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So my usual group has expanded significantly in size and we're now playing a 3.5 game doing a (probably heavily) modified version of White Plume Mountain, and it's the most fun I've had rolling dice in a very long time. The (key) players for the story: Zador - an agnostic Drow Cleric with a prosthetic knife-hand and a hatred for vampires Boris the Soviet Lovehammer - a Half-Orc, Half-Dwarf Barbarian boasting a whopping 9 INT Solaire Sün - a half-elf Paladin of Pelor El Illusario - a Human Masked Wrestler (monk) Christos Jakobson - Human Bard/Pied Piper (played by forums user Spookylizard) Saw - an Elven Druid Dresden - a Half-Elf rogue Hubert - an 87 year old Human Wizard, played by myself. Disclaimer: I am telling most of this from my [character's] point of view, as there are lots of little details I forget. Spookylizard will probably be able to add on anything I've missed. I came in on the second session, having to miss the first because of work. We were introduced as already having been working with each other for a while, but making separate camps so we were not present for part of the first encounter. Upon joining we all immediately roll listen checks, and everyone except me hears what sounds like a Wyvern roaring and people screaming for help in the direction of the other half's camp. Someone comes in to my tent and informs me that the rest of the party may be in danger. I grumble, pack up my spellbook and everything and move out with the rest of them, I summon a spectral hand on the way. We arrive at the other camp just in time to see everyone being attacked by one Wyvern who's roaring "OOH, FOOD" in Draconic. Illusario charges in and goes to grapple the wyvern who is harassing Boris, while Oliver (Illusario's players previous character, a Ranger) realizes and wonders aloud "Huh, don't Wyvern's normally travel at least in pairs?" just as he gets stabbed from behind by the second Wyvern's tail. Illusario suplexes the Wyvern he's grappling in to a group of trees, where Dresden was hiding and I electrocute the other one with my Magic Hand. At this point I decide to reason with them, and end up getting them to agree to stop attacking us, and instead go raid the village we just came from because A) There's much more food there and B) we'll probably get hired to go 'exterminate the Wyvern menace' upon which we can just find another village for them to raid and split the earnings 60/40. The Wyverns agree to this under the condition that I enlarge the Rangers corpse for them to eat and the one who killed the ranger formally introduces himself to me as Willy the Wyvern. We part ways amicably and continue on to the mountain. After we enter the dungeon we are met by an incredibly flamboyant Sphinx named Sondheim who guards three doors. He tells us that to open each door we must answer a riddle. Sondheim: I have a bed, but I need not sleep, I have a mouth, but I need not eat, I- Saw:  A RIVER!Sondheim: WOULD YOU LET ME FINISH THE RIDDLE FIRST?! Okay, so now for those of you who DON'T know the answer... And so we make it through the first door. Solaire leading the way through corridors, followed closely by myself and the party's beguiler accidentally trips a mark of insanity, causing the three of us to go insane. Permanently. As a half-senile old man already, I see very little difference in this except for more attacking the party. My gut reaction to becoming insane is to cast spider-climb on myself, and start walking on the ceiling. Little do I know I deactivate(?) a red slime/ooze trap that followed, but then... DM: Did you have a rope tied around your robe below your midsection? Me: Uhh, I guess not, why? DM: Your robe flies up in front of your face, you can't see. Also you accidentally flash everyone. Oops! Solaire and Beguiler have to roll will saves to not be disgusted - Beguiler passes and Solaire fails spectacularly. He then begins to charge forward, taking the right corridor at a fork and slamming in to a door. I proceed forward, followed by the rest of the party. Everyone crowds the door as I am still on the ceiling (holding my robe down now) and contemplates the door for a moment, wondering if it's trapped. Boris the glorious Lovehammer decides that "door is door" and flings it open. Half the party spills into the entrance, I walk up to the ceiling of the next room. There is a lone skeleton and a bunch of what appear to be glass balls hanging from the ceiling. Illusario quickly dispatches the skeleton and Solaire breaks the first glass ball, letting glimmering shards rain down. As this is happening I am reaching the center of the room, and one of the cords that a ball is hanging from. I grab the cord and slide down on to the ball. I cast Gust of Wind to swing myself back and forth, slamming in to balls behind and in front of me and smacking the one to my right with my quarterstaff. As i smack the one to my right I regain my sanity for a brief moment and see a ring fly out of it, which whispers to us "I am a blessed ring, and grant my caster a wish once a year - but that wish comes at a price, you must pay with a margin of your life." I jump down and walk over to the ring and pick it up. At the same time Solaire, in his insane state, decides that he will kill anyone and everyone for that ring. Solaire charges at me and gets just within striking range as Saw casts Entangle and roots everyone to the floor. Solaire tries his hardest to kill me with the sunrod he'd been holding. At the end of that debacle, Dresden ends up with the ring and puts it on, permanently losing 1 CON and immediately taking the lying bastard off and dropping it on the floor. We backtrack and take the left fork this time, and reach another (very simple) riddle involving prime numbers. We solve it with no difficulty and move on, Solaire once again leading the way. In the next corridor we encounter a portcullis, which Soliare contemplates for a minute as I catch up (once again on the ceiling). As I arrive behind him he decides to try and open it, only to discover it's a Mimic, lose the grapple check, take an assload of damage and get pinned to the ground. All as I stand 10ft above him laughing. Everyone else catches up and tries to help get the mimic off of him, to no avail. I decide "screw it, it's not blocking the way" and continue on, not provoking any attacks of opportunity because I'm on the ceiling and he can't touch me. Saw sees me trying to leave and tries to lasso me as I pass the Mimic, and fails. She then makes the argument that it would have been right above the mimic, so it may have lassoed him. She rolls a use rope and gets a natural 20, resulting in the lasso catching on my beard, and then getting entangled and knotted around the mimic's throat. I continue walking on unhindered as the Mimic beats Solaire, the shining Paladin of Pelor to death. PLAYER DEATH #1 The next room is described to us as a giant chasm, with two ledges and 9 wooden discs suspended on chains in between them. All over a pit of boiling mud. Being on the ceiling, I don't care about any suspended discs and proceed halfway across the room where I turn around and wait for everyone. While I wait for everyone, I realize that I have an incredible amount of weight suspended on my beard and look down to see the Mimic, dangling over the boiling mud, mouth gaping open with something glimmering inside. I cast Scorching Ray on the mimic, miss and hit the rope, dropping him to the boiling mud. Me: can I try and use Mage Hand to grab some of the stuff out of his mouth? DM: roll DEX. Me:  Natural 20.DM: You grab two things out of the mimic's mouth. I triumphantly stuff my loot in my bag of holding and continue across the room as everyone spills on to the first ledge. 