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overlordbunny posted:For those of us who are unfamiliar with the system, what does this part mean? Not involved in his game, but IIRC: Vampires in V:TR and V:TM are supernaturally afraid of and vulnerable to fire (rotshreck = "Red Fear" in German), and can lose control to their bestial impulses when confronted with it. Paths are a philosophy that vampires can try and follow to replace conventional mortal morality. Paths / Morality will degenerate to the point of the vampire being permanently feral if you lose too much control or are too evil/transgressive of your Path, so Path Degeneracy rolls are a bad thing to critically fail. E: F,B. Sorry to poach that.
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Nov 1, 2016 03:55
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Spiderfist Island posted:Not involved in his game, but IIRC: Vampires in V:TR and V:TM are supernaturally afraid of and vulnerable to fire (rotshreck = "Red Fear" in German), and can lose control to their bestial impulses when confronted with it. Paths are a philosophy that vampires can try and follow to replace conventional mortal morality. Paths / Morality will degenerate to the point of the vampire being permanently feral if you lose too much control or are too evil/transgressive of your Path, so Path Degeneracy rolls are a bad thing to critically fail. No worries, after I posted I realized I probably wrote far too many  so this more succinct post is good to have
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Nov 1, 2016 04:00
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I'm looking forward to finally getting back into VtM this month. My first group wrapped up, I had posts about it throughout the thread. The second campaign got dropped because we had too many people skipping it in favor of the Dystopia Rising larp, so, lack of attendance. I'm joining up with one that's been running for awhile in a few weeks, when I get home, so hopefully I'll have some good stories. With the Halloween season over, hopefully my buddy will get Scion back together so I can post more of that as well.
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Nov 1, 2016 15:27
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Cuchulain posted:I love this goddamn game. I need more.
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Nov 1, 2016 20:39
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I have a really bad cat-piss story that is tangentially related to tabletop, but I'm not sure if I should post it here. It's more about meeting some people at a local gamer group, and everything just kind of falling apart. Again, no gaming happens, that night was actually supposed to be a Rocky Horror thing, but it's one of the local gaming groups and its awful. Really awful. Is this okay to post here or do I just find some other thread to post it under? I know  is a thing, but I just want to ask.
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Nov 2, 2016 01:24
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This thread seemed kind of slow to me lately, so unless it's likely to cause a massive argument, I'd say go for it.
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Nov 2, 2016 01:29
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We had a good conclusion to our Hunter game a couple weeks ago. The premise of the game was that we were all hobos in the 1930's American South. the GM asked everyone's characters to have some reason to be transient. We roved from town to town, usually riding the rails, and occasionally killed monsters when we got there. We were pretty incompetent (being basically Tier-1 Hunters with no outside knowledge of monsters to draw from besides our characters' direct experience). So the game was a lot of trial-and-error, and daring ambushes using a lot of Molotov cocktails. I played a folk singer who was a combination of Tommy from O Brother Where Art Thou (a kid who sells his soul to "play the guitar real good") and Woody Guthrie (an actual American folk singer and socialist troubadour). I went ahead and named him Tommy Guthrie. His songs used hobo slang to encode messages to other hunters about monsters, and formed a sort of 1930's version of Hunter Net. Being folk songs, they transmitted via radio and word-of-mouth easily, and they hid the messages well in both lyrics and hobo slang. It worked really well. And then he died. Tommy was lovely at combat and was a mortal in a World of Darkness game. I knew the risks, and I dealt with it. But the group had been taking up his personal mission as what was increasingly the main quest: to find the "devil" that he sold his soul to, and bring him to justice. The more the group learned about the supernatural, the more it became clear that, a) Tommy really did have no soul (he thought he was cheating some whacko and didn't believe in souls... until he lost his), and b) the "Devil" was probably a vampire or wizard