being high enough level to cast blade barrier soon. The convert or die crusade is back somewhat on the rails as a convenient counter to the inconvenient army was found to be a diseased army of undead. Many of whom had been recently raised during our revival meetings. Wanting to more fully honour my deity I asked that I be visited with obvious sores and pustules to help get my comeliness into even more Awe inspiring areas. The DM is reluctant and appears revolted by my request. Why would I do such a thing? I would suffer other consequences to my abilites, did I want to go through with it? The DM has qualms about some boils... Despite the ongoing success of my army of the pestilent undead, Guthorman still dogged our steps. Every time we left a dungeon bloodied a bunch of his bullies would pull up and try to take advantage of our weakened state. Like a flash it hit me. There was one really 'good' way to screw over a Paladin permanently. All I needed was a way to make Guthorman commit an knowingly evil act, without compulsion. It took me a while but the plan was effectively to have him kill me for a crime that I was in fact innocent of in a hasty enough way that it was this act, and not any of my previous crimes, that provoked it. When I'm feeling kind to myself I am comforted by the thought that it was a make believe rape in a make believe setting in an rpg game. Illusory fake rape did however work and the first thing we did after making Guthorman a fallen paladin was introduce him to a demon lord to make him a death knight. Masters of wit (and cat piss) that we were we would summon him by invoking the cry in the movie Warriors, "Guthorman come out and plaaaay!" Still Dave to the rescue! On the very day of my character gaining enough levels to cast blade barrier I was imprisoned in an artifact by the Druid. Out last and most shameful evil campaign at an end. It would have only lasted long enough for me to engineer the TPK - 1 with blade barriers in any case. What possessed a bunch of mature role players with literally years of non-pissy to go to the font? I really don't know. We haven't been back.
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Jul 8, 2014 04:44
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NinjaDebugger posted:For the real trove, seek out a complete archive of the Living City modules. Mod authors often unofficially competed to get new "of Wonders" gear certed in their mods, in addition to the more memorable competition to see who could find an item of clothing players would not wear for the bonuses. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm going to ask my GM to add those to the game at earliest convenience. This is a guy who rolled me a bodice dagger-sized sheath of holding meant for stowing two-handers. I'm not expecting a lot of resistance. Living City had the Temple of the GOlden Arches too, didn't it? Bieeanshee fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 04:54
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I'm running a Play-by-Post game of Werewolf the Apocalypse with a group who've mostly never played any White Wolf games. I wanted players who hadn't played White Wolf before so they don't know how all the world works and know all the hidden lore. Basically, they only know what they see in-game or what they've specifically asked or been told about. Which results in hilarious moments like this: XyloJW posted:Jarrod attempts to deactivate his light-beam power by killing its target, using his staff like a stake. Jarrod drives the end of the staff into the vampire's heart. Its eyes go wide, and it collapses instantly, taking the staff with it. bell jar posted:gently caress yeah! For those who don't know, in White Wolf, staking a vampire just paralyzes them and removing the stake frees them.
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Jul 9, 2014 23:09
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That's going to be hilarious.
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Jul 9, 2014 23:44
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As a novice in a group of novices, my story isn't much, but it was funny to me. We were playing a "Legend of Zelda + Eternal Darkness + Final Fantasy" (  ) custom campaign. I was playing a yeti, who had great strength and large size but was unable to speak common language. Luckily I had a partner mage, Chester, who took some spell to understand me. We were playing over AIM (double ) so I had to just emote everything when he was busy...which was very often, as he was kind of an rear end in a top hat who prioritized powergaming instead of roleplaying or teamwork with his supposed best-friend-of-10-years. As an custom-class Esper, he had access to an Esper Form. He chose Ragnarok, which let him kill people and turn them into items. Real useful for a battle against Lovecraftian zombies. He used that ability whenever possible, even in the middle of civilians who were supposed to be fantasy-racist against Espers. Even when his powers were better used on helping the rest of the team instead of fishing for free potions.We had a hunch that some mad god had possessed the local governor, and we were trying to gain entrance to his manor to find out. After immediately getting spotted, we run away to hide in an alleyway. While the team argued over what to do next, Chester spent one line to say "I'm going to the castle myself, bye" which was lost in the sea of messages while he sneaked off to a private room with the DM. By the time we realized, it was too late. We had used his invisibility to get this far, and we weren't getting out of the town without it, so we had to just wait. 45 minutes later, the DM announced that Chester had died. He had met the evil, possessed governor who immediately dispelled his invisibility. Despite many warning of foreboding feelings, Chester decided to launch a fireball. He was killed instantly with some sort of eyes of madness. So I was stuck as a lone yeti with no ability to speak, the governor knew we were after him and who we were, and we had no more leads. That was the final session of that campaign. HellCopter fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 00:57
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NutritiousSnack posted:That's going to be hilarious. Technically if he did enough damage on the first vampire to drive them into Torpor he'd be OK? I used to run a Brujah in oWoD who specialized in stakes and would do that all the time.
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Jul 10, 2014 15:39
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