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The stars are not right. The stars are seeing stars.
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Aug 6, 2014 03:17
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| # ? May 21, 2024 17:18 |
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It appears I have obviously been playing the game wrong all this time.
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Aug 6, 2014 03:42
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I played a Creeping Horror game recently as a Dumb Thug. It was great: my character refused to look at things if other people found them frightening. If there was something creepy, out came the Tommygun. Everything else was malaprops and bravado.
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Aug 6, 2014 03:47
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alcharagia posted: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. How the hell did he smell you in a burning building?
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Aug 6, 2014 06:37
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Captain McStabbin posted:How the hell did he smell you in a burning building? By smelling out which bits weren't on fire?
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Aug 6, 2014 13:21
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Hugoon Chavez posted:That sounds fun, how is Worlds in Peril? I backed it but I haven't had time to read it fully. It's pretty much the best way to do Superheroes in an Apocworld system. The powers are basically a list of permissions to let you perform the basic moves, graded by how difficult they are for you to do. It's quite elegant and a lot more clever than attempting to make playbooks power suites. The playbooks themselves are Drives and Origins and generally give you moves to interact with people. The basic moves are DW Defy Danger style 'these can be rolled with any stat based on the circumstances' so you can really give your character the stats they should have without fear of gimping yourself. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it was only a one shot so we didn't use the advancement mechanics or anything. I couldn't tell you how it would hold up in long term play. And yeah, Worm reference. Nobody else at the table had read it so I was happily stealing things left and right. I was playing Dead Reckoning, who was basically Tattletale if she was a grown man and could use her power to perform physical actions, with the caveat that it was way less good at getting peripheral information. The Darksiders were heavily inspired by the Undersiders, although with a kinetic energy soaker in place of Bitch, a flying brick in place of Regent, a gadgeteer in place of Grue and a teleporter for Skitter. Despite the fact that the GM hadn't read Worm, he got their personalities quite true to the original based on nothing more than my vague descriptions. I did enjoy repeatedly bringing up how relieved Dead Reckoning was that he lived in a landlocked city so he didn't have to fear aquatic based Kaiju attacks.
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Aug 6, 2014 15:02
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AzMiLion posted:
BBQ cleric is my hero. ... or martyr, I suppose 
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Aug 6, 2014 18:01
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Played my first game of Gamma World the other night. In spite of none of us (including the GM) knowing how the hell the system worked, we had a blast. We had a surfer-breakdancer-sergeant... guy (?) who attacked people with dance moves and served one of them so hard that the bad guy drowned in a nearby vat. We had a mad scientist type who cloned himself and drew some kind of power that let him explode. But don't worry, he'd be back when he "got better". There was cat shadow-rogue thing that went for a ride in the luggage of the breakdancer's skybike and would not stop making Schrodinger jokes. And there was a hawk/fire thing that kept becoming more and more on fire. We blew up parts of the Space Needle after the mad scientist had wired the elevator to work off of a potato battery, defeated a plant monster, defeated a Balrog-looking thing by shoving it down the elevator shaft, and the breakdancer finished the adventure by serving a satellite dish so hard that it fell off the roof, thus stopping some signal from going somewhere and doing something. Needless to say, I can't wait for the next game!
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Aug 6, 2014 19:47
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quote:that kept becoming more and more on fire. My favorite part.
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Aug 6, 2014 20:39
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Kavak posted:EDIT: I will also accept a Nyarlathotep who has stopped giving a gently caress about his avatars. I'm pretty sure this is basically the idea, because this took place smack-dab in the middle of the Dead Man Stomp scenario and Nyarlathotep was behind that one as well as the one the last DM made (he shows up a shocking amount of the time!) This is why I've made certain my next scenario (we do round-robin DMing) has cool guys instead of that lame-rear end, like Professional Cool Guy Glaaki  Edit: In a more recent session I was given temporary control of an AFK player's character (a pastiche of Mississippi Governor Theodore Bilbo except fatter,) and of course given the opportunity to control a kooky old man the first thing I did was attempt to have him sneak around and pretend he wasn't hanging out with the largely-20-something main party because none of them liked him. Somehow I passed 10 of said rolls on a 10% chance to pass each roll, and this ended up with said player returning after "Gilbo" had crashed through floorboards, hidden under tables, stalked people around everywhere, and finally hidden in the trunk of a police officer's car to investigate another player's claim of being a federal investigator by sneaking into the annals of the police station. And he chose this point to have Gilbo shoot a police officer in the junk. Kinu Nishimura fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 01:19
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The game was Lord of the Rings, the Decipher one. The party was: Arien, a Gondorian ranger, noble, sniper, and infamous paranoiac; Ashr... ASHRAGE KHAN!!, a Haradrim mounted archer specialized in screaming insults at monsters and then riding circles around them, all the while flinging unconscionable amounts of arrows; MacHale, a Bree hobbit, gourmand and the guy with the infinite daggers; Rand, a Daleman guardsman/leader-of-men who yelled the exact opposite things than Ashrage and thus made armies army better, and; Beldar, a dwarf merchant played somewhere between Gimli and Quark from DS9. Complicating factor: Beldar's player has a significant stutter. The party is on its way to Rivendell. After surviving... rather, after handily spanking a massed goblin incursion into Bree, we discover in the wreckage a thrown horseshoe. It is notably black, black enough to signify that the rider that threw it might themselves be of a somewhat darkened shade, and that we should absolutely not leave this lying around for the local blacksmith to discover and tinker into eating utensils. Party banter occurs on the trip; scenery porn is described in excruciating, setting-appropriate emerald detail. We curve round Weathertop and set into low forest, camping one evening off the road in a shady dell. We set a watch, but it's basically unnecessary: the thing that attacks us in the night isn't so much stepping on twigs as entire trees, and we all lurch awake with precious few moments to prepare against the troll that is bearing down on the party. Now, as it is Lord of the Rings, trolls are something of a big deal. And as we are in relatively safe lands, no one felt particularly inclined to sleep in their armor. We quickly take up positions. Arien, being the one on watch, is already armed and armored and up a tree. Rand grapples with his sword and shield, crouching in a bush and trying to put on as much as he can before he has to fight a giant monster. MacHale effortlessly blends with the shadows. Ashrage secures the horses, scampers off a small distance, and readies her bow. Beldar fails all appropriate rolls and is still asleep by the time the troll crashes into the clearing. The troll isn't so much wielding a club as much as a log. He spots the sleeping figure, the embering fire, and gets those thoughts that trolls tend to do when they see food and cookware right next to one another. Beldar finally wakes up just as the troll is just about to step on him, springs to his feet, and grabs his maul, which the DM figured she might as well let him sleep next to. Beldar can't outrun this thing, can't outfight it, and the rest of the party is nowhere to be seen, so he does the only thing left to mind and faces off against it, hoping to last long enough for us to implement our no-doubt ingenious trap. What his player meant to say: "I hit it with my maul!" What came out: "I hi- hit... I HIT IT WITH MY DWARF!" The conversation pauses long enough for the innuendo to sink in, and then we all fall apart laughing. Cries of "What's the damage roll on that thing?" and "Hit it in the troll!" fill the table. It is now permanently established that the dwarf sleeps naked, and gets the nicest, softest bedroll all to himself, forever.
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Aug 8, 2014 01:59
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So did he hit it with his dwarf?
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Aug 8, 2014 02:47
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It was a love that could not be, and was retconned to 'maul'. After a few remarks about what else he could do with a large, rigid stick with a hard head, provided the troll was willing.
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Aug 8, 2014 02:58
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But was it a critical hit?