3/4 of the way across I get blasted with boiling mud, because I didn't notice that it was going so high as to hit the ceiling. Knocked down to -9 hp, I fall like a brick as Willy the Wyvern soars through the door with a Cleric (Solaire's new character and son, Beright) in his claws who catches me, and drops us on the far ledge. Beright stabilizes me to 1hp ans I sit there and watch people try and come over. Saw tries to jump and fails, falling in the boiling mud. She's reduced to -9hp as Christos does everything he can to fish her out. He gets her back on the ledge and Illusario tries his hand at the platforms. He nimbly backflips his way across all 9 of them with no troubles whatsoever and gets to the other side. Christos decides he's going to try shooting a rope in the ceiling (it's 100ft across) and swinging over, misses twice and then tries to jump. He falls in the mud and gets boiled to death. Boris tries to jump over, and almost falls at least 3 times (it may be more, I can't remember). On the last platform, he just barely fails and slides in to the mud. He survives the fall and retains consciousness while in the mud, Illusario takes the rope I tossed over my shoulder as I was digging through my bag of holding and ties it to the Cleric. They go out to the platform and Illusario lowers the cleric down to try and save Boris. Initially Beright can't reach Boris, so he just heals him so he can survive. Boris then grabs Beright and starts to get pulled out. Unfortunately, they were over the same vent that had hit me earlier. So Boris gets rocketed to the top of the cavern, slamming against the ceiling. As he falls Illusario drops Beright without realizing to catch Boris. he succeeds and takes him to the safety of the ledge. Beright survives the fall with 2HP and tries to swim to the edge and climb out, only to find that it's a straight climb up a sheer cliff face. I temporarily regain my sanity and dig out one of the things I got from the mimic. I end up with the metal tube, which contained two divine scrolls. As I take one out and begin reading it to find out what it is, I lose my sanity and begin babbling incoherently, causing me to misread the scroll. DM has me roll percentile, and thanks to a Magical Stroke of Infinite Luck I end up reading the scroll as Mass Heal, a 9th level spell - curing me and everyone else of insanity and healing the party an incredible 70 HP. I fish Beright out with tensers's disc and spider climb the rest of the party over to the next ledge and we go to the next room. PLAYER DEATH #2 We enter the next room, and it is pitch-black. Only Boris and Zador (and one other whom escapes my memory) can see. They describe it as a room, more or less empty, save for a cloud of gas. I stay by the door as some of them move in. Illusario gets attacked as the gaseous form becomes a dwarf which Zador recognizes as a Vampire. We fight the vampire for a good while, myself keeping him out of gaseous form with spellcraft checks. Eventually Illusario dies to reduced levels, and Zador gets dominated. The first thing he does on his turn while dominated? "I'm going to go up behind Dresden, and use my knife-hand to stab him in the back of the head!" As an aside: It's VERY worth mentioning that Zador's player doesn't do ANYTHING at all during normal play. He avoids combat and risks like the plague, and plays very much like a pacifist. We played a 3.5 campaign he ran once and he would come up to me (when I worked with him) and say "Man I have so many ideas. You guys are SOOOOOO screwed." So basically, he just wants to kill everyone at the table and be ZADOR, LORD OF ELFGAMES. They both flub every roll and end up prone. Beright becomes the Vampires next target, as he slammed him with his Shield of Pelor. The Vampire makes short work of him (outright killing, not con or level damage), and after that Boris the majestic Soviet lovehammer gets reduced to 0 levels, and dies. Saw and I come up with a plan to keep the (now incredibly wounded) vampire solid so at least one of us can kill it. Luckily it does not resume gaseous form on its next turn and I take it out with a Scorching Ray. The room lights up, I loot his corpse and Boris and Illusario come back as Vampires. I find Whelm on his corpse, give it to Boris and ask what happened to Dresden's corpse. He points to Zador who has no idea what he's talking about. I shrug but make a mental note to kill the "Weak-willed, godless cleric." PLAYER DEATHS #3,4,5, AND 6 To Be continued. Aside from Zador's player this is probably the best game I've ever been a part of, and hopefully Spookylizard can fill in anything that I've forgotten.
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Jul 24, 2014 10:22
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Its worth noting a fair few player deaths have been entirely due to "acting without thinking", "i have a different character i want to play" and a lot of "no guts no glory". Our GM has been totally solid and not murdering people, and weve since houseruled a mechanic wherein all of our PCs have large, extended families, all of whom are cursed, and subsequently get a random flaw in addition to Family Curse. Willy the Wyvern has subsequently played replacement--sibling delivery system. Notes: my bard died after wasting numerous amounts of ropes attempt to cross the chasm. Then when he jumped, seeing how easily Illusario did it, he dropped, carrying the rest of it. Thank god the wizard had some. Illusario didnt lower the cleric as much as drop him the full length of the rope, nearly breaking his back. He also totally intentionally dropped the cleric to catch Boris. This was after the replacements rule had been introduced, and the cleric was thinking up funny names for his next character. Multiple characters were dropped to -9. And recovered. The vampire fight was pretty neat. Its very worth noting that the moment Zador had been dominated he competely switched from quietly meek and disinterested in the game to full YES I AM EXCITED FOR THE GAME LET ME MURDER A PC. Like, a complete flipped switch. It was... Surprising. Theres a high chance hes going to end up with some PvP because he doesnt like vampires, and now there are vampire spawn in the party. And a
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Jul 26, 2014 06:21
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The Dustmans' Conspiracy: Part the First - Jonathon Livingston Schlomo Our weekly D&D group started running a new Pathfinder game recently, set in a seaside city run by guilds. The PCs all coming to belong to the most ignominious guild of the city, the Dustmans' Guild, at the beginning of the campaign. One of the players wanted to play a Stone Golem-like character with a smidge of Sam Lowry from the 1985 film "Brazil". With some adjustments he created Schlomo, the giant, dumb, mono-syllabic golem(ish) with mystical writing on his forehead that had been strangely and inexplicably etched through. During the day, Schlomo worked as a laborer, utilizing his prodigious strength to load and unload ships, and because he did not need to sleep, at night he would guard the warehouse from thieves. He never left the warehouse but for work though he had a small storage room of his own; there he would draw on the walls with found bits of charcoal during his private time. Mostly, he would draw birds. Scholomo liked birds. He would see them sometimes hauling crates to and from ships, and admire their soaring grace privately before feeling a sense of uneasy disquiet for which he knew not the word. Schlomo would then bow his great head, and return to his toil. One day, after Schlomo was left at the warehouse at the end of the workday, his fellows going home to their families and homes; Schlomo, while patrolling his tiny domain, smelled smoke. He searched for the source of the odor and discovered a fire burning an adjacent warehouse and heard retreating footsteps. He set about locating an empty barrel, filling it with sea water and began dousing his warehouse and attempting to put out the blaze on the neighboring building. With a couple of good rolls he was succeeding in his task, and was near enough to the neighboring warehouse to make out the stacked barrels of oil a moment before they caught fire and exploded. Schlomo was flung into the air, sent racing across the heavens and over the sea, and as he did he spread his arms like a bird, swallowing the majesty of water and air around him. Free. He plummeted into the ocean to be engulfed by depths and darkness, and was awoken upon the beach -discovered by one of the Dustmans' Guild factors, who took him in to their guildhall.
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Jul 26, 2014 16:56
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Kumo posted:The Dustmans' Conspiracy: Part the First - Jonathon Livingston Schlomo This campaign and character have to end with him discovering a Ring of Flight or something like that, so he can forevermore soar among the clouds with the noble boids.
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Jul 26, 2014 18:44
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Interesting line in our PF game tonight. Our party has walked into an evil temple within a demiplane and encountered a large number of flying demons there, led by a succubus. The party Barbarian is frustrated as they poke at him from above with polearms, but it turns out that the Wizard (who is a bit.. cavalier.. about his spell list) doesn't have any Fly spells prepared. As a last resort the Cleric mentions that he has a pair of Winged Boots, and this results in the Barbarian racing over to the Cleric to exchange footwear mid-combat (by the end of which the Barbarian also needed a Heal spell as he continued to get poked) So, the flying Barbarian and the rest of the party defeat the first round of demons, but then two more fire-based creatures appear and blast the Barbarian to death just a few initiative ticks before the Cleric could cast Communal Resist Elements. There are various discussions about what went wrong, if a round was wasted, and so on but ultimately the party defeats the creatures. The Barbarian player announce he wants to create a new character rather than having the Barbarian resurrected. The party rescues a prisoner, loots the area and prepares to head back. Then the Cleric's player chimes in with "oh, mustn't forget to go and get my boots back off the corpse...." and wonders why the table broke down in laughter.
