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Had a great game of Lasers and Feelings. Captain Darcy was overtaken by brainworms, and we learned a lot about him: --His reputation as a conqueror was so great, we had to print out pamphlets for everyone we brought onto the ship. (The pamphlets were titled No, you're probably not being enslaved.) --His favored Lovemaking Music was either Thus Spoke Zarathustra or "Da Dip". --He punished underlings with bureaucracy. (The exploration officer, through supreme bravery, made his way from Janitor to Laundry Officer to Vice Asst. to the Underhead of File Filing). --He knew much about alien tactics: The Kru'oz alien scout ship was honor bound to face us in the game of Z-42, "The Bigger Battleship". --He was an un-courteous host: We had to resize, then discontinue the stocks because they didn't fit the 8-year-old refugee we brought on board. (She was named Zelda, based on the old video game, Save me the Waltz.) --He was a hero: According to his will and testament (that was a rewritten and heavily redacted love note to the Xenobiologist), he wanted to be fired at an enemy ship. This was a great coincidence since it also fit brainworm protocol. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Apr 25, 2023 |
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Feb 13, 2015 09:28
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Golden Bee posted:he wanted to be fired at an enemy ship. This was a great coincidence, since it also fit brainworm protocol. This is a great coincidence, because this is how I want to be "buried". I mean, really. How could anyone not?
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Feb 14, 2015 00:49
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DM's girlfriend cancels for the tenth week in a row, then wonders why I have so little enthusiasm for the game.
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Feb 16, 2015 19:28
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I was running an Adeptus Evangelion game, and one of the players decided he'd keep the lovely, lovely default Pallet Rifle around for comedy for the first battle. His first shots struck the Angel and did nothing, because the gun does d10 damage to a creature with likely DR 8-10 or more, even at low levels. Then the gun jammed. So he looks at me and goes. "You know, gently caress it. I throw the rifle at it." He hits the Core, bypasses the AT Field, and rolls a triple exploding 10 for damage, blowing the thing the gently caress up. The only Angel to ever be killed by the Pallet Rifle.
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Feb 16, 2015 19:31
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Writer Cath posted:DM's girlfriend cancels for the tenth week in a row, then wonders why I have so little enthusiasm for the game. I don't follow unless you're the DM or the girlfriend.
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Feb 16, 2015 20:58
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They're doing filler quests til the main character comes back!
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Feb 16, 2015 21:11
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Rannos22 posted:I don't follow unless you're the DM or the girlfriend. My friends, the DM and his girlfriend have cancelled game with little to no notice, for the tenth time in a row. On the plus side, I asked her for more than one hour's notice before cancellation. She called two hours ahead of game to cancel. Baby steps, right?
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Feb 16, 2015 22:42
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Writer Cath posted:My friends, the DM and his girlfriend have cancelled game with little to no notice, for the tenth time in a row.
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Feb 16, 2015 22:48
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No play in a month means the game is dead. It's your fault on this one, but let me know if you ever want to buy a bridge.
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Feb 16, 2015 23:15
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Ten times in a row!? How often are you supposed to play? If it is once a month you've been in D&D purgatory for nearly a year! Crazy you'd stick with them at all. Send them a pic of you flying double birds and get into a game, yours been dead like Uncle Bernie.
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Feb 17, 2015 03:28
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Golden Bee posted:No play in a month means the game is dead. It's your fault on this one, but let me know if you ever want to buy a bridge. I dunno, my current irl game has missed 3 weekly sessions in a row but it's been because someone gets wildly sick each week because it's crud season.
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Feb 17, 2015 03:33
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The natural conclusion of a game killed off my regular one for a good six months (with compounding factors). While I wouldn't instantly call it dead, because I know how easy it can be to become complacent in Not Doing Things, you should probably just be like "hey if we're doing dnd again can you just let me know?" and then find something else on tuesdays or try and arrange another time. Are they this flaky on other poo poo, or are you just dnd friends?
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Feb 17, 2015 04:00
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Golden Bee posted:No play in a month means the game is dead. It's your fault on this one, but let me know if you ever want to buy a bridge. Although that being said I'm definitely starting to feel complacency set it, it's a good thing I already had everything prepared or I'd probably have been like  . Gonna need one hell of a recap.
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Feb 17, 2015 09:05
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Yeah, agreed, my monthly game has been setback because we're all busy as gently caress and shows no signs of dying off.
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Feb 17, 2015 09:50
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I think the perfect day to game is Sunday. The pace of RP games just matches the feeling of Sundays. It also helps you forgot that responsibilities begin the next day.