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Aug 8, 2014 19:50
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Okay, so my group had an absolute blast playing our FAE X-Com this Wednesday. The following is a huge post, but here's some of the highlights to see if you're interested: -Killing two aliens with one bullet by ricocheting the shot off their spine -Sentai-Style combo-attacks -An old man's heart problems being fixed through violence -Strong homosexual overtones, from both sexes -A PR guy dragging an alien off of a UFO by the throat -Yellowstone National Park -Lots of screaming -Carpet bombing the state of Wyoming -A ludicrous number of entirely gibbed aliens -Way more hand to hand combat than you'd expect -Astonishingly one-sided battles So if any of those things caught your attention, do I have way too many words for you! For a little background, we're doing X-Com in FAE because a bunch of us are big fans and we were bored one night. There are four players, and each of us have 2 characters, a commander and a soldier. The commanders are Stern, the slightly sociopathic German doctor with some sort of science degree; Daniel, an old war vet with too many medals for his coat; Hector, a guy who went to school for Philosophy and Communications and ended up as the PR/HR guy for a secret military operation; and Natalya Gorbachev (no relation) a Russian Cold-War Expat and head of operations. They run the place, decide who goes on what missions and, like any adults with differing viewpoints, bicker like children at all opportunities. Our soldiers are Molly&Liz, a world-class trickshot/sharpshooter from the Appalachias and a professional mercenary who's armed to the goddamn teeth and may have some slight anger issues; Benjamin who is a veteran sniper from World War 2 and a goddamn pudding thief; and Kaz, a roboticist who pilots a fleet of scout drones and a Super Heavy Infantry Vehicle, basically an ATV with a mounted 50 cal machine gun and two rocket launchers. For full disclosure, I play Hector and Molly. Last night was our third session. The first session was just a short one where we all established our commanders and sent a squad of NPC soldiers to stop an attempted abduction. The X-Com base is far underground, beneath the great pyramids, and we received reports of alien activity in Cairo. We found a strange tall and lanky figure on top of a building with no roof access overlooking the state building, and deduced that the aliens must be planning to infiltrate the state house and take someone, maybe multiple someones. We sent in a dozen soldiers, killed 5 Thin men and lost 5 soldiers and managed to prevent any abductions. Only two of the thin men bodies were intact enough to be of any use in research, but overall the mission was considered a success, in no small part because Natalya decided to use the base kittens to craft a perfect viral video to distract the populace from Aliens. Also Hector spent his quarter of the budget on quality of life improvements for the soldiers and a massive network of people all over the world watching every news station and reporting any strange happenings. No one else spent money this session. Hector has to write black letters to the families of the deceased, and Daniel gives a speech about war and how it sucks, but we have to keep fighting and pull through, raising troop morale even higher. The second session started with Stern vivisecting a thin man corpse. She learned a lot about their biology, how they shoot poison and how their muscles have been modified to be more humanlike, and so theoretically could be implanted into a human to enhance their leg strength. Most importantly, though, she learns that their bones are superdense and x-ray reflective, and we learn that the UFO we detected above Cairo is scanning for them. So we decide to set a trap. We're going to set up one of the thin man corpses in an empty part of the desert where the wind is heavy so that its limbs are swaying and it isn't immediately obvious that it isn't alive, and we'll wait for the UFO. Just as we are about to send Special Team out for this mission, we get a call from the Council Member representing the United States. Apparently he has learned that Russia has shot down a UFO and is trying to do research on it in secret. Also, there are crop circles in the US causing growing unrest. Not the scripty, obviously fake ones, but just huge circles as of a giant elephant stamped on the field. We thank him for the information, and inform him that we will try our best to discern the cause of the circles as soon as we can, but we will be much better able to do so after we capture the UFO that we're luring in. So we set our trap, stand a thin man in the desert, and wait, most of us camouflaged. Liz isn't hidden well enough and is spotted by the UFO, which tries to shoot her with a big-rear end plasma cannon. She is fast enough to get the hell outta dodge, and a Sectoid pops its head out of a hatch on top of the UFO to scope out the situation. Benjamin and one of the scout robots both try to fire on the sectoid and miss, and molly pulls a knife from her belt and throws it. She doesn't get the spin right and the handle connects with the sectoid instead of the blade. It is enough to daze the sectoid and knock him off of his perch, leaving the hatch open for Molly and Liz to scramble toward in hopes of infiltrating the ship. When they reach the top, the ship begins to take off, but Benjamin and Kaz's Shiv unload three separate rockets and an entire box of .50 cal rounds into the ship's propulsion systems. The ship is grounded, Molly and Liz get inside before it crashes and from there it's mostly cleanup. Sectoids are shot, blown up, pulped, wrestled with and clubbed and in the end we capture one alive and leave two bodies mostly intact. Back at the base, Natalya begins an operation to learn more about the Russian UFO; Stern begins developing better armor with a mounted grappling hook for mobility, which seems to be the best combat against Thin Men, the most dangerous enemies we've faced so far, Daniel orders interceptors since we know now that UFOs can be taken down with conventional weaponry, and everyone works together to put together a statement to the Council about how we've captured a UFO, how we now know it is possible to bring them down, and how we would like to have an open information-sharing plan between all council nations regarding matters of alien technology. Hector delivers the message to the council, and it goes over swimmingly, securing X-com a 25% raise in total funds. Which brings us to Wednesday. Wednesday was... Something. I'm gonna be splitting this one up into four parts, because it's a doozy. "Two Entire Towns!?" So the third session started off pretty normally. Since we got an increase in funds, everyone that wasn't named Hector decided to start actually using their parts of the budget. Stern hired more scientists so that more than one thing could be researched at once and finished developing the Skeleton Suit, Daniel ordered new equipment and began training some troops to pilot less heavily-armed but still powerful SHIVS, Natalya did... something which is a secret to most everyone, and Hector had already used up his funds. Everyone went out for Smoothies, and we began work on several projects. Time-skipping a few weeks, we get an urgent call from the US, there's been a development in the situation with the crop circles! Two whole towns in Wyoming have been wiped off the map overnight. No reports of explosions or strange lights, the towns are small enough to not have had their own news stations, so no luck there. All that was left of them were two huge patches of bare earth, everything was gone. We didn't believe it. Natalya had her people hack into a US satellite so that we could get a feed on the situation, at which point we decided that using the satellite without their permission was a bad idea, and Hector called them up and asked to be patched in legally. What they were reporting was true. Where the two towns were supposed to be according to three different maps, there was just bare ground. There was something odd about it, though. There weren't any basements or piping or roads, just bare earth, completely flat and featureless. We immediately cross-referenced the previous night's weather patterns to see if there was a disturbance, because obviously any ship large enough to do this would have some effect on the local weather patterns. Nothing. We checked for x-rays, sonar, anything and we couldn't find a trace. So, with no other options, we sent our special team and our A-team to check out the sites, along with an interceptor each for backup. A-team's interceptor was shot down, but they managed to land safely, and they went about their mission off-screen as we switched over to special team. Benjamin is sleeping, Kaz is tuning his robots and Liz and Molly are making bets on who will get the most kills. The commanders have an idea, and the skyranger lowers a hook to the ground at the edge of the barren land. It catches on the bottom of the giant cloaked tarp over the town and begins dragging it off when the UFO uncloaks behind the skyranger. The Interceptor is close, but not close enough to get to them before they fire at us. Thinkin' quick and simple, Molly tells everyone to buckle up and hops onto the SHIV. She tells the pilot to open up the cargo bay, aims the SHIV's weapons since its targeting systems don't play nice with flying at a couple hundred miles per hour and she tells Kaz to unload everything that the Shiv's got. Molly aims straight for the flight computer to