who tricked Tommy. But then Tommy died right before we tracked the sucker down. By the time we found the Devil, I was playing a new character. She was a nurse as a teenager in The Great War, and fled her native Germany when Nazism got scary in the 1930's. So she was an illegal immigrant and hid her identity. She was quiet and posed as a teenage boy so as to avoid trouble while riding the rails. (The GM was also not a douchebag about this and wasn't going to make anything of this despite it being a WoD game, so this was mostly for character flavor). I wanted to make a doctor to help the group with their injuries, because the GM was running a gritty, realistic system for damage. Basically, lethal and agg damage could kill us due to infections, as could things like exposure. So we needed a medical professional. I figured a nurse was probably a more responsible bet in 1938 than an actual doctor for administering medicine. So the group at the end consists of:  My German nurse, who despite having a thick accent and trying to stay inconspicuous, is one of our two de facto social characters, in addition to being the party healer. A grizzled veteran of The Great War, whose experience there convinced him of things that go bump in the night. As a skilled marksman, he is our shooter. An Appalachian miner who found a monster deep in a coal mine and killed his whole crew in order to bury the monster in the mine shaft with them. He is extremely religious, and considers hunting both his penance and God's specific plan for making him kill all his friends. He is our demolitions specialist, and is decent with a gun as well. A burglar who saw one too many things during his misadventures and now knows that supernaturals are real. He is less into hunting for the crusade and more in it out of self-preservation and material gain. He is specialized in hand-to-hand combat, but is also a craven coward. A con man who stole a fortune and lost it to the mafia, and his now hunting/being hunted by the mafia in a supernaturally-tinged game of cat and mouse. He is decent in hand-to-hand, but is mostly our other social character. (He handled all the lies, and the nurse handled the more genuine interactions.)As the game is approaching its final plot, about 3ish games from the end of the campaign, the miner's player has to drop out due to scheduling stuff. But he gives the GM some instructions and lets the GM run him for the last few games. This becomes important. Keep it in mind. So we track down The Devil in Dallas, Texas. Dallas, though, is a hellscape. The center of the city is barricaded and appears to be besieged by two allied factions. One faction are militant leftist working class people and hobos, and one faction are more moderate and bourgeoisie-type people. They have teamed up because some rear end in a top hat has taken over the city and had been shipping "undesirables" off into the dust bowl to the west en masse, where they never return. He was also putting explosive collars on people to control them and using other anachronistic technology that shouldn't exist in 1938. This all stopped when the city revolted, but the ruler barricaded himself inside. We find ourselves in the middle of this, and the weird tech is enough to pique our interest as hunters. We settle on a plan to help the factions take Dallas back, but we're concerned that the more violent faction is going to take the tech and do damage elsewhere with it. Being irresponsible hunters, we decide to ignore our misgivings and be the murder hobos we literally are. We succeed in taking Dallas, at great cost, and several of our party is wounded. In the aftermath of the battle, my character immediately goes to work healing the wounded in her makeshift triage clinic. The rest of the party is around as well, assisting with clean up and bring people to and from the clinic. It is in the middle of this that The Devil finally shows up. He is a southern gentleman: white suit, bolo tie, smooth Georgia drawl, speaks in Foghorn Leghorn-esque folksiness, and is a perfect gentleman. So naturally half the group attacks him on sight once we figure out who he is. The burglar readies to attack, but steps back when the vet tries to stick The Devil with morphine. He fails badly, and finds himself dosed. The burglar pauses, and the miner simply leaves. The rest of the group (with the vet now unconscious on a gurney) hears him out. He claims that the situation in Dallas was his fault, indirectly. He made a deal with someone else, further to the west, and that person has gone rogue and found a way to renege on his end of the bargain. The weird tech is coming from that guy, and the rear end in a top hat ruling Dallas is his puppet. The tech is.... costly, hence the guy in Dallas sending all those people west who never return. So we ask: why not just deal with this yourself? You are supposedly The Devil, and you started all this, so why not pull it all down? His answer is that the guy he made a deal