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Feb 17, 2015 13:27
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Sneaky Fast posted:Ten times in a row!? How often are you supposed to play? If it is once a month you've been in D&D purgatory for nearly a year! Crazy you'd stick with them at all. Send them a pic of you flying double birds and get into a game, yours been dead like Uncle Bernie. We're supposed to play once a week. When I posted, I was much more pissed than I am now. The thing is that each of the excuses individually would be fine, but taken as a whole, they just piss me off. If they said "Hey, we need a break," it'd be fine. They are friends of mine outside of game, but they can be seriously clueless about other people's schedules.
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Feb 17, 2015 13:46
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Iceclaw posted:Yeah, agreed, my monthly game has been setback because we're all busy as gently caress and shows no signs of dying off. How do you even remember wtf is going on in a monthly game. If my games miss a week no one can remember what we were doing when we come back.
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Feb 17, 2015 20:17
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Last night I saw a reverse miracle during our Dark Souls themed D&D 4th edition campaign - our druid player got hit by this illusory special attack that made him think he was dying. Mechanically, he was making two saves a turn, a save versus death, and a save versus the illusion to realize that he was not actually dead. For those not familiar with 4th edition, with death saves once you fail three times you die, and the dc for the test is always 10, so a little over 50% chance on a d20, the same for the save versus illusion. So he would pretty much have to fail five tests in a row to die (since the death saves came before the illusion saves). He failed five tests in a row and 'died', for a certain value of dead (it being Dark Souls themed he was up and about and complaining a bit after the fight was over after having lost one healing surge permanently, the penalty for death in this campaign). That man has some absolutely horrendous luck with dice.
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Feb 17, 2015 20:37
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SpiritOfLenin posted:Last night I saw a reverse miracle during our Dark Souls themed D&D 4th edition campaign - our druid player got hit by this illusory special attack that made him think he was dying. Mechanically, he was making two saves a turn, a save versus death, and a save versus the illusion to realize that he was not actually dead. For those not familiar with 4th edition, with death saves once you fail three times you die, and the dc for the test is always 10, so a little over 50% chance on a d20, the same for the save versus illusion. So he would pretty much have to fail five tests in a row to die (since the death saves came before the illusion saves). He failed five tests in a row and 'died', for a certain value of dead (it being Dark Souls themed he was up and about and complaining a bit after the fight was over after having lost one healing surge permanently, the penalty for death in this campaign). That man has some absolutely horrendous luck with dice. A beholder once wiped out half our party because we failed a combined 15 saves against its death ray.
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Feb 17, 2015 20:44
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Sometimes the dice say that "nope, you can't do poo poo".
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Feb 17, 2015 20:52
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I once spent an entire fight dominated because saving throws. I kept dropping hints that someone could First Aid me but noooo.OneThousandMonkeys posted:How do you even remember wtf is going on in a monthly game. If my games miss a week no one can remember what we were doing when we come back.
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Feb 17, 2015 20:57
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:How do you even remember wtf is going on in a monthly game. If my games miss a week no one can remember what we were doing when we come back.
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Feb 17, 2015 21:17
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:How do you even remember wtf is going on in a monthly game. If my games miss a week no one can remember what we were doing when we come back. I record quite a lot of my games with a microphone on my iPod. It's really great to not only play them back a week or so before the next game when I'm going to and from work on the bus to get an idea of what happened, but remembering some of the hilarious table-talk is also great. They're also really fun to listen to years later when you've forgotten the game and you're bored on a plane trip or something. I absolutely could not have accurately built the complicated cosmology for my Smallville Gods game without the recording of the character creation session.
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Feb 18, 2015 00:04
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My Lovely Horse posted:I do session writeups. Sometimes I even remember to send them to my players! And then occasionally they read them. IC session writeups, footnoted by other players, was one of my favourite suggestions from the Earthdawn rulebook.