ground the UFO without wrecking the propulsion, Kaz unloads everything without a single misfire, and we blast a hole in the UFO. As it's falling, though, it shoots at us, knocking out one of our engines and killing the pilot. Molly, Liz and Benjamin throw on parachutes and bail as Kaz tries to pilot the skyranger to a safe landing. Liz and Benjamin safely parachute toward the crashed UFO, and Benjamin scopes out the situation. Literally, he looks through the scope of his rifle, sees two aliens and takes a shot, ricocheting the bullet off of the spinal column of one of the sectoids and into the head of the other. It was a drat good shot. As they're falling, they start hearing a panicked stammer coming over the radio. Molly didn't have time to properly secure her parachute, and as she was falling it came off. She's holding onto one of the straps, but she's spinning wildly and she needs help. Liz turns around, thinking that Kaz can send the SHIV to back up Benjamin while she goes to save Molly. Liz manages to get to where Molly is and grabs onto her, and they glide down and land on the tarp. They begin sliding down at a dangerous pace, especially dangerous considering the ~30 foot drop onto solid earth at the overhang of the tarp. Molly gets an idea and shoots at the tarp where they're sliding, hoping that they'd be above a roof or something. They fall through, and they're right above the street. Right 40 feet above solid concrete. Luckily, Liz is still connected to her parachute and it gets caught on the tarp, leaving them hanging by strings. Liz begins climbing the parachute cords with Molly on her back when they see an inhuman silhouette in the windows of a house below them. Molly pulls out her revolver and shoots, and they hear a pained hiss from below as they breach the tarp again, they then pirated down the tarp, using their knives to slow their descent. (The next two parts technically take place simultaneously, but I'm going to keep them wholly separate for hopefully obvious reasons. "Wait, we're going up against Mechtoids?" Okay, so Liz and Molly are just outside of the camo-tarp which they've ripped giant holes in when Molly realizes that they have grappling hooks that they could have used to make that whole ordeal way safer, and then a bullet grazes her side. She drops to the ground, still shaken up from the fall, but she can identify where the shot came from. It was conventional ammo, and we know aliens use plasma, so Liz raises her hands and shouts in that direction "We're Human!" There's no response. Liz gets molly up and they both find cover. Molly, being a pretty small woman, hops in a garbage can while Liz hides behind a building. It's at this point that they notice one of Kaz's recon drones flying in the area. They both turn on their helmet-cams so that they can see what it sees. It flies up to the building that the shot came from and notices something. It's an alien we've never seen before, Reptilian and holding a hunting rifle. The recon drone manages to unleash a burst of fire from its mounted SMG, and it puts one of the Snakeman's arms out of commission before a gunshot is heard and the feed cuts out. Liz and Molly are in cover, but from the vantage point of the trashcan in the middle of the road, Molly can tell where the shot that took out the drone came from. She unhooks a grenade from her belt, pulls the pin and hucks. Boom. It's at this point that Liz and Molly hear a robotic stomping coming from the town center. We see a hulking mechanical monstrosity lumbering towards us. (Out of character for a bit. This was our third mission, and only the second one that our operatives had gone on. We'd only encountered sectoids and weaponless thin men. We all figured that we'd probably be introduced to, like, Floaters at this point at the most. In-character we obviously had no idea, but most of us in character are shoot first and shoot a lot more later sort of guys. So yeah, we're at conventional weapons levels and assuming the best, and then this. The title of this section is something that Liz's player and I said simultaneously. It was actually much, much worse.) As this big-rear end bipedal machine rounds the corner, Molly grapples up to a roof and Liz dives through a window, calling Kaz and telling him to forget the UFO, come help us. The Shiv was pretty close, luckily, and arrives basically immediately, drawing the fire from the two giant plasma cannons away from the ladies. Unfortunately, the Sectopod wasn't the only threat in the area. Simultaneously, Liz and Mollie feel a tingling and hear a staticy noise. Molly is quick to react, spinning around so that she's only grabbed around the arm by the weird, flying squid robot thing that sneaked up behind her. Liz isn't so quick, taking the noise for just radio static. The seeker grabs her, and wraps two of its arms around her neck and one around each arm, dislocating one of them. Molly, with her free arm, pulls her revolver up and aims it at the thing on her arm, pulling the trigger once before fanning the hammer with her chin to unload all of her bullets into it as quickly as possible. It explodes into a cloud of inky, black blood. Liz, meanwhile, doesn't have the luxury of a free arm. She headbutts the Seeker, getting it to loosen its grip, before she grabs tha arms around her neck and tosses the alien to the ground, stomping on its head repeatedly. As she's stomping, the unmistakable sound of a Plasma Cannon firing is heard. The SHIV is taking heavy fire, only managing to dodge due to its relative small size as it feeds a belt into the .50 cal and cycles out new rockets. Pretty soon it'll be able to fire everything, and when it does that it's always devastating. While the Sectopod is distracted, Molly swings down to try to help Liz, but Liz isn't having any. She wants this one and she wants it bad, so Molly tosses her her empty revolver. It's got some heft, oughta be able to bash that thing's head in. And bash its head in it does, Liz absolutely destroys the thing just as the Plasma Cannon fires again! This time, the Shiv isn't maneuverable enough to get out of the way, but the fleet of recon drones fly in to form a wall to absorb the brunt of the blast. Before the second cannon has a chance to fire, molly pulls out her pistol and starts plinking at the Sectopod. She knows it isn't gonna do anything to actually hurt it, but it might get it to start turning. And turn it does, giving Kaz the chance to unload. He fires off an entire belt and two rockets into the Sectopod, managing to disable one of the cannons. Liz and Molly exchange a glance and nod. If there was ever a chance to catch it off balance it would be now. So Molly braces herself in the doorway as Liz produces her Anti-Materiel rifle. She props the barrel on Molly's shoulder as Mollie straightens up the aim of the shot. Molly squeezes down on the barrel to keep it steady, and Liz pulls the trigger. The recoil is massive, pushing Liz and Molly back as the bullet is sent at over twice the speed of sound straight into the core of the Sectopod, whereby it begins collapsing and exploding. Unfortunately, we forgot something. There was still one Snakeman. It takes a shot at Liz, who is starting to really hurt now that the adrenaline is running out. Molly tries to return fire, but as Liz collapses the sudden weight of the rifle forces Molly down too. Molly gets on top of Liz and rolls both of them over so that they're taking cover under the window that they were being shot through, and after a bit of tricky shooting gets the Snakeman down as Liz and Molly sort of just collapse onto each other. "Some Three Stooges Bullshit" While all of this is going on, Benjamin lands his parachute in a cornfield near the UFO crash site, and sets up to snipe the aliens as they come out. After a bit of waiting, a Sectoid pops its head out of the top hatch and Benjamin fires, catching the Sectoid on the shoulder and causing it to pratfall out of the UFO, flailing and screaming as it slides and hits its oversized head, falling unconscious. He proceeded to shoot two more because they were idiots and just kept walking out into his line of fire. After killing the 5 Sectoids on the UFO, Benjamin stood up to go check for any holdouts. As he did so, a strange crystal floated out of the UFO. As soon as it was spotted, the crystal emitted a strange light which hardened around it, coalescing into a humanoid figure, which immediately takes a shot at Benjamin. Benjamin somehow dodges plasma by bending over backwards trying to be cool and ending up just falling flat on his back. He pulls a grenade and throws it in the direction of the Outsider as a distraction while he begins the not-inconsequential task of standing back up in his old age. He manages, and sees the Outsider approaching quickly, seemingly unphased by the grenade. The alien is advancing on Benjamin, so he pulls out two pistols stolen from Molly's stash and begins firing as fast as he can. Unfortunately, he's a sniper, not a pistolero, and the Outsider is missed by every shot. Benjamin then gets an epiphany! He remembers a conspiracy theory he heard once, that Tesla used crystals to communicate with a race of aliens way back in the early 20th, and figures that these must be those aliens! And the crystal must be their core! He rushes the Outsider, trying to grab its core, going into Cardiac Arrest in the process. The Outsider retaliates by pulling out a stun rod and zapping Benjamin, restarting his heart but stunning his left arm in the process. They continue to wrestle, neither gaining the advantage, for minutes, during which Benjamin suffers three more heart