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Jul 27, 2014 07:45
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Erica: The World's most Forthright Assassin The current game I've been playing has my PCs working for, and against, a religious theocracy. They're gathering information from both the city and the rebels, because they can all agree that something is Not Right in this town. I was never aiming for the PCs to come to blows or anything, but I was interested to see if I could get them to split apart on ideological differences, one side working for the rebels, and the other for the city, if only for a short time. Erica was previously playing a Dwarven Cleric who, due to circumstances, was now two levels ahead of Luke, the Elven Paladin. She decided to create a new character until Luke could catch up. She chose a half-elf assassin. One of the things they're investigating is that someone torched the city guards barracks, killing eight people. So I thought it would be interesting if Erica's assassin was the one hired to do the job, only she was told there'd only be one person inside, instead of it being shift change, when it was most populated. So Erica was pissed off by this, because that wasn't the job she was hired for, and wants more information. They were joined by a new PC, Chris. Chris is playing a bard who is a little shady, especially in comparison to the uptight paladin. Chris' job was to infiltrate the rebels and find out more about their leaders and motivations. Erica discovered these two having a meeting and decided to eavesdrop. Eventually, she was busted. Paladin: Do you know who set the fire in the guards' barracks? This is the first meeting of the these three characters. The righteous paladin, the kidna sketchy bard and the even sketchier assassin and I'm thinking it'll be pretty cool, because assassins are sneaky and evasive by nature, so it'll be... Assassin: Yeah, it was me. Me:  Paladin: And do you feel no remorse for your crime? Assassin: Yeah! I mean, I didn't even kill the guy I was targeting. Now I won't get paid! Paladin:  Me:  Bard: Hey some rear end in a top hat's listening in on us, I'm going to run off into the woods alone and chase him. So I got the PVP I wanted, although it was far more explosive than I was ever planning. It was probably a stupid move on my part to make her the assassin, but I never banked on having the world's bluntest assassin at the table. So the session ended with the bard and assassin teaming up, knocking out the paladin and stuffing him into a sack with a live chicken, then finding an empty store and tying him up hoping to convince him that they should all investigate the goings-on in the city together. And the elf has pink hair because someone threw red paint at him, so we've been calling him the Animelf.
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Jul 27, 2014 18:47
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Writer Cath posted:Erica: The World's most Forthright Assassin That's pretty good and all but... why the live chicken?
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Jul 27, 2014 21:10
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Rorac posted:That's pretty good and all but... why the live chicken? Can you find any good reason not to include a live chicken in as many steps of your antics as possible?
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Jul 27, 2014 21:14
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Rorac posted:That's pretty good and all but... why the live chicken? I rolled percentile to see what was in the bag and got a 94%.
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Jul 27, 2014 22:40
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Writer Cath posted:Assassin: Yeah, it was me.
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Jul 27, 2014 22:51
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Rorac posted:That's pretty good and all but... why the live chicken? One game, I rolled a Goblin Alchemist, and noticed that it had the skill Throw Anything. So I used some starting money to purchase a sack, and filled it with Goblin Throwing Chickens. It was a genius move, because in a pinch they double as an emergency food supply! The best part happened when we were running a pregenned module, and at one point came across a house inhabited by an evil doll. The house stood on two chicken feet... I hosed around with that thing and my chickens for probably half an hour, before deciding to turn it into a chicken coop.
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Jul 28, 2014 01:06
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A friend of mine once had a decanter of endless chickens in a campaign. He used it for food, and for checking for traps when they got sent to Ravenloft: "I fire a chicken down the hallway." "As soon as the chicken passes the threshold, a hundred skeletal arms reach out of the walls and tear it to bits." "We take the other hall."
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Jul 28, 2014 02:42
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Notable Gaming Experiences: Why is it always Chickens?
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Jul 28, 2014 14:10
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Bieeardo posted:decanter of endless chickens How did such an artefact of magnificence come to be? Also, is your GM taking applications?
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Jul 28, 2014 15:52
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The Finale, part 1 So, this'll be a long one. When we last left my Deadlands players they were leaving the city of Shan Fan in flames in a war between an immortal demon-possessed wizard and a Chinese gangster kung-fu master. Well, they had only driven for a few hours when they spot the airship coming after them. Apparently Nicodemus has figured out that the coin he's looking for is no longer in the city and is pursuing them. At this point Nicodemus has only two other Fallen working for him, the PCs having taken out his other coin-bearing allies. He and his crew have 16 coins (including Lasciel's, although Max still has her "shadow" in his head). They need 2 more to complete the set of 18 they'll need to forge the Crown of Tears. The PCs have two coins currently in their possession, one taken from the poor bastard in Shan Fan and one they took from one of Nicodemus's unlucky servants. They'd gotten ahold of about 2 others and they're safely stored in Deseret and between all the Blessed there and the mechanical might of Hellstrom labs a they're pretty secure for the near future. The remaining 7 coins are elsewhere in the world, being carried by a faction of fallen angels who are too united for Nicodemus to take on directly. That means if Nicodemus wants to pull off his plan anytime soon (which is important, the coins have a way of spreading and finding new bearers...and none of the fallen angels in these coins want to be turned into a superweapon for Nicodemus. If this takes too long everything could blow up in his face) he needs to get the two coins in the PCs possession. He's not about to let them get away this time. Fortunately Miss Hart has installed numerous upgrades in the Tumbler, one of which is a speed-booster which lets them put quite a lot of distance between them and the airship, but they blow the roll after keeping the thing running for too long and the Tumbler breaks down. While Miss Hart is repairing the thing the PCs find themselves surrounded by almost two dozen Native Americans armed with bows and spears (followers of the Old Ways). Fortunately they aren't immediately hostile and Killian is the diplomatic sort (when he's not being shot at) and so he manages to convince them that none of them are looking for any trouble. The leader of the warriors agrees but insists that they cannot be allowed to leave without speaking with their holy man and won't explain why. The posse isn't thrilled by this but they agree to try and avoid a fight. So, they are brought to the shaman, but their introduction is interrupted by the appearance of the airship in the distance. The tumbler isn't repaired so the PCs are getting ready to fight when the shaman tells them to put their weapons away. He performs a short ritual and a thunderstorm forms in a matter of moments, a bolt of lightning strikes the airship, bringing it down in flames. The shaman asks the posse to follow him and they (along with an escort of several warriors) come to the edge of the tribe's territory just as Nicodemus and his two Fallen cohorts walk up, looking completely unharmed by the destruction of their airship. However, Nicodemus does not seem willing to come any closer. He completely ignores the PCs, addressing himself to the shaman and demanding that he give up the two coins. The shaman is completely unimpressed and flatly refuses, telling Nicodemus to clear off unless to be thrown out. Keep in mind that up until now Nicodemus has totally ignored any of the PC's attacks