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Feb 18, 2015 01:13
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Most of the games I'm in recap things at the start, I'm usually pretty good (if kinda biased) at keeping stories straight in my head so I do the recaps for my own games, and for most others with 4-6 people we can collectively figure it out. Also most of us keep notebooks when GMing, for plot stuff and npc details, though slowly transitioning over to tablets as they become cheaper and we start earning real people money. For example last week in my Age of Worms game; the Ranger picked up her owlbear cubs and commissioned a necklace, the Pholtan Cleric picked up some books on Mechanus and the planes surrounding his deity's realm and got a bit lost in a political discussion between the Pholtan Judge and the High Priestess of St Cuthbert, and the Blood Knight looked into concentrating down the vast quantities of blood she had collected from murdering an rear end in a top hat Duke - only leads besides him were an alchemist who had skipped down, and a Wizard Professor looking into storing energy in physical form. This being Age of Worms, the Professor's research had progressed to storing in living things, as they had a much higher capacity than "simple" matter, and of course the living things with the greatest capacity are insects, or more specifically, worms! Alina, the Blood Knight, didn't quite pick up on this (or the reason the professor was hiding their face) until the worms started glowing green. Professor then threw the magic-charged worms at a student, to demonstrate their ability to channel the magic into a host, causing him to erupt into a massive lopsided fleshbrute thing which absorbed further magic cast at it - attempts to stab the professor reveal she has transformed halfway to a Worm that Walks, though not far enough to avoid being beheaded. Alina pushes the now-dormanet brute over and leaves, heading to the Temple of St Cuthbert because she misremembered the Cleric's deity. Which turns out to be exactly where the Cleric is, taking over that Temple due to an influx of worshippers, a happy accident! This kinda turned into a story, sorry. Our Archaologist Bard was absent for the session, and Ranger had to leave early so they didn't get to do much this session.
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Feb 18, 2015 04:55
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I really should do some kind of record keeping. One time I forgot an NPC's name, took a best guess at it, and he spent weeks with the wrong name before I looked at a map that still had his old token. It's a shame because his name was originally Harold and I could've been doing Harold/herald puns the whole time.
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Feb 18, 2015 05:26
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PublicOpinion posted:I really should do some kind of record keeping. One time I forgot an NPC's name, took a best guess at it, and he spent weeks with the wrong name before I looked at a map that still had his old token. It's a shame because his name was originally Harold and I could've been doing Harold/herald puns the whole time. That's when you have the real Harold show up and reveal the other was an imposter the whole time. Alternatively, multiple personalities or demonic possession.
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Feb 19, 2015 18:09
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Jurgan posted:That's when you have the real Harold show up and reveal the other was an imposter the whole time. Alternatively, multiple personalities or demonic possession. We ended up deciding that there was a switch up somewhere and Harold was antagonizing another party who pissed off Henry and it was one giant misunderstanding.
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Feb 19, 2015 18:22
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I tell my players to make some characters for a quick arena-style one shot with a bit of a story to familiarize them with the pathfinder adaptation of the Tome of Battle, and they come to me with: -Sexy the Punch Master -A goblin serial killer -Sgt. Yolo Noscope of His Majesties 420th Light Regiment of Foot There's a story brewing here.
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Feb 25, 2015 03:40
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This Dungeon World campaign of mine concluded more than a month ago and had plenty of great moments, I should post at least one. This one is about a particularly dramatic character death. We had a party of three and I was the GM. The Bard (Scarlet), the Fighter (Trevor) and the Ranger (Damian) had just crawled off the carcass of a mutant colossus that had turned an entire country to glass, killing it by slaying its master in actually a really cool boss fight. Damian actually died but hit his death saving throw, so he had a chit-chat with this setting's death god, who tethered his soul to the big villain they'd face next, a vampire queen who took the Norway-analogue country by turning all seven of its jarls. That was the set-up for the whole rest of the campaign, but they laid low after in a fishing village for several months to train and all that. (They bought like 60% of its real estate, but that's almost another story completely.) So they were riding high, an old army buddy of this same Ranger tagged along and taught them all about slaying vampires, as his character had beef with their queen and had a similar deal to Damian's. They were all ready to sneak into Norway and kill all seven of its governors, and in fact one came to their humble fishing village calling them out in the plaza with a firing line and cavalry in tow. In spectacularly good rolls and clever thinking they hosed him up soundly, so six more to go. How hard can it be? They found their way into the country, found a druidic uprising already in full swing, and made tracks to their next target. This jarl exiled Damian and all his squad in part of the whole vampire take-over, so it was a fight to look forward to, and plenty met them on the road there though nothing they couldn't handle. But, let's talk about Scarlet. She was a dwarven princess who wandered off to write a ballad about Trevor, this crazy strong Guts-like motherfucker, and she helped carry him along anywhere abject violence wouldn't. Her family was recently annihilated and her land reduced to a radioactive crater in the course of the