attacks. After the Sectopod is dealt with, the group decides to check back in with Benjamin and witnesses... whatever it was that was going on. Liz and Molly are too beat up to go help, and the SHIV's treads have been busted, but Kaz himself, still in the Skyranger which crashed near the UFO, can reach him in time to help. Now, keep in mind, Kaz is a tech guy. He's a little overweight, piloting his robots from the relative safety of the ship, only having gone through basic firearm training, but he still picks up an assault rifle and starts running as fast as he can to try to help out Benjamin. He arrives on scene just after Benjamin's 4th consecutive aborted heart attack, and decides to join in on the wrestling, making a flying leap toward the Outsider just as it wiggles out of Ben's grip. He brings the outsider to the ground and causes it to retreat into its crystal, which Kaz takes hold of. This, it turns out, was a bad idea. The crystal begins shooting hard-light tendrils up Kaz's arm. Kaz screams in pain, as Benjamin grabs the Stun Rod that had been used on himself so many times and begins tasing the crystal repeatedly. It's at this point that Liz and Molly limp onto the scene, Liz mostly being held up by the smaller woman, and immediately turn around upon seeing the two men rolling around on top of each other with a stun rod and a crystal. "We had ruled out that course of action as intelligent lifeforms." After everything is over, S Team sends a report back to HQ. They went to check out the town after it was cleared up. No human life, anywhere. They've just all disappeared. This call was disturbing, but not so much as the next one the commanders received. It was a call from A team. The last surviving member of A Team. He was holed up in a classroom on the top floor of the schoolbuilding, shooting any aliens that try to enter. The situation was hopeless, and as far as he could tell the only way to stop the aliens would be a bombing run. Daniel saluted the soldier, and told him that he and his team were true heroes willing to give their lives in order to secure the safety of the entire planet. Hector called up the US councilman. He told them the situation, that the town was still there, minus its inhabitants, and that the aliens had brought up a force stronger than we could have ever anticipated. The only way to prevent the aliens from running free in the United States was to glass the town, or what was left of it. Hector lied and told him that in doing so, no human blood would be spilled. The councilman understood, and ordered the airstrike. The commanders watched the feed, each reacting differently. Hector was the only one who had to look away when the schoolhouse came into view. There was a moment of silence before anyone spoke up. When they did, it was Hector and Stern speaking at the same time, maybe agreeing on something for the first time ever. The people had a right to know. We just bombed an American town, and two entire towns have gone missing. This would be impossible to cover up. Those people had families, friends, jobs. Even if the towns only had a population of 1,000 people, word would get out. So we had to prepare to tell the world before they found out. If we were going to tell the people what happened, though, we would have to figure out why it happened. So we set about trying to puzzle it out. Was it just a trap? We had captured one of their UFO's, stopped one of their abductions. The aliens had to know that there was someone fighting against them. Did they want to lure us to these towns and get rid of us? It's possible, but if so, why Wyoming? What's in Wyoming? Yellowstone. Yellowstone, one of the most geothermically active areas in the world. If you could harness the power of Yellowstone, you could use it to run just about anything. The Aliens must have a base there, and that's where they took the people! It's why there weren't any strange weather patterns from enormously large UFO's, there weren't any! They were local, they sent small UFO's to abduct the townsfolk by pieces, or even using some sort of ground transport, and then they covered the towns with the cloaking device. While we were piecing all of this together, Natalya had an intuition, and asked Stern to investigate. Natalya was right. There were many layers to this trap, and one was flying right at us, on the tail of our Skyranger. The UFO that was over the other town, the one that had shot down A Team's interceptor, was following the Skyranger back to our base, and we had no way to reliably track it. Stern, Daniel and Natalya discussed possible solutions while Hector vanished from the room. No one noticed, until the alarms started going off. Hector had gone to the brig, grabbed our captured Sectoid, and dragged him to our captured UFO, a research option that had been thrown out due to humans being "intelligent life forms." Through a series of gestures and screaming, he had communicated to the Sectoid that it was going to use the UFO to tell us where the other UFO's were, or its life was going to become significantly more painful. The sectoid approached one of the monitors and hit a couple of buttons, bringing up a display of all of the UFO's currently deployed. There were nine, counting the one in our base. The most important thing, at least in Hector's opinion, was that we had this display on camera, and so now we knew the exact location of the UFO tailing our Skyranger. Hector then noticed that one of the UFO's was apparently giving off a distress signal. The one in our base. And the Sectoid was trying to sneak away. Hector lunged for the sectoid, grabbed it by its throat and slammed its head on the keypad to get the monitor to shut down, and that's basically where the session ended. Jolyne Cujoh fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Aug 10, 2014 |
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Aug 10, 2014 06:57
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E:Raenir K. Artemi posted:rad cool xcom FAE adventures I would like to know more. SpookyLizard fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 00:24
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Last week three members of my very large (7 players normally) regular 3.5 Eberron game crew couldn't make it. Since we were about to embark on a new chapter of the game the remaining players, joined by my son, decided to play the D&D 5e starter set as a one-shot instead. Some spoilers if you play it... but only for the first five pages since things went... poorly. We all had a blast even though it ended in the first tpk I've had in quite some time. The pregenerated characters were generic and good as written, but did take a little bit of work for the players to gel with them. The group being hired mercenaries guarding a supply shipment from Neverwinter to the Phairlain (which was naturally referred to as P-town for the rest of the night). The characters wound up bonding over a game of cards being played on the way, which we resolved using different skills depending on the play style of the character. The halfling rogue played the people, not the cards so did a Charisma check, while the Elven Wizard used intelligence to represent careful strategy and the bumpkin dwarven cleric used his wisdom and insight to choose what felt correct, all the while looked down on by the noble born fighter who would not deign to play a lowly game of cards, but did watch carefully to make sure there was no cheating going on. This did help give the characters some personality and turned out to be a great way to get them together and talking. This being D&D, of course, the travelers came upon the scene of a recent ambush: dead horses shot by black arrows, and quickly discovered hints that the riders of the slain horses were dragged off and were in fact the people they were traveling to P-town to meet. Upon discovering that, they were also ambushed by goblins, whom they dispatched extremely quickly, one shotting most of them. Being used to 3.5 and having a ridiculous amount of dungeon tiles and minis, I did use the map for this, though honestly it wasn't really necessary for the encounter. Just habit. The halfling ran off after the last goblin, who fled down a mostly hidden path, followed by all but the wizard, who did manage to call the rest back for the obligatory "we shouldn't go after them, instead lets go to town and get help" versus "but they could be dead by then" vs. "there's goblins to kill, what are we standing here for" argument. Eventually, the wizard was overruled and was forced to tie up the oxen and supply cart before running after the rest, grumbling all the way. The path had a series of traps laid along it, which were discovered not by the halfling rogue, but by the noble fighter, who was in the lead the whole way. The halfling attempted a disarm on the snare trap, but botched that and lost her coat, which had buttons snagged onto the snare when it got set off. Arriving at the mysterious cave with a stream running out of it, there was the second goblin ambush, which also turned out well for the party, though the magic user expended his last magic missile spell and the group took some hits. Instead of taking a short rest, they decided to journey onward. The group bypassed a wolves den nicely, spotted and killed a goblin sneak before he could get to a lever that would have sent a flood rushing down at them, climbed up a wall to a rope bridge and wiped the floor with another small set of goblins who were standing next to a waterfall and didn't hear them come in. I once again realized my limits in that I really need to pre-draw some of my maps