and they've barely survived any of their encounters with him. But the old shaman seems to faze him and he doesn't seem willing to confront the man. After simmering there for a few minutes he seems to come to a decision and tells his two minions to go back to the airship to see what can be salvaged. When they turn around to leave his shadow extends to long, flexible arms and snaps both their necks and then snatches their coins from the corpses (which is quite messy since it seems both swallowed their coins for safekeeping). Depositing the bloody coins in a silk coin purse he informs the shaman that his resistance will soon be irrelevant and his insolence shall be repaid. With that he strolls off. Jim takes a few shots at the back of his head which causes him to stumble briefly and look back with a distinctly murderous expression, but the shaman takes a step forward and he turns around and continues to stroll off before vanishing in a cloud of darkness. Taking the PCs back to the tribe's main camp the shaman explains a few things. He and his tribe have been given a special task by the benevolent spirits, guarding evil relics and dark forces which they keep trapped in a specially blessed and warded well in the center of their territory. To assist in this task they have been granted immense mystical power, but they are not allowed to leave the land and they cannot permit any evil force from leaving as well (hence why Nicodemus refused to actually set foot into the territory, once he had there would have been no avoiding an all-out battle). The shaman is of course aware of the coins the PCs are carrying and states that they must also remain here, which Killian and crew have no problem with since it's clear this guy has the means to keep them under wraps. However, there's a catch. Max still has a fragment of a fallen angel kicking around in his head, and unlike the Dresden Files from which this was stolen Max has done absolutely nothing that would lead the demonic entity to redeem itself...if anything Max has only barely avoided giving into complete corruption. The tribe cannot allow such a being to leave once it has been brought into their territory. So the shaman has two options: Max can choose to stay with them and he will be treated well and brought up as part of the tribe and taught to avoid the darkness within...or they can perform a very dangerous exorcism ritual. Of course, in Max's head Lasciel is offering a third option: the shaman has powerful magic but he's still just an old man and if Max can stick a knife in his throat before anyone can react Lasciel can give him the power to call her coin to him, give him her full power and allow them both to escape these superstitious fools. This is a moment of truth, as I said Max has teetered on the brink of evil the whole game and his player is extremely tempted by the offer. I was also very clear to her that I was totally willing to let this happen and very likely if she turned now Max would take Nicodemus' place as the final boss of the campaign. Well, the player decided to settle this the same way it started: with a coin toss. Heads she goes with Lasciel, tails she sticks with the posse. Tails. So, looks like she decided to go with the forces of good after all. Of course, staying here for the rest of his life was still unacceptable, so he opts for the exorcism. Once he makes his decision the shaman wastes no time, the boy is stripped to his underwear and dunked in a blessed spring. Then an obsidian knife is used to slash Max's left wrist, they tightly bind the wound but the bleeding is still severe...unless he receives proper surgery or magical healing he'll bleed out. The shaman and several of his warriors form a circle around Max and the bloody obsidian knife is pressed into Max's right hand. They begin to chant and Max can feel the dark spirit being drawn out of his body, forming itself into the shape of a beautiful but inhuman woman dressed all in white. Now outside of his body the fragment of Lasciel continues to try and bargain with Max, offering him all sorts of things. Max can't resist bantering a little and listening, it's only when I ask the player to make a Vigor roll does he realize that she's just trying to drag this out so he's weakened by blood loss. So the duel begins. At first Max tries to blast her with magic, but quickly realizes nothing he has seems to work on her, and she grows several long talons and begins trying to skin him. Fortunately he's quick on the uptake and realizes that he's meant to use the knife. The bloody knife does quite a lot of damage but Max isn't really much of a fighter, so it's a tense challenge as he has to slice her up while bleeding out and avoiding her attacks. Fortunately she doesn't have any magic of her own in this form and Max is eventually victorious. With the demonic spirit destroyed Max is finally free of it's influence (which isn't saying much) and he's free to go...but now Nicodemus has 18 coins and the PCs have no idea where to look for him. They never found out if he had any kind of base of operations and they don't know much about the ritual to forge the Crown of Tears. Fortunately the shaman agrees to consult the spirits for advice to try and assist them after healing Max. He returns after a night of divination and lays some plot on them: Nicodemus is headed for Death Valley, the closest place with the proper negative spiritual energy for the Crown to be forged and he'll be performing the ritual at the height of an astrological confluence which will be occurring in a week's time. Fortunately Death Valley is only a few days away once Miss Hart fixes up the Tumbler...unfortunately Nicodemus is still basically invulnerable and immensely powerful. The shaman reveals his invulnerability comes from a relic he wears around his neck: the noose of Judas. Armed with that knowledge the PCs might have a chance of beating him in physical combat. He also offers them an alternative solution: with the proper ritual he can summon a powerful spiritual entity capable of transporting the PCs into the Hunting Grounds. In the spiritual realm Nicodemus will have no supernatural defenses and will be much more vulnerable...but if he kills anyone of them in the Hunting Grounds it will mean the destruction of their immortal soul...total obliteration. The spirit will also demand a sacrifice from two people: one to take them into the spirit world, and another to lead them to Nicodemus. Now, I had a whole weird, vision quest journey ready for this. The PCs would get a chance to decide who would offer the sacrifice and I created a list for each of them of things that the spirit might demand of them. The idea being that once they offer themselves to the spirit it would make up to three requests. If the PC refuses the first request it will request something more demanding, if they refuse that then they must accept the third demand which will be even more severe. Each demand would be tailored to a particular PC. For instance, if Max offered himself the first demand would be his power...he would basically lose all his Power Points and would only be able to perform magic by Dealing With the Devil. If he rejected that then it would demand his adulthood, forcing him to remain a child for the rest of his life (this would also come with the loss of the extra Benny he gets from the Young hindrance). If he rejects that then it would demand his ignorance, specifically his ignorance of his soul's fate so that he would forever be tormented by the knowledge that Hell inevitably awaits him after death. I don't recall all of them, but most of the rest were similar in some way. Miss Hart might be required to sacrifice her creativity, losing the ability to create any sort of infernal devices other than ones she had already made. Patches might have to give up his childlike innocence, becoming fully aware that he is an abomination. Jim would have to give up his hardness, losing the ability to easily and casually take life. Then, once they have been taken to Nicodemus in the spirit world they would have to battle him as he merges his essence with the Crown (time flowing differently in the Hunting Ground) and battle him and the other half-merged fallen angels in the spirit world. It would have been awesome. The fuckers decided they wanted to ride through the desert and shoot stuff. Of course. Of course, considering what happened afterwards, I can't help but conclude they made the right decision.
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Jul 28, 2014 16:19
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Captain Bravo posted:One game, I rolled a Goblin Alchemist, and noticed that it had the skill Throw Anything. So I used some starting money to purchase a sack, and filled it with Goblin Throwing Chickens. It was a genius move, because in a pinch they double as an emergency food supply! My old Orc fighter never hit better than when he was throwing iron rations. Swords? Almost cut off my toe. But iron rations always strike true.