campaign due to that colossus above, but her people had the chance to flee, and were in fact plentiful in Norway, so there was a great likelihood she would restore her royal family after the quest, and as time progresses she showed her chops as a leader. But still, after several months of playing, she was still working on that ballad from day one. They threw open the doors of the jarl's lakeside castle, it guards either dead or fleeing, and now they stood before a huge thrown room where the water seemingly had seeped into, a thin layer on the tile and running down the steps. Then I said "roll for Wisdom". Little did they know a gift from an alien being to the jarl was in that very lake, and now its psychic presence reached out to them. Of-loving-course Trevor fails this roll, and suddenly Scarlet and Damian have a zweihander-lugging hedge knight bearing down on them, getting in a good hit that sends Scarlet reeling. Behind them they brought some druids to back them up, but they had similar problems, and the two groups were split. Then the jarl came stepping down from his throne seeing all this, having an exchange with Damian as Scarlet sought to clear Trevor of his domination, carefully. The vampire jarl revealed with a flourish his passion in mortal life: ice skating. They were fighting an ice skating vampire. He was serious about that poo poo too, he had razor blades embedded into his arms and legs, and an aura of frost solidified the water as they touched them. Damian actually held his own pretty good against him, and the jarl couldn't even get in a hit as he played his cards right, but the battlefield was still pretty chaotic. Scarlet had a great plan to handle Trevor, one that I anticipated and thought should drat well work and everyone can go on their merry way killing the boss. DW's rules for the Bard has them granting buffs and heals by playing their chosen musical instrument, including an effect that will clear the mind of enchantments, which of course would apply here. Getting a 10 on a roll after mods is the best outcome, granting everything you wanted and keeping you safe. 7-9, in the case of Arcane Art which she was performing, would make it work, but "you draw unwanted attention or your magic reverberates to other targets affecting them as well, GM’s choice." So Scarlet finally decides to show her masterpiece, the ballad she wrote about Trevor's exploits so far, and use it to wake him from the spell of the lake monster. She had a magic guitar she found along the way, but she decided to make it real and use the upright bass she began their journey on, just for old time's sake. Her player rolls, and gets a 7-9. I thought, well, that jarl's right near her, and likely he'd want to keep Trevor impaired, so he takes a swing with one of his razor-bladed arms And he instantly takes her down to 0 HP, to my surprise. Scarlet's player makes a death saving throw. If you're familiar with how rolls in DW work, they use 2d6. He gets a snake-eyes. It's one of those moments that everyone yelps out after the dice fall, and I can't do much but cover my mouth and pretty much think about what I did. This is a character we've been with for months now, that has had plenty of awesome moments, that I had plans for and that everyone enjoyed. Now she dies, and I say a thing or two about how her head rolls off her shoulders after the strike, how the damp rock around her darkens and her red hair mats in the pinkish lake water, all in time for Trevor to wake and see. "What do you do?" I ask, and for a truly rare moment one of my player's says, "I don't know." They win the fight, in the end. The jarl was a glass cannon and that was his one hit in the fight. One blow from Trevor and his viscera's hanging from the chandeliers, and the lake tentacle beast breaks through a wall, stricken by the loss of its master. They regroup and kill it to, Scarlet's player whipping up a new character sheet so he can still be a part of the fight. In that castle they lost something they could never replace. Five more jarls to go.
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Feb 26, 2015 03:12
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Spekhogger posted:Scarlet drat, that's a hell of a story. Well played all around.
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Feb 26, 2015 15:19
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Writer Cath posted:My friends, the DM and his girlfriend have cancelled game with little to no notice, for the tenth time in a row. Seriously. If a game is canceled three times in a row it is a dead game.
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Feb 26, 2015 19:02
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SpiritOfLenin posted:Last night I saw a reverse miracle during our Dark Souls themed D&D 4th edition campaign - I have to ask. If you are basing your game off of Dark Souls why pick 4th edition? Shouldn't it be easy to die in a Dark Souls based game? Especially if the players are immortal in undeath?
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Feb 26, 2015 19:12
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God Of Paradise posted:I have to ask. If you are basing your game off of Dark Souls why pick 4th edition? I imagine because it easily meshes with the way Dark Souls does checkpoints and how that's an integral part of the style.
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Feb 26, 2015 19:32
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Edit: Sorry, wrong thread. I could have sworn this was the GM advice thread.
Foolster41 fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 21:49
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God Of Paradise posted:I have to ask. If you are basing your game off of Dark Souls why pick 4th edition? I don't know why the GM chose 4th Edition, but "dying easily" isn't the core theme he is exploring there - it's more the feel of the setting, player characters stricken with the curse of undeath and thrown into a world they barely understand. We only have the vaguest ideas of what's going on in the main plot of the campaign for instance, and we started the game with basically zero setting info ("your characters have the curse of undeath in a fantasy world, and you paid for a trip to this island in the middle of nowhere because it calls to you"). I think I vaguely remember the GM picking 4th edition as the rules system as he wanted to prove a point about it, about how versatile it is or something like that.