because I ran out of room on the erasable mat I use. After scouting out both ends of the corridor, the rogue discovered a room with a 'big goblin (didn't recognize the monster as a bugbear)' surrounded by a pair of wolves and some regular goblins. He let the others know and before they could plan, rand ahead and attacked the big leader. He had a surprise round on both the monsters and his party (his family motto being "I didn't think this through"). The battle was large (5 PCs vs 5 NPCs) but surprisingly quick and easy to run. Sadly, there were some significantly poor tactical decisions made by the party. Like starting the combat before most of them were there/ready. Then having the cleric charge up ahead of everyone else. Poor guy was dropped in one hit by the enraged bugbear. The wolves were particularly nasty, gaining advantage when striking the same opponent as a pack took the noble warrior down, also in one shot. The rest of the group were using archery and ranged magic, but went down one by one until there was one last goblin against the wizard, both down to one hit point, and chasing one another around the room to get the advantage of one last shot off. At one point, the goblin was put at a disadvantage on his attack and I rolled a 20 and a 1 for his attack. Didn't think I'd see that split in the first game! Regardless, the wizard could not roll above an 8 to save his life, and in the end, the goblin took him down. During the battle, the cleric did stabilize via the death saving throws, but the noble and the archer both failed and were killed. Despite (or perhaps because of) the tpk, this was a blast to play. The new rules on advantage/disadvantage, the streamlining of crits (no more rolling to confirm them, if you crit, you double the number of dice of damage you roll), the dramatic shortening of skills and the assumed auto-successes for tasks like climbing while not in immediate danger really made the experience shine. Combat was fast and it felt like there were important decisions to be made. Wizards who were out of spells were not useless in combat since cantrips can be cast at will and can actually do some damage/have some effect. The character traits, ideals, bonds and flaws all were immediately useful and even made the pregens fun and interesting to play right out of the box. I actually look forward to the day when I can move my current campaign over to the 5e system, though that will take a while since its full of 3.5 oddballs for even Eberron.
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Aug 11, 2014 17:58
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It wouldn't be role playing if people thought everything out like they should.
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Aug 11, 2014 21:01
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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 did this and proceeded to have some of the best rolls ever. The low level wizard broke into the house that the PCs The bard wakes up with is bed on fire. He rolls out of bed, somehow loses initiative and is hit with the Sleep spell. Because he was groggy, we house ruled it so that he was asleep. The meditating paladin downstairs didn't near it. The ninja sleeping down the hall failed her Perception. Level 2 wizard proceeds to stomp the crap out of the bard that killed his cat, then flipped the flaming mattress over on top of him, which thanks to a series of terrific die rolls on my part, set the house on fire. Eventually that got the rest of the party's attention.
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Aug 14, 2014 01:00
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So my second ever Shadowrun 5e game went great. Two of our five players couldn't make it, so the remaining three of us picked up a side job instead of progressing with the main module plot. Mostly, anyway. Izanagi, our human rigger, had taken the mysterious scrambled-contacts Hermes Ikon commlink we found on our first mission, and it had started beeping...while it was turned off. She calls my character, the elven decker Dax, to come check it out and make sure it wasn't going to explode or something. Dax gets a ride over (because I spent all my money on my deck/augs/other stuff and didn't have enough money left for a bike), and discover a flash drive hidden inside the commlink. Dax saves what's accessible of the data on it, and gives Izanagi a copy. That is all Mysterious Plot poo poo that will be relevant in future games. Dax then gets a call from our mysterious new fixer/lawyer Imaginary about a job. We're to meet up with a Mr. Johnson at a bar at the edge of the Barrens. We tell her it'll be about an hour for us to get ready and get over there. Meanwhile, we also call up Locke, our troll face, to see if he wants in. It is now canon that Locke's ringtone is Banana Phone. We also try to call up Union Jack and Halestorm, but as their players aren't there, of course we don't get a hold of them. Turns out Mr. Johnson is a troll, and we negotiate an extra thousand nuyen to make it an even 2000 for each of us. The job is to keep Mr. Johnson's little brother in the Crimson Crush from participating in a drug deal that night, and we're given the location of where the deal is going down. We decide it's a good idea to scope out the place ahead of time and see if we can't figure out a plan. Locke insists on driving his own car, and Dax rides with Izanagi down to the location at the docks. While Izanagi gets the lay of the land via her flybot, Dax hacks into the shipping company's systems to see how hard it's going to unlock the gate and check out the shipping manifests. The ship coming in tonight with the drugs on it is a huge thing. Our first thought had been that it would be a smaller ship that only needed one of the company's docks, and that we could set a diversion on the other, but this ship was large enough to need both. So that plan was out the window. Dax comes out of the matrix, Izanagi jumps back into her meat body, and we try to figure out how we can divert either the gang or the ship. And then...we get the break we needed. Locke notices a fellow suspicious black van also parked near this place. Izanagi sends her flybot over to see who's inside, and it turns out to have a scouting party for the Night Hunters. The Night Hunters are a gang of heavily cybered humans who get off on killing non-humans. The Crimson Crush are all trolls and orks. And two out of three of us in our van are not humans. Of course the Night Hunters notice our van as well, and come over to check us out. Thankfully Dax and Locke are hiding in the back, so they only see the human Izanagi, who pretends her GridGuide got hacked so she's lost. They buy it and we escape with a sigh of relief. With evidence of a very credible danger, Locke is able to convince the Crimson Crush that attempting to take on the Night Hunters is literally suicide for the entire gang, even if they were able to win the fight tonight. They agree not to go, contract fulfilled. But that wasn't enough for us. I carefully edit the flybot footage to make it appear that the Night Hunters' target is actually the drugs, and we go hop down to the nearest Knights Errant station to let them know of this very important news...turns out to be the same station we were all hauled into the previous morning (all of us falsely accused of stealing a shipment of commlinks, thanks Imaginary for getting us out). They're skeptical, but Dax edited that poo poo good and they end up believing it. All that done, we go and get our payment from Mr. Johnson, and the next morning the newsfeeds are reporting a major drug bust down at the docks, with 15 Night Hunters being arrested for novacoke trafficking. Locke ends up with a 150 nuyen parking ticket for parking in front of a fire hydrant that didn't actually exist, but hey, at least all his wheels were still there. So yeah, it may have taken us four loving hours to figure out our plan, but damned if it didn't go perfectly.
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Aug 14, 2014 02:00
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Writer Cath posted:I did this and proceeded to have some of the best rolls ever. Hahaha, Good, Good. That's beautiful and amazing and look forward to hearing more.
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Aug 16, 2014 04:36
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In yesterday's session of my Call of Cthulhu group adventure one player managed to kill Y'Golonac in a single turn
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Aug 16, 2014 19:11
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alcharagia posted:In yesterday's session of my Call of Cthulhu group adventure one player managed to kill Y'Golonac in a single turn With what, a Howitzer?
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Aug 16, 2014 19:12
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Kavak posted:With what, a Howitzer? With a Kamehameha and his hanzo steel, because the character in question was a ninja ghost designed to be a randomly-appearing midboss who showed up any time someone failed a Luck roll and so got to go twice in one turn
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Aug 16, 2014 19:34
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alcharagia posted:With a Kamehameha and his hanzo steel, because the character in question was a ninja ghost designed to be a randomly-appearing midboss who showed up any time someone failed a Luck roll and so got to go twice in one turn I am going to surmise that you are not playing Call of Cthulhu by the prescribed method.