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Jul 28, 2014 22:02
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Deadlands Finale, part 2 So, the PCs have decided they want to take on Nicodemus in person rather than attempting a spiritual journey. They get the Tumbler fixed up and head towards Death Valley. The shaman gives them a mystically summoned eagle that will serve as their guide. A couple of days from their destination they run across something unexpected: an entire unit of Union troops, including a few steam tanks. They've been spotted and it doesn't look like these guys are in the mood to let them leave without talking first so they drive on up. Fortunately no one can charm like Jethro and after some amazing persuasion rolls they've got a personal meeting with the folks in charge. And some tea. Well, it turns out that this lot is from Fort 51 and the man behind it is a young Mad Scientist by the name of Nicola Tesla (I hadn't shamelessly name-dropped any historical figures for the entire campaign. This was my last chance). He'd come west to help the Union boys out with some experiments that would be extremely unsafe anywhere near populated areas. Well, in his spare time he had been tinkering with a device called the Doom-Gauge, designed to measure "background danger levels". Well as soon as he finished just a day or so ago the thing started blaring like an airhorn. With some calibration he determined that the source of extreme danger was somewhere in this general region. Without giving away too much and sounding like nutjobs the PCs managed to convince him and the Union captain in charge that they knew where to find the source of the danger and that they should team up. They're given access to the soldier's supplies so most of the gunslingers load up on additional ammo and a few specialty rounds like AP or incendiary bullets. Jethro has different ideas and gets ahold of all the dynamite they have (which turns out to be quite a bit) and he sews all the sticks into loops on the inside of his coat. And he procures a donkey. So, with several dozen soldiers and a few steam-tanks in tow (as well as Tesla's tank-sized Galvanic Cannon, an extremely powerful weapon that required several rounds to charge up, although Miss Hart discovered that she could charge it up quicker with bolts from her electronic umbrella...at the risk of catastrophic failure) the PCs felt a lot more confident. They set up camp that night but things quickly went to hell. Patches was the first to notice when some kind of spiky leech-like thing crawled into his blanket and tried to french-kiss his spine. Fortunately he's tough and he managed to smash the little monster. It quickly became apparent that these things were all over the camp, burrowing into union soldiers and taking control of their brains. The fight with the mind-controlled soldiers was short but costly. Almost half the union forces were dead and before being killed several of the soldiers had smashed most of the force's water barrels. Not only would this mean precious little water in the blazing desert...but there might not be enough water for the steam-vehicles to make it back even if they do beat Nicodemus, and a journey on foot would be practically suicide. Despite this miserable turn of events Jethro manages to get everyone's spirits up and they collect themselves for a glorious final battle. To reach the site of Nicodemus' ritual they have to pass through a blinding sandstorm, filled with horribly mutilated and deformed corpses. They finally make it through and find themselves approaching some kind of ancient stone temple. At the top of the temple steps is Nicodemus, elbow deep in what seems to be one of several human sacrifices. The posse arrived, of course, exactly at the height of his ritual. At this point they are still all the way across a small valley at the foot of the temple, but the long distance doesn't faze Jim. He whips out his rifle, takes aim and declares he's going for a called shot at the noose around Nicodemus' neck (a net target number of about 14 or so). He nails it with no trouble (the guy is really good with that rifle). The bullet tears through the ancient relic and it falls from Nicodemus' neck, and with it goes his invulnerability. Well, surely that pisses him off so he raises his bloody hands and shouts in a voice that echoes throughout the valley. "BE BLIND!" Jim utterly fails his Spirit roll to resist and his eyeballs burst. While everyone is in shock from this the bodies scattered everywhere animate and And the fight is on! Fortunately, although Jim would normally be out of the fight at this point he does have a sidekick, a Blessed with a focus on healing, who just so happened to pull a Legend Chip at the start of this session. Jim asks if he can use that Legend Chip to bypass the lengthy spellcasting time for Greater Healing to fix crippling injuries, I allow it and the healer makes an amazing roll and Jim is back in business just as soon as he can wash all the blood out of his new eyes. Jim starts taking shots at Nicodemus again (which is harder now, as he has time to bring up a powerful Deflection spell) while Miss Hart helps Tesla charge up his cannon. Max unloads with his magical cannons. Killian and Patches lack the range of the others so they take care of the undead minions who get too close so they can't interfere with any of the tanks or long-range characters. Jethro hops on his donkey, revs up the Arken-saw and starts to, slowly, charge across the map. Within a few rounds Jim has put a few bullets into Nicodemus and the guy is having trouble soaking them all. He performs some sort of invocation and a huge crack splits the ground just in front of the temple, spewing forth dark smoke and releasing demons which charge towards the PCs and their Union allies. Despite the additional obscurement, Jim gets in another good hit, and Tesla's cannon vaporizes several of the demons in their tracks while Killian and Patches continue to hold the line. Max summons a Sharknado which rips through the opposition. Jethro continues plodding his way towards the other side of the map. Nicodemus stumbles into the depths of the temple, bleeding badly. The tanks fire on the temple itself but the ancient stonework is exceptionally difficult to damage and the structure remains standing. More demons vomit forth from hell and the PCs are starting to sweat. Miss Hart grabs Patches and, after one more bolt into Tesla's machine, hops onto the tumbler, both of them driving into the midst of the demon horde, ramping off a collapsed stone monolith and landing on top of a particularly large monster, crushing it under the tumbler as the two of them begin tearing into the demon horde from within. Miss Hart turns on the Iron Maiden and laughs off the claws and flame blasts. The distraction allows Jethro to keep trotting through the demons with minimal interference. There's a deep rumbling from below the ground and a chime like a massive bell being rung. This happens 3 more times, each time getting louder and the temple explodes as Nicodemus bursts forth, going full one-winged angel. Well, more like multi-headed angel. He is the biggest enemy I've ever used, quite literally. As I mentioned before I use paper minis, PCs and monsters are represented using trifold figures and terrian is full-3d papercraft (I used to work at a mindless job which allowed me a lot of time to work with my hands). So in this case the temple is actually a large structure composed of papercraft stone blocks and walls and when I set the map up before the game I actually hid this "transformed" mini inside, so I just reached in and shoved it forward, scattering stone blocks everywhere and revealing the monster. Normal tri-fold minis are about an inch tall for human-sized characters. To create this trifold I used 3 full sheets of 8.5 x11 cardstock glued together. It was big. Here's the picture I used, along with the image on Killian's mini, to scale.  Something else you should know about me is that my group generally considers me a bit of a "softball" GM. I rarely throw unfair challenges at them and more often than not they end up steamrolling my opposition in mere moments. So between exploding Jim's eyes and turning what they thought was a near-victory into something like this had them panicking for the first time in the whole campaign. So, the King of Tears engages the PCs. Fortunately for them it's first focus is on the steam tanks: bolts of darkness fire from it's extra heads and most of the tanks are demolished. The next turn it begins to sing a song that causes blood to stream from everyone's eyes and ears. Several of the union soldiers die as mouths open up all over their bodies and join in the chorus before choking on blood. Jim takes a few utterly ineffective shots before making a difficult Notice roll to spot a few glints of silver through his scope: although the thing is wearing a burning silver crown it seems to be incomplete and each of it's extra heads also has one of the coins imbedded it in. Jim manages to shoot one of the coins, causing that head to collapse...and causing the King of Tears to turn its attention to him. However, this is when Jethro (on his incredibly brave and/or unobservant donkey) reaches the far size of the map where the King of Tears takes up half the space. He hops off his donkey, runs up to the thing and does his best impression of Agent K from men in black. "Eat me!!!" Well, he is very persuasive. One of the heads spots him and snatches him up in one bite. It seems like Jethro had been counting on that dynamite coat of his. He was planning to, inside the monster's stomach, detonate a clockwork grenade to blow up his entire wardrobe. However, the bite damage Aces a lot and Jethro screws his soak rolls so he's instantly incapacitated...but he avoids death. I let him know that a big injury to the monster's torso might set off his dynamite, but he'll only survive a round or two in the monster's stomach. Fortunately, Tesla's lightning cannon just finished charging and he lets off a burst at the King of Tears, but rolls pitiful damage and doesn't even manage to shake the monster. But I do agree to give a 50/50 chance of ignition from the electric bolt. So I roll a d6, on an even roll nothing on an odd roll it'll blow. I get a six. Now, normally this would be a dud, but Jethro's player points out that dice in Savage Worlds Ace and i just rolled the max so I should roll again and it could still come out odd in the end. By the way, both of us were fully aware that this wasn't how the rules worked in this case, he was just hoping to convince me to give it a second shot and I allowed myself to be convinced. So I rolled again, getting a 1 for a total of 7. boom. I mean, really boom. That lunatic had so much dynamite on him. I added it up and eventually realized that even if I rolled all ones and twos on damage the King of Tears was totally screwed. Of course we rolled anyway, and ended up doing something like 80 damage total. Needless to say, the King did not manage to soak the 13 or so Wounds he suffered. The demonic monster exploded in a burst of hellfire and gunpowder. Now, of course needless to say Jethro would be blown to bits too...except that bastard had Very Hard to Kill, which means that any situation where he would normally die he has a 50/50 chance to survive. No matter what. So I roll a d6, saying that on an even roll he'll live and on an odd roll he's dead. I roll a six. Jethro's player starts celebrating when I point out that by his previous argument I should roll again to see if the final result is even or odd. He has no choice but to accept that logic. I roll again another six. I roll a third time. Six again. Everyone is starting to pull their hair out. I roll a fourth time. 4. even. He lives. The old, lame toothless Southern looney just exploded a demon forged from the souls of 19 fallen angels from the inside and he lived. Well, with the death of the King of Tears the undead bodies collapse, the demons are sucked back into hell and the sandstorm dissipates. The PCs are left to help the few surviving union troops and they take stock of their situation. Unfortunately Miss Hart and Patche's suicide charge wrecked the tumbler badly enough that it's water tanks are dry. Most of the steam tanks are likewise scrap. They get together all the water they can find and set out to try and leave Death Valley on foot. The rest I narrate via a "cutscene" from Killian's perspective. Killian is trudging through the noonday desert, carrying Max's unconscious body in his hands, the boy had collapsed from heat stroke a few hours ago. Patches trudged behind him holding Miss Hart and Jim in his huge arms, but he looks just about ready to pass out as well and he's leaking badly from his stitches. They had never found (or expected to find) any sign of Jethro. Their weapons, armored jackets and ghost rock had all been left in the sand hours ago to minimize weight. He takes step after step, but before too much longer his vision blurs and he finds the ground rising up to meet him. He senses Patches kneeling down next to him to try and help him up, but apparently the effort of getting back to his feet is too much for the giant and he slumps over as well. The last thing he is conscious of is the sound of wings as vultures descend. ...then he wakes up. He's laying on a soft feathered mattress. He's in a hotel room. His wounds are all bandaged and he can see his coat and guns, freshly polished, hanging from a hook by the door. Max is snoring in an overstuffed chair. As Killian steps quietly out of his room he can see he's in a suite, with another room where Miss Hart is resting in a large bed with Patches snoozing at the foot of the bed like a dog. Jim is in the next room over. Jethro is snoring like a chainsaw on a couch, wrapped like a mummy in bandages. His eyes are drawn to something by an open window, a small end table with a single silver plate on top of it. Resting on the plate, still soft and warm, is a single biscuit. He ponders this for a moment when, from across the street, he hears a scream and someone yelling "Everyone down! We are robbing this bank!!" Fin.