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Mar 2, 2015 00:11
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quote:I vaguely remember the GM picking 4th edition as the rules system as he wanted to prove a point about it, This should have been sirens going off in your brain to stay away as soon as he said it.
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Mar 2, 2015 00:18
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I don't know, I think 4e would work pretty well for some aspects of Dark Souls. Start by renaming "Second Wind" to "Estus Flask" and replace "unconscious" with "dead" except you still get back up just as easily.
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Mar 2, 2015 00:21
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:This should have been sirens going off in your brain to stay away as soon as he said it. He didn't mean to prove that it's bad, that's for certain - he was trying to prove something positive about it. The campaign's been fun so far.
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Mar 2, 2015 00:35
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Outback Liam Vs. People Who Don't Know What Kayfabe Is Some people are born to be hated. Those people tweet about Frank McBonds and say, hey, at least I'm not that dickhole. McBonds "resigned" last month from the Yankees after a controversial senate hearing. And after a tabloid scandal, it came out he was headed straight for Infinite Championship Wrestling! Outback Liam was the most over man in the company, after tag match last week where the monster Talos Carnassis tried to go into business for himself. Talos tried to choke Liam unconscious (because Liam, a comedy mastermind, embarrassed him (in a match that Talos was stinking up)). Despite the ending of the match (Liam heroically kicked Talos in the balls and the ref made a fast count), Liam was allowed to open the show live from Boston, Massachusetts! The Outbacker called out McBonds. McBonds came to the ring with a baseball bat that shot sparklers. He had a pinstriped singlet with a hat that said PEDs. He mispronounced Boston as Bus-Town. There was nearly a riot before he got into the ring. The crowd chanted gently caress You Frank. Liam insinuated rude things about Frank's mother; Frank explained that Boston had muddy water because the city was made of poo poo. The building shook with booing. A match hadn't started yet. From a gameplay perspective: Frank had a skill that gave him +1 momentum when he worked the audience, and a skill that gave +1 momentum when he rolled a 10. So even though he was a lovely, barely trained wrestler, the crowd hated Frank enough that it worked to his advantage. Liam introduced Frank's opponent, hometown jobber Johnny Young! Liam went to do guest commentary, and the match was competitive: unfortunately, Frank thought Johnny was making him look bad. So Frank started punching Johnny, for real. And started cracking ribs. Liam ran in for the save and tried to hit Frank with the gimmicked bat. It exploded into sparks (dazzling the fans), but Frank toughed it out and no sold it. The confused Liam fled backstage. --- Talos and Liam's tag team partner, Evan Hark, also had matches at this point. Talos was a fan of McBond's baseball career and hatched a plan to attack Liam which they, both being assholes, agreed to. Talos, already limping from a match a few weeks ago, hurt his arm trying to throw a local jobber. (Most of which he'd earned himself; the big man had little traction with the crowd and overdid it). The bookers, fearing for his safety but wanting his heat, put him in guest commentary for the final match. But the match was rebooked! Instead of facing his technico opponent, Liam was booked against McBonds! The match started well. Liam could walk McBonds through basic, week 1 wrestling bits. Frank would wait on Liam's lead, "dusting off his cleats" and playing to the crowd's hatred. It all lead to a spot where the Australian leaped over the Yankee, turned around, and hit him with a baseball slide! The crowd exploded. As Frank recovered his wind, Liam taunted Talos: first a limp, then arm pain, then a double arm pain. Frank recovered and, in a spot of bravado, tried to choke Liam with the ropes. He'd seen the move done, so he put his feet on the back of Liam's neck. When Liam was trying to knock the athlete off his neck, Talos SLAMMED an announcer chair into his skull. Liam was concussed. Basically, everything went to poo poo. Frank stumbled into the ref, knocking him down. Liam told him to stall, which he did, grabbing a microphone and listing Yankees' world series victories. Meanwhile, Liam's tag team partner SPRINTED to the ring, and hit a running dropkick to Talo's head. In an "innocent accident", he made Talos stumble backward, the chair slamming into Talos's neck. The Monster, Talos Carnassis, was wished luck in his future endeavors. Back in the ring, Liam stumbled his way to the finish. Originally, Talos was supposed to cause a DQ. Instead, he sent Frank under the ring to get a bat, and when the later swung it, Liam pointed it out to the ref for a DQ victory. The Yankee Slugger ended up charging the mound, taking out Liam and his partner. McBonds got jeered like he was the second coming of Bill Buckner. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Apr 25, 2023 |
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Mar 2, 2015 07:40
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