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Aug 16, 2014 19:37
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:I am going to surmise that you are not playing Call of Cthulhu by the prescribed method. Considering said session also contained, among other things, betting on chihuahua racing and a boss fight against Mr. Chin from Trio The Punch: Never Forget Me, I think you're right on the money there Edit: But the Y'Golonac fight actually was supposed to be kind of threatening i know, i was the dm. 
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Aug 16, 2014 19:47
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:I am going to surmise that you are not playing Call of Cthulhu by the prescribed method. Bad Wrong Fun! 
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Aug 16, 2014 20:09
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I feel as though I should mention that Y'Golonac was weakened to about half health because earlier he got his rear end kicked by Mordiggian and Tulzscha for being an upstart whippersnapper (he was on Super Fire for 37 damage) but still, he still had like 38 HP left
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Aug 16, 2014 20:24
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Is that a lot? I don't know jack about CoC rules.
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Aug 16, 2014 20:29
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Yeah it is, highest possible HP a starting PC can have is 18 and that's if you get stupidly lucky
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Aug 16, 2014 20:30
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So, remember the three murderhobos from last session? They keep amazing me with awesome poo poo and things i didn't even think of. This time featuring Zelda the dwarven warrior-princess(heavy armor, heavy weaponry) Moonleaf the Elven Druid, she quickly got called Moon-Moon due to loving up rolls at the worst times. Lee Royson, cleric of Jenknar, Dwarven god of Brawling and Equality!(the same dude who ran with the BBQ God last time) So the players are a bit more familiair with the combat system this time around so it's time to do some RP stuff. The setting they've ended up in and will be playing in for the duration of these characters is rather simple. It's set in the world of Dragon's Dogma(A Action-RPG for Xbox and PS) and they've arrived on a boat in one of the fishing towns. I had the players act out the journey on the boat and they met up with a group of bluecloaked crusaders looking to banish some evil being from this world,loaded with enough weaponry to supply a small squad each, including whip-swords and magic chainsaw things.(They are totally not the Belmont clan from castlevania), meet up with the camel vendor from last session and another apostle of Tyrex, looking to spread the joy of food to this world. They decide upon arrival in the world that none of those plothooks make any sense and run off to the capital of the country, working as caravan guards along the way. Working just for food and travel they end up doing an amazing job which included but wasn't limited to throwing goblins into goblins, using all kinds of wrestling moves to slam goblins into other goblins, and generally applying a lot of megaviolence. The druid spends most of his time shaped into a wolf, tearing out throats left right and center and scouting out a bunch of traps and ambushes and p. much saving the caravan. Upon arriving at the capital they discover that the Duke has locked down his manse and there are rumors that he is fearing the end of the world. The Warrior and Druid decide that the best course of action is of course to break into the manse via the sewers, crowbarring out several heavy gates along the way and eventually getting caught by a small horde of guards. They somehow manage to logic their way into being the heroes of the story and offering their services in dealing with the problem to the Duke. This problem is a giant castle that has slowly been appearing in the wilderness.(TOTALLY NOT CASTLEVANIA) The Cleric in the meantime went to the local dive bars to look for a brawl, ended up in a underground fight club match under the local inn, and suplexed and antler tossed the opposition into submission. before challenging the owner of the fighting ring to a double or nothing match. In which he said a hilariously inspiring prayer to his god, summoned the luchador mask of his clan( The Battlebeards iirc) and german suplexed the dude so hard he is probably still embedded partway into the floor. Then proudly declaring the fight club to now be a temple of Jenknar, and for his lackeys to start recruiting more members. He did all of this due to judicious use of awesome points and some very lucky rolls. After all of this is done they are all summoned by the duke and sent off to go deal with the castle situation, bringing along a follower from the Temple of Jenknar for additional firepower. At this point they all have some extra gear. -The elf got a really loving rad shortbow. -The fighter now carries around a portable ballista -The Cleric got a tabard with the symbol of his god, and reinforced gauntlets and a crash helmet for better headbutts. The fight that ended up being the end of the session was against a reasonably large horde of skeletons(20sh) consisting of about half archers, and half melee and a bigass skeleton wielding a canoe as a gauntlet with an anchorchain for a ranged weapon. The druid calls in a couple of divine favors and gets a web of vines to entangle a large amount of the skeletons, whilst the bowmen repeatedly fire salvo's at them and nearly take them out. The skeletons are being decapitated and crushed by the two dwarves, using a combination of throws, suplexes and something they dubbed the babe ruth special. Where one dwarf throws a enemy to the other one and she knocks it out of the park with a warhammer. The big skeleton who got the name mr. skeltal from my party then decided to mix things up and wrapped up the druid in his chain and proceeded to hit the dwarves with him. Instead of escaping the druid started putting arrows in mr. skeltals face, ending up with one in each eye socket and the killing blow between the eyes. The big reveal before the end of the session was that the skeletons were wearing the colours and symbols of the crusaders. The castle is now in range and there is some serious poo poo going down soon. Some other highlights include the elf and some goblins having a swordfight ontop of a huge cyclops. The druid meowing at everyone because he spent several days as a cat, and the cat-druid being obsessed with mice. ending up catching about 14 or so total in the span of a ingame day. I loving love this group, they come up with some insane poo poo at times and usually stumble their way through a failing plan while the world turns to chaos around them. AzMiLion fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Aug 16, 2014 |
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Aug 16, 2014 22:28
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SpiritOfLenin, would you happen to have the final sheet for your Genetor in that Rogue Trader game? I introduced her into my Black Crusade game as an NPC Rogue Trader and it's kinda amusing how my Heretics are just as shady as your group ended up being. They're trying to get somewhat more legitimate passage into the Jericho Reach than previously planned, and so they decided they'd bargain with a Rogue Trader. Trouble is, they're all heretics (but of course) and thus have to take what they can get.