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Jul 29, 2014 13:19
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Okay that was loving awesome, but I need to know something:oriongates posted:Well, in his spare time he had been tinkering with a device called the Doom-Gauge, designed to measure "background danger levels". This danger that Tesla's device detects- would a big concentration of it be called a...zone? 
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Jul 29, 2014 13:39
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Kavak posted:Okay that was loving awesome, but I need to know something: Are you describing some sort of zone of concentrated danger?
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Jul 29, 2014 21:36
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SpookyLizard posted:Are you describing some sort of zone of concentrated danger?
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Jul 29, 2014 21:58
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Loxbourne posted:How did such an artefact of magnificence come to be? Alas, I can't remember that part of the story. You know how it is when everyone at the table is sixteen, you're either drowning in friendly succubi or endless supplies of absurdities. oriongates posted:Now, normally this would be a dud, but Jethro's player points out that dice in Savage Worlds Ace and i just rolled the max so I should roll again and it could still come out odd in the end. By the way, both of us were fully aware that this wasn't how the rules worked in this case, he was just hoping to convince me to give it a second shot and I allowed myself to be convinced. So I rolled again, getting a 1 for a total of 7. Ladies and gentlemen: exploding sixes.
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Jul 29, 2014 22:23
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oriongates posted:Deadlands Finale, part 2 This is pretty clearly a sign, given the PC just blew up that amalgam fallen angel-demon.
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Jul 30, 2014 00:33
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HiKaizer posted:This is pretty clearly a sign, given the PC just blew up that amalgam fallen angel-demon. Oh poo poo.
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Jul 30, 2014 01:39
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I am running through the Lost Mine of Phandelver and had two things happen in our last campaign that I wanted to share. Spoilers for the adventure, I don't want this to look like a redacted CIA file. I mis-read the adventure book (only getting to look at the set for like, 15 minutes before we started) and thought that the passage leading from the wolf room into Kluurgs room was a narrow passage, not a chimney. As such, I decided that for the elf and halfling, it would be a simple DC 10 dex check to get through. And for the Fighter and Dwarf, a DC 15. Everyone made it on the the way through, had their fight, but I decided to change things a bit by having one of the goblins run off to tell the others that he was now the chief. The party started searching the area, and the wizard decided that it was now time for diplomacy. He failed, terribly, and ran back to the group to explain that they were being beset by goblins. About 15 of them(I fudged numbers). The halfling and dwarf decided to get out asap, while the wizard tried to intimidate the new chief via the strength of the fighter. Failing AGAIN (like, a 2 on the first roll and a 5 on the second), they tried to book it. But the fighter went first. And failed his roll. Which means he is stuck. The wizard aided him in getting unstuck, and they just narrowly got away from the goblins. The fighter is now called Pooh Bear. Later, in the city, the wizard decided that he wanted to follow up on his adventure hook and see a priestess of Tymora. Knowing nothing about Forgotten Realms, I only had the information from the kit to go on (Tymora is the goddess of Luck!) He said he was going to be making a prayer, and wanted to know what the shrine and offerings should be. Me: Uhh.....well, for an offering, Tymora will take a single double faced coin. Any denomination. Him: Ok, I assume these gold coins are double stamped. What happens during the prayer? Me: You, uh, you place the coin into the wide slot at the top of the offering box. Interestingly, you see it drop down and hit a peg, bouncing the coin to the right. It almost immediately hits another peg, bouncing it again. You watch the coin bounce left and right, before it finally ends up in a covered tray at the bottom. You see there are three covered trays, and a fourth that simply opens back to the ground. Him: So there was a chance I could have gotten my offering bac--wait a minute, did I just play Plinko?
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Jul 30, 2014 23:14
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sansuki posted:Him: So there was a chance I could have gotten my offering bac--wait a minute, did I just play Plinko? Too bad he lost, otherwise he could've won a Neeeeeeew car!
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Jul 30, 2014 23:17
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That's oddly appropriate for a deity of luck - if she really likes your prayers, why, you just might get your pocket money back (and then go gamble it
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Jul 31, 2014 00:16
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Punting posted:That's oddly appropriate for a deity of luck - if she really likes your prayers, why, you just might get your pocket money back (and then go gamble it Considering in-universe gambling (with fair play only, of course) was shown as a real rite of observance to Tymora by her priests, it's actually beautifully appropriate to the setting also. For not knowing much about FR, that hit it dead on there.
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Jul 31, 2014 15:15
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Fight with a midboss, our mad engineer takes a hit.Lawton posted:Fsssh. And a bullet finally managed to rip through the armouring on his greatcoat, causing him to start bleeding...octopi? "Oh curse it all." I love my players.
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Aug 2, 2014 03:13
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Ran a Fate Wushu game today. Want to have a successful one shot? Follow your players. First, I asked for rumors about the emperor then guided characters through their high concepts (Kung Fu master who wears iron shoes and stomps his foes, and trip-happy apprentice/scam artist.) Third player joined midway through character creation as the failed warrior turned shopkeep. ME: How do you know these guys? NEW PLAYER: They owe me money! Perfect. I walk to the kitchen for some chips, and on the way back, I come up with the adventure seed: Someone spreads the rumor that there's buried treasure, and it drives the townsfolk to destruction. Easy enough. The scene starts in an inn, with the players getting drunk. They fast-talk their way past the local tough guy, Quan Yin, and as they're about to pay their tab, a messenger runs in: The Emperor has hidden treasure in the supports of structures! The townsfolk go wild. The players barely escape, chasing down the messenger (who kneecaps a player with a pewter jug), kick his horse out from under him, and interrogate him. He's spreading a rumor from the Emperor...the Emperor of Crime, that is! One player suggests the EoC is doing this to reduce the real estate values of his competitors. (Of COURSE he is!) They track the Emperor to his favorite noodle shop, in the open-air caverns complex below town. They get past the guard, with a bit of trouble: it's a clean establishment, so they'll have to take off their shoes. Even without shoes, they trash the crime boss's thugs. But when he flees into the kitchen, the kung fu master gets into a long tangent about cooking styles. The emperor corners the old shopkeeper and traps him under some shelves...until they negotiate a deal. As they're finalizing the deal, the kung fu duo arrives. The Emperor of crime wallops them with a deceit check...and convinces them that the shopkeeper started all this trouble! He hires the kung fu duo, and things are swell... Until they meet Quan Yi ("I wonder what happened to Quan Yi?"). After discovering their treachery, he knocks them both unconscious. They awaken outside the Shopkeeper's looted store. The emperor's long gone. The storekeeper, in a fit of pique, doubles their debt. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Nov 9, 2023 |
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Aug 3, 2014 07:02
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Golden Bee posted:Ran a Fate Wushu game today.
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Aug 3, 2014 07:06
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I just recently started GMing for a few friends of mine, and because we're all Dresden Files fans, I wanted to run a Dresden campaign for them. Everyone started off as basically unaware of the supernatural world at large, and the cast was: Owen, the literal Knight of the Round Table who'd had his memory wiped, powers mostly erased, and thrown forward through time. Allyson, the kinetomancer who didn't know much about magic and just assumed she had superpowers, so she decided obviously she needed to fight crime. And Deva, who was a pure mortal with absolutely no knowledge, but a ton of time as an actress. They were all SCA nerds. I didn't plan this, it was something my players came up with on their own. At various points, the characters broke into a college professor's office to find a student's address - before one player sheepishly remembered he was actually playing a college professor, Allyson ripped off one of the iron gates libraries use to fence off sections and beat down a creature of faerie with it, and my personal favorite: At the end of the campaign, because they'd succeeded a lot better than I had anticipated in the investigation bits, they'd discovered that one character's boyfriend was being seduced by a vampire. She didn't want to call him, because she'd said she wasn't going to call for three days and it was only day two, so Owen, the professor, looked at her seriously and said, 'You don't need to call him. He was at an SCA party, it's almost dawn, so there's only one place he could really be. Which Denny's does his group go to?' I was completely unprepared for this and lost it, and we wound up calling the session there so I could put more of the mystery of What's Going On together. It was a good game - despite trying to run a horror-y game, it turned into black comedy pretty fast, and everyone enjoyed it.
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Aug 3, 2014 07:47
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Funny thing is, especially in the early books I can see some big bad supernatural threat going down at a Denny's, with Harry smacking his forehead when he realizes it was happening there.
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Aug 3, 2014 16:38
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quote:the characters broke into a college professor's office to find a student's address - before one player sheepishly remembered he was actually playing a college professor This seems pretty typical among PCs. I once had a guy in a Perfect Dark d20 game plant a bomb on a massive fuel tank as leverage that consisted of a sock filled with smokeless powder that would be duct taped to the tank and shot by a sniper....when he brought several remote mines.
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Aug 3, 2014 17:11
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Speaking of Denny's, my usual group have this habit of trying to cram a "working lunch" into whatever game we have going on at the time. We were in a Worlds in Peril one-shot where we had the three main characters as part of the Protectorate, a Justice-League style national crime fighting organisation. We were: Xanatos: a guy who gained the power to store up and release kinetic energy and went "gently caress it, I'm Gambit." Handyman: A matter manipulator who once tried to use his power to make himself more handsome, hosed it up and ended up like Voldemort and is now to scared to fix it lest he accidentally kill himself. Dead Reckoning: A former villain who joined the Protectorate to avoid a prison sentence. His power is that any offhand guess he makes is exactly, to-the-micron correct. Good at finding secret lairs and shooting weak points. What makes this session a notable gaming experience was the way the party behaved and interacted with all the NPCs. The running joke became that we all had a second power not written on the sheet: super-sanity. We never once reacted to anything with something other than dry sarcasm, insults and direct, brutal action. The premise was that while we were out stopping a bank being robbed (during which Dead Reckoning kept interrupting the villain's monologues by shooting him in the head to check whether his force field was still working. Dead Reckoning was very new to this whole "hero" thing) a villain blew up every Protectorate station in the city, incapacitating every hero apart from us and all of our support staff. Our reaction to this was to liberate a bunch of fusion grenades from the wreckage of a station, buy suits and balaclavas and go down to the local supervillain black market in a lovely disguise as a villain team called "The Businessmen". After trashing the black market and discovering that Dead Reckoning's old villain team, The Darksiders, were involved, they threatened a captured villain with extrajudicial execution if he didn't tell them what they wanted to know ("the Protectorate's gone up in smoke. There's no judge to try you with. Who's gonna know?") and went down to the Darksiders' new hideout where the party got out their fusion grenades and threatened to suicide bomb if the Darksiders didn't cooperate. Upon discovering that the bombings were perpetrated by bodyjacking interdimensional aliens (or as we insistently mispronounced them to annoy NPCs, 'alions') the party press-ganged the Darksiders into assisting them with threat of bodily destruction via fusion grenade. Still in disguise as The Businessmen and with the villains in full costume, we promptly went down to the local Denny's, fusion grenades primed and in full view, crashed the place and sat down at a table for a working lunch. We paid and tipped with an entire briefcase full of stolen cash for the inconvienience. I believe the meeting culminated in us offering the Darksiders' gadgeteer a job because we had earlier discovered that Proton*, the Protectorate's Iron Man expy, had left plans for a force field in his bin which had promptly been stolen and widely distributed on the villain black market. And gently caress it, everyone was dead, we were in charge now. When the Protectorate A-Team showed up to help, featuring Proton, we ripped into him for his massive incompetence, took the piss out of all of them for their lovely names, costumes and themes and insisted that we'd much rather resolve the situation with some press-ganged villains than with their help. *Who I don't think was referred to in character as anything other than 'Father Christmas' Edit: I just remembered that the climax of the session was a trip to Mars to disable the alions' Doom Laser. The way we got people to come on the suicide mission to help us was by pointing out that if they didn't, they would be on the firing end of the Doom Laser that we would have control of. Coming with us ensured they were at the non-firing end. Doodmons fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Aug 3, 2014 |
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Aug 3, 2014 17:14
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Finally got to DM something again after several years of nothing and failed PbP threads. A couple of budies of mine wanted to try out Pen and Paper RPG's, one of them had a bit of experience wth DnD but the others were totally fresh to the concept, All the experience they had was based on reading sir bearington stories and other things. So here's my first tale of DMing something in a long while, the system was Old School Hack, my first time DMing that system so some thing went hilariously wrong. The tale of a drunken cook, A very greedy rogue and a homicidal battle babe. Oh, and a cook-off with fate. The characters in this story are. Jeb A cleric of a god called Tyrex. The god of the simple things in life, Farming, Cooking, and Good eating and drinks. Also booze, lots of booze. He was looking for a legendary ingredient to make a dish that would please his god enough for him to ascend in the ranks. Uses a pitchfork as projectile/stabbing weaponry and misses all but one hit in the game. Shark A Rogue who was looking for a legendary treasure to get rich beyond measure. has a trait called Endless Daggers, throws lots of them. OlyShi Murderous Warrior, wearing very heavy armor and wielding a sword the size of a small horse. She lost her horse, or something. This was probably one of the most chaotic and fun oneshots i've run ever. The party starts off in a shithole of a town dubbed Black Reach by the party members, surrounded by sandy plains, mountainous ranges. Some fortresses and other old things. The run started off with the party members in a Inn, like all good fantasy cliches, only this one was run by the local bandits. And they started some poo poo with them. There's about 14 dudes in the Inn in total, with someone or something tied up upstairs. The plan here was for them to find that something(a goblin) and get some information about a treasure these goblins had. But back to the fight. The leader of the group is downed and unconscious within the first round of combat, causing a good chunk of the enemies to flee out of the upstairs window, the lower part of the Inn had no windows, so visitors could get trapped inside by bandits waiting outside who bolted the door shut from the streets. After a bit of fighting, several decapitations, A bunch of things being re-purposed as throwing weaponry (Including but not limited to at one point a table.) And the rogue attempting to hop the bar but ending up rear end over teakettle on the other side of it. After most of the battle is over the bandit leader and one of his thugs get interrogated by the two murderous bastards whilst the BBQ Cleric walks off upstairs and finds the goblin. The Warrior and Rogue find some evidence of the goblins being