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Aug 16, 2014 23:59
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So I just got caught up with this thread, which has kept me entertained for a few weeks now. First of all, thanks for that. Second, I'd like to express my disappointment that DivineCoffeeBinge's Star Wars game never got off the ground again. It was always interesting to read about, and I can only imagine how awesome it was to play. Third, I have stories! I'll start with my most epic, which could have been a best experience, but turned into a worst experience since it nearly destroyed my group at the time. Please be warned,  .It was during the heady of 2nd Edition D&D, and during the first campaign I ever ran with that rules set. Most of my experience to that point had been Basic D&D, the old FASERIP Marvel system, and a variety of Palladium crap. I'd been running the game for a while, and I had a standing rule with my players that, if you've fallen behind in XP for whatever reason, I'd run you on solo stuff between the regularly scheduled games so you can catch up. Well, after an unfortunate encounter with a fire giant and a few ogres, two PCs ended up needing a Raise Dead and thereby fell behind the party's XP frontrunner, the Paladin. They both wanted to catch up, so I arranged a one-on-two game for the next night. The players were named Adam and Jay. Adam was easily my most dedicated player - not really a party leader sort, but he devoured all the lore and backstory to my campaign world, couldn't get enough of it. Jay was... not like this. In fact, it was pretty clear to everyone that I didn't particularly care for Jay. My campaign rules for characters included "no evil characters," because it was a big epic campaign of good vs. evil and all that good stuff. So, Jay always made Chaotic Neutral characters with strongly murderous tendencies. He was also a blatant cheater - his first character I killed off through DM fiat because I'd caught him lying to me about his character's capabilities, and it was because of him that I had to institute a rule of "When rolling for hit points, you use the cup rolling method." One of his first character's actions, in one of the earliest scenes I ran in my campaign, involved his gnome making lewd comments to a female NPC in a tavern, then sniffing her bar stool when she got up to leave. Basically, the guy was a scumbag, and I really didn't care for his presence in my game. Yes, yes, I know. I should have just given him the boot. Problem was, I was still suffering from a number of geek fallacies, the other players (for some reason) liked his presence, and I'd not yet learned the adage "No gaming is better than bad gaming." What can I say, I was young. Anyway, Adam was playing Valkreen, a Rakasta (a race of smilodon-riding, samurai cat people) dual-classed Ninja 6/Wizard 3. He also had a pet wolf he absolutely doted on (as in, a good half of the gold his character collected would go to pampering that drat mutt.) Jay was playing an 8th-level halfling thief named Jay von Halfenstein III (naming was another thing he did to drive me up the wall.) I gave them an opportunity to split off from the rest of the party on a sea voyage and earn some extra gold, so they took it and began their not-quite-solo adventure. Now, at the time I'd read an article about introducing shades of gray and moral quandries into your campaign, probably in some issue of Dragon magazine. Since I was clearly an awesome DM, I decided to give it a try. Big, big mistake. I had this group of villains who worked for the campaign's first big bad, basically an anti-adventuring party. When Valkreen and von Halfenstein reached their first port of call, this group cornered and confronted them. Instead of fighting them, the leader of the evil party decided to make them an offer: He dumped a bunch of magic items on the table and stated that if they worked for him and worked as moles for his master, they could have all this - plus riches beyond their wildest desires. Now, the idea that I'd had was that Valkreen and von Halfenstein would reject the offer, there'd be a big chase, a fight on the ship, and then the two PCs would escape by the skin of their teeth - probably after swiping a few items along the way. I know, I know. Like I said, I was young. Instead, Valkreen rejected the offer, but Halfenstein gleefully accepted. So the evil party leader basically said, "Well you're no good to me as a mole if the rakasta knows about you. Kill him." I still got my chase scene and escape-by-the-skin-of-his-teeth, but Halfenstein was one of the ones trying to kill Valkreen. Valkreen got away, and Halfenstein was given a couple of the newer recruits in the evil party (another halfling rogue and a lizard man fighter, IIRC) and told to give chase. The session ended there, since I wasn't sure where to go from there. So, I ran two more sessions of this as Halfenstein chased Valkreen over half the southern coast of my campaign world, and nothing was resolving. Twice, Valkreen asked Halfenstein to rejoin him, and both times Halfenstein repaid Valkreen's offer with a murder attempt. The next regular session was coming up and I needed to resolve this, so I planned for a third session which basically NEEDED to bring this whole matter to a resolution. I planned for Valkreen's ship to get shipwrecked on the coast of a jungle, whereupon he'd find his way to an ancient temple of a snake-worshipping civilization. Along the way he'd meet residents of the jungle whom he could ally or anger, depending on how the roleplay would go. Once at the temple, a hurricane would hit the area and he'd be forced to take shelter - at which point he could make a stand, or solve a puzzle in one of the rooms to teleport him to safety. Thing is about the puzzle, it requires *two* people to work simultaneously for it to function, so it would only be a get-out-of-jail-free card if he and von Halfenstein resolved their differences and worked together. I'd also prepared encounters that were almost insta-kills for each of the PCs - a death knight chasing after von Halfenstein for some murders he'd committed a few towns back, and a crimson mist that worked for a wizard that Valkreen had killed a while ago, out for revenge. If they didn't resolve things, or if one of them decided to just flee, I'd drop the encounters on one or both of them. Basically, I was determined that this whole sub-plot that had gotten out of hand would be resolved going into next game, which was only two days away at this point. Meanwhile, Jay would see the shipwreck, have his own ship anchored, and give chase. He, too, would run into an assortment of NPC jungle inhabitants, giving him the opportunity to pick up more allies along the way. Now, I'd already loaded von Halfenstein with a bunch of rewards for pulling this off (all the magic items the bad guy gave him), he just needed to get rid of Valkreen to keep them. Valkreen, on the other hand, had *lost* a lot of equipment over the past three sessions, and I figured he needed a reward from this whole thing. So I asked the player before this session what he'd like to have, and he told me a bag of holding. Ok, that's a pretty standard piece of equipment (as I recall, I was rather surprised I hadn't given him one already), so I told him that if his character makes it out of this okay I'd arrange for a bag of holding to be given to his character as soon as I could justify it. This is an important point for later, so keep it in mind. So, the session starts, and I send Jay out of the room to run the first parts with Adam. His character has a pretty high charisma, but he manages to flub it with almost every NPC he runs into except one: A shambling mound named Floyd. This character came from an adventure card, a TSR product back in the day that was basically a deck of encounters. Floyd was charmed by an elven wizard with a deck of many things who wanted the gold and treasures the deck could provide but didn't want to risk any of the negative effects, so he gave the deck to Floyd and told him to start drawing. When all was said and done, Floyd had an intelligence of 5, wore a girdle of dwarvenkind, and was CG alignment. In frustration, the elven magi teleported away, and ever since then Floyd was looking for his "elven magi friend" so he could hug him and pet him and cuddle him etc. Valkreen promised to help Floyd find his elven magi, as long as Floyd could help him get home. Valkreen reached the temple and immediately flubbed the teleport-puzzle. Welp, so much for that! Then he found a rather large-ish room with a spiked snake pit in the centre, one way in or out, and a pair of narrow bridges over the pit - he figured this would make a good place to make a stand, since he wasn't keen on surviving the jungle during a hurricane. So, then it was Jay's turn. Historically, he'd been pretty poo poo with NPCs - he'd go out of his way to offend them for no good reason. Not this time! Credit where it's due, Jay had his character charm the pants off of everyone he met, and backed it up with some really good rolls. When he reached the temple, he had a vampire and all its skeletal horde, a werecrocodile, and I think a hill giant (maybe it was an ogre) added to his entourage. In other words, things weren't looking good. The fight started, and Adam played things smart; he used the bridges to his advantage, so that only a couple enemies could attack him at any given time. Von Halfenstein ordered the vampire to start by sending his skeletons over the bridges. They weren't very effective, but he had a LOT of skeletons. Before I go into the next part, it's important that you understand that Jay LOVED wands of wonder. During his very brief PC-killer Ravenloft campaign, we'd practically trip over the things. I'm not so fond of them, but knowing his predilections, I made sure there was a wand of wonder in the pile of goodies his character got from the bad guys. He'd kept it in reserve until now, but I guess Jay got the feeling this was where the conflict between Halfenstein and Valkreen was going to be ended once and for all, because he whipped it out and used it liberally. One gem-pelting and a lightning bolt later, and Valkreen's wolf was nearly dead - he ordered his wolf to fall back, and Floyd took the wolf's place at the other side of one of the two bridges. Floyd was a lot tougher than the wolf, and took a lot less damage from the skeletons' attacks, to boot. He ended up killing