investigated by the bandits, and it's quickly apparent that they have some form of treasure or know of one. They are also surprisingly well spoken and somewhat intelligent. Deciding that the goblin needs to be liberated he gives it a lift outside, out of a one story up window. This causes the goblin to break a couple of limbs, and start screaming like a fire-alarm. Which is good, because the Inn is now kind of on fire. The bandit thought that the only reasonable thing to do was set the whole place on fire to kill the inhabitants. The Rogue and the (at this points completely hammered) BBQ Cleric jump out of the window, both accidentally doing a flip and landing with style. near to the goblin who is now screaming even louder. Who promptly gets a bottle of whiskey poured down his throat and gets stuffed in a sack. The Warrior was having none of this and went out the front door, going with the logic that she came in that way, and she is drat sure going out that way. She kicks the door, rolls really well and burns some Awesome Points, proceeds to launch the door(which is on fire) into a bandit and the building across to the street. The rest of the bandits definitely run the gently caress away at this point. The party decides to go on a bit of a sidetrack here and stocks up on food, water and other necessary things for a trip to the goblin fort, all the while carrying around the very angry goblin in a bag. They end up getting some camels and food for way too many drat days and head off. After two trouble-less nights the BBQ Cleric decides that he's done cooking all the time during his guard shift and falls asleep drunk, the goblin then escapes.They realize this a couple of days later when the bag the goblin was in is filled with some rocks. They run into some more goblins, throw a bunch of them into a river and get a head off of a big goblin as a trophy. Which they then use to open the goblin fortresses magically sealed doors. Turns out, The goblins are cursed and they used to be humans, now they are decades old, don't age and are looking for help. Turns out they were cursed by an undead mage, please go beat him and receive a prize. The cleric gets some unknown rare herbs and spices, the Rogue gets a coin he never tries anything with and the Warrior is content with having a sword so big it almost has a personality. The big bad ends up fighting them in a octagonal arena, in a castle named Fort Awesome( My players are the best worst. pick one) in which he teleports around and throws skeletons and other things at them, In the center there is a pretty big fire pit in which almost every enemy ends up getting thrown in the center, including the big bad on an amazing hit by the Warrior. The BBQ Cleric then has his moment to shine, He throws almost every herb and spice he has onto the pit, including lamp oil, flammable peppers and who knows what and creates a column of fire forceful enough to throw the roof off of the building, The Rogue and the Warrior end up kicking the mage back into the fire-pit until he is baked to a fine crisp. After which the fire pit explodes Sending the roof flying straight up.(the one natural crit the Cook rolls) The players celebrate for a bit before one of them asks if the roof is ever coming back down as a joke, since it was the end of the session I had it come back down, roll whatever plausible way you can think of to get the gently caress out of dodge. The Warrior leaps the hell out of dodge, the rogue does a series of flips and tumbles. and the BBQ Cleric end sup failing his roll bad enough to freeze up and get crushed by the roof itself coming back down in a giant ball of fire. The game went completely of the rails the second they threw the Goblin out of the Window and jumped after it, The city almost burned down cause everyone hosed up their roll for firefighting, even misidentifying a bucket of water as a bucket of lamp-oil, causing the flames to spread even faster. The fixed this and promptly started harassing and threatening shop-keeps, wich i dropped some not so subtle hints as to this being a dumb ish idea. Then they use a goblin head as a lunatics doorbell., and blew up an undead mage and his chambers to finish the night off. All of this took about 4 hours and everyone had a total blast. Got some interesting feedback on GMing from them, apparently i can improvise better than i expected. And some of the players wanted to take the various maps and symbols i drew home to keep as a memento to their first RPG experience. In other words, it was loving awesome and i was laughing the entire way through! mostly, everyone had a loving blast and we have the next sessions lined up, they want some additional stuff in the game so i gotta write some of my own things but it's mostly porting over feats in a fun way. Starting on a adaptation of some classic ish DnD Modules in a week or two, let's see how quickly those get derailed. AzMiLion fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Aug 4, 2014 |
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Aug 4, 2014 23:24
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Robindaybird posted:Funny thing is, especially in the early books I can see some big bad supernatural threat going down at a Denny's, with Harry smacking his forehead when he realizes it was happening there. Yeah, I fully expect this to become a Thing. That, and I'm pretty sure that one of my players wants to one day use the Arch as a giant Nevernever gate. We don't play again until this Saturday, but I'll post a summary once we do!
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Aug 5, 2014 07:16
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Doodmons posted:Speaking of Denny's, my usual group have this habit of trying to cram a "working lunch" into whatever game we have going on at the time. We were in a Worlds in Peril one-shot where we had the three main characters as part of the Protectorate, a Justice-League style national crime fighting organisation. That sounds fun, how is Worlds in Peril? I backed it but I haven't had time to read it fully. Also, is that a Worm reference?
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Aug 5, 2014 08:39
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So I was playing Call of Cthulhu with a long-time group of mine recently. We were investigating and poo poo, when my character (Ozymandias Psalmanazar Crowley, redneck street magician,) was tasked with going to the Phoenix Hall of Records because apparently I am the guy who goes to the hall of records in every session. I get there and the clerk on shift is Solid Snake (the GM insisted on referring to him as Iroquois Pliskin.) Mr. "Pliskin" led Ozzie into the Hall of Records, then blocked the door with his body. After finding basically nothing of note in the hall of records, Ozzie was faced with the task of removing Mr. Pliskin from his egress. After a long period of dialogue in which Mr. Pliskin summoned an infinite-ammo bandana and I used Ozzie's 75% Conceal in the intended manner to procure myself the same kind of infinite-ammo bandana, Ozzie offered to show Mr. Pliskin his innate ability to shoot lightning from his fingers Star Wars-style (his finger bones were replaced with the parts of a Mi-Go Lightning Gun at birth (long story.)) Mr. Pliskin deflected the bolt of lightning by chanting "Kuwabara" and the hall of records was lit on fire. Mr. Pliskin removed his shirt and entered into combat stance. Another person in the call started playing "Snake Eater." Now, for reference, Ozzie had 13 Strength, 7 Dexterity, and no points in Martial Arts, therefore having a 1% chance to succeed on any given Martial Arts roll. Mr. Pliskin had 17 Strength, 17 Dexterity, and a 99% chance to succeed in Martial Arts rolls, as well as being immune to Ozzie's lightning fingers, which had for understandable reasons been my go-to in most combat situations. And this is Call of Cthulhu, which means dying would be very easy. So obviously it was time for me to be a dumbass. Ozzie had, in his inventory, a fake beard. He did not wear the fake beard. He just had one because I thought it would be funny. Thinking quickly (after I lucked out and passed Ozzie's 14% chance to dodge Pliskin's roundhouse,) I pulled the fake beard over Pliskin's head to blind him. Unfortunately for me, being a soldier, he was also trained to detect an adversary by smell, so I pulled it over his nose, but he could taste the air because he was a snake, so I pulled it over his mouth, but he was still able to see me! This was a free action (for... some reason,) but I was basically doomed anyway (considering the building was also burning down.) But then I remembered- a few sessions earlier, said DM's character at the time had given Ozzie a tin fire truck as a gesture of goodwill (also as a joke, mostly as a joke.) And since Pliskin was blinded to everything but Ozzie, I of course decided to trip Pliskin with the fire truck. This succeeded (it was a Luck roll but Ozzie has a 90% chance to pass Luck rolls so I was pretty confident.) So then I beat feet. This fight accomplished basically nothing in the long term other than getting me the bandana but I beat Solid Snake in a fight unharmed so I was pretty proud of myself.
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Aug 6, 2014 02:48
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So were you playing out your character's LSD trip or this is just a very silly Call of Cthulhu game? EDIT: I will also accept a Nyarlathotep who has stopped giving a gently caress about his avatars.
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Aug 6, 2014 03:09
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And you said this was...Call of Cthulhu.
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Aug 6, 2014 03:10
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