the werecrocodile, but not before a few chunks were taken out of him. Much to my dismay (because Valkreen was a much more interesting character than von Halfenstein, and Adam a much better player), Jay's victory seemed assured. It was just a matter of whittling down Floyd and then mobbing Valkreen. But Jay was getting impatient. Things weren't going as fast as he'd liked. So on his turn, he leveled his wand at Floyd and used a charge. The result he rolled stated that the target grows leaves. Well, shambling mounds are vegetation anyway, right? I figured that would be worth a cure light wounds, explained my reasoning, and Floyd got a few hit points back. Fine, fine. Jay was still already victorious, it was still just a matter of time. But that wasn't good enough. Von Halfenstein, on his next turn, used another charge. This time he rolled a lightning bolt result, and he was very pleased with himself. Only shambling mounds are immune to lightning. In fact, lightning gives them temporary hit dice and makes them grow bigger. So Floyd was now nine feet tall and was back to about half hit points. Okay! That's a setback, definitely. But Jay was still the most likely victor. Really, he could have just sat back and let things play out, or altered his target to Valkreen. But no. He rolled again. Semi-precious gem pelting. A little bit of damage, but not much due to the shambling mound's inherent resistances. Then he rolled again on his next turn. All the grass in the target area grows to ten times its original size. Huh. Well, y'know, shambling mounds are vegetation. Grass, weeds, vines, that sort of thing. So Floyd went from nine feet tall to ninety feet tall and gained a bunch of silly bonuses. He couldn't USE those bonuses, mind, because there wasn't enough space in the room for anything ninety feet tall, so after growing up, he started growing *sideways* and ended up filling the entire area. The fight ground to a halt. Floyd, being particularly stupid, had no idea what was going on and started calling out plaintively for his catman friend to help him. Anyone who wanted to do anything on the battlefield needed to make a Dex check to squeeze through the grass and vines. I think Jay knew, at this point, that he'd screwed the pooch. His victory was basically impossible now, since very few of his new allies were able to make the requisite Dex check, and one-on-one Valkreen's ninja abilities would make mincemeat of von Halfenstein. So von Halfenstein made his way to Valkreen and tried to call a truce. Valkreen wouldn't hear any of it, telling him he might have been able to forgive him for the betrayals and the murder attempts, but Jay tried to kill his *wolf*. There could be no coming back from that. (It was actually a pretty intense roleplay scene!) Valkreen took out a dagger (since his katana was now useless in the new fighting environment) and tried to stab von Halfenstein. The halfling, in response, took out his wand of wonder and aimed it... at Floyd. I don't know what he was hoping to accomplish at this point. Maybe a reversal of the last effect? I dunno. But he rolled the exact same result as last time. KABOOOM! A nine-hundred-foot tall shambling mount explodes outward from the ruins, now turned into so much rubble. Jay's surviving allies all flee, not having signed up for a battle against a loving plant kaiju. Jay, himself, flees after expending another charge at Valkreen (I think he got butterflies). Floyd begins searching for his cat friend, very confused and scared, not really understanding all of what's just happened. Valkreen climbed to the top of the tallest tree he could find and then quaffed a potion of rainbow hues, using it to draw Floyd's attention - to date the only useful application of a potion of rainbow hues I've ever personally seen. Obviously, I declared Valkreen the winner. A brief encounter with a death knight later, von Halfenstein was dead. Since there was really no room for a nine-hundred-foot-tall *anything* in my campaign world's ecology, I ruled that the effects were temporary and wore off after a day or so. All in all, it was a pretty awesome session. But the fallout... Afterwards, Jay was a bit butthurt over his character dying. He asked me why I sent a death knight after him, since it was obviously such an overpowered encounter. I explained my reasoning about wanting things to be resolved for next regular game, which he accepted with a little grumbling after I pointed out that it was still possible for both of the characters to escape if they'd worked together. So then he asked Adam why Valkreen didn't accept his olive branch. Adam said, "Well, I wanted to get a bag of holding." I facepalmed, and quickly tried to explain that wasn't the reward for killing Jay, it was the reward for surviving the whole ordeal. And that Jay's character received his rewards beforehand, I was just making sure Valkreen would get something out of the whole subplot, even if it had to wait for later. Didn't matter. As soon as Jay took the story to the rest of the group, they all turned against me. Apparently, I'd designed a lopsided encounter where it was impossible for Jay's character to win, and I was obviously playing favourites with all my rulings and blah blah blah. We didn't play that regular session because of it. The group did get back together after a mediated meeting between me and Jay. We didn't exactly see eye-to-eye, but I think he relented when the rest of the group started to get Adam's side of the story and realized things weren't quite as clear-cut. Jay's next character was a doppelganger thief and was just as annoying as the rest of his characters. Months later, Jay would leave the group when he moved to Florida to hook up with an older sugar mama, because that had more appeal to him than getting a job. I can't describe how much my games improved after he was gone. So that's the story of the player-created shambling mound kaiju that nearly destroyed my campaign. I know it was a long read, hopefully it was worth it. I have more stories to tell, but I'll leave it here for now.
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Aug 19, 2014 17:30
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Can i ask you what your other players enjoyed about Jay? I've had people like this in groups and if my picture of him is in line with reality, they kill most attempts at serious RPing. To be fair though the interaction at the bridge was awesome.
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Aug 20, 2014 17:18
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Did Floyd ever find his elf?
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Aug 20, 2014 17:50
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Yeah, I still have no idea why they liked Jay so much. I guess he was funny, in a scumbag way. Pretty sure he stole a lot of his jokes from Andrew "Dice" Clay, actually. Whatever, I still couldn't stand the guy. Floyd never found his elf, but he still got a happy ending. He became Valkreen's sidekick, and a permanent fixture of the party. Pretty much everyone loved Floyd (except Jay) right up until the end of the campaign - which never finished, just sort of petered out as everyone moved away or started LARPing or whatever. Something else I forgot to mention: Adam loved the temple. So much so, in fact, that event gave birth to a fascination for his character with the ancient civilizations of my campaign world, leading to Valkreen turning into something of an archeologist who'd dig up ancient relics not to sell them or add them to his inventory list, but "because they belong in a museum!" Adam was a pretty awesome player.
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Aug 20, 2014 18:48
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So I'm here with a request, inspired by a story in the D&D Next thread of a DM rolling 200 Perception checks for a crowd of peasants. Have you ever rolled straight 18s in an oldschool D&D game, had a Shadowrun test explode over and over and over again, or dealt with a terrible GM who demanded every single NPC on an entire starship have a chance to smell the gas leak? Hit me with your stupid dice stories where ridiculous shenanigans with dice - whether due to luck or terrible people at the table - made or broke an entire game. There's gotta be some great examples of this in the best/worst experiences back catalog.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:38
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Zombies' Downfall posted:So I'm here with a request, inspired by a story in the D&D Next thread of a DM rolling 200 Perception checks for a crowd of peasants. Well, I did play in a game called Monty Pythons Flying Dungeon (a convention game), where, after questing around the con to find real life parts to create a device to knock over a several pound rabbit, we had to roll dice for damage. All of them. And any others we could get. (I borrowed two dice bags from friends.) The rabbit had around 20000 HP, if I recall correctly.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:46
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Secondhand, but there's a game out there where a large enough critical hit is represented by rolling all the dice available and adding them together for damage. When this happened in a game shop, everyone came over and opened up new packages of dice just to see how high it could get. The result was a rogue's sneak attack backstab with the power to destroy a small moon.
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Aug 25, 2014 17:02
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In my first campaign, I was playing in a hybrid mashup of 1st and 2nd editions that the DM had put together. I was playing a human Fighter, and around this point, I think I was around 4th or 5th level. We're exploring an old keep, and we come across a beaded curtain with an enchantment on it. We figure out that you have to make a strength check in order to pass through, and if you fail, you take some token amount of damage. Basically, we each rolled a d6, and our Strength score determined the minimum that we had to roll to pass our check. My Fighter, with jacked up strength, needed to roll higher than a 2 on a d6 to pass through. I failed. Repeatedly. And when I say repeatedly, I mean that I went from full HP, to almost zero.
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Aug 25, 2014 17:08
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