with is using magic to hem him out. He can't stop the tech directly except by bringing down the guy on the other end of the deal. But he can't do that because he can't physically get at the guy out west. He needs us to do that for him. He suggests using the virtual army in place in Dallas to assault the city his bargainer has made for himself out west. He also suggests using all the leftover tech to help in the assault. Lastly, he claims that the magic his cheater is using is causing the dust bowl, and it will get worse indefinitely unless he is stopped. So the pressure is on to fix his mistake. The Devil offers help with all that. He offers to buy our souls in exchange for the power necessary to break into the city out west and bring down the guy he made a bad deal with. Of course, we all give him hell over this, but he is totally serious. As the nurse and the con man start seriously entertaining his idea, the burglar is not impressed. He is sticking to his cowardice, and in this case it has finally made him more, rather than less, moral than the rest of us. He tries to remind us that somebody else selling his soul was the whole reason we were here to kill this guy, not to cut more deals with him. And a similar deal has put The Devil in this pickle, too. But the benefits are too great, and the cost too low. As I put it as the nurse, "I've been through the Great War, so I'm probably going to hell already. So I might as well do some good here and now with what time I have left." She bargains for the power to heal anyone, instantly. She also asks for a considerable amount of money, since healing isn't going to do anyone any good after all of this if I just starve to death on the road somewhere. She gets it all for the low, low price of one human soul. The con man bargains for the ability to be the greatest thief in the world, and for a magic knife. He gets both, for the same price. It's about then that the miner steps back into the tent. He is carrying a lit stick of dynamite. He has heard everything. He hurls the dynamite and we all hit the deck. Bear in mind that this conversation had been taking place in a corner of the nurse's makeshift triage clinic for the battle of Dallas. We are surrounded by wounded hobos and residents of Dallas. With the same logic as I asked for money in the transaction, I decide to hit the deck rather than save a patient or two. The new gift isn't going to help anyone if I'm blown to pieces all over the clinic. That would cost me some Integrity (morality) later, but so be it. The explosion deals all of us some agg damage, and musses The Devil's hair. He looks... more nonplussed than annoyed or angry. I rush to put my new gift to the test and save some of the dying wounded. the con man and the burglar go to work trying to stop the miner from getting out another stick of dynamite from the bag he is also carrying. He has lost his mind. He is reciting Biblical passages and is looking straight through the party. In the middle of all of this commotion, the vet wakes up. He's hurt from the explosion, and confused. He sees one party member (the miner) trying to kill The Literal Devil, and two party members trying to stop him. So he does the logical thing: he attacks the con man and the burglar. I pipe up on my next action and tell him to attack the miner, that he's lost his mind. He believes me more than them, since the nurse is not a literal criminal like the others, and he halts. We kill the miner, a former PC and party member, right there in the triage clinic. Meanwhile, the nurse has been flipping the script on triage: she is going straight to the most far-gone but still living patients, and touching them. The first one heals up completely and instantly. The nurse feels dizzy immediately afterward, but is otherwise alright. I was worried the deal would create the kind of healing magic in Carnivale, which doesn't heal as much as it moves life around. But, nope. Complete healing, free and clear. I can't heal myself, but anyone else that isn't dead is fair game. The nurse cures about eight people before she just about passes out from the exhaustion put on by the magic. All of those healed are rightly stunned and several of them already think she is a saint, or an angel. They bear her onto a gurney so she can rest. I may have started a murder hobo cult.  The miner is dead, too far gone to heal. He probably wouldn't want it, anyway. The coward burglar, to his credit perhaps, also refuses healing. He is sticking to his guns and doesn't go anywhere near any of us, but he stays in the group (if only to make sure we don't go nuts). The vet notices this and asks about it. We made the deals while he was unconscious from the morphine, so we explain it to him. He gets pissed at first, and then I tell him the nurse's reasoning: The Great War damned everyone in it, so you might as well make the best of a bad situation. He didn't know she was in the war, and his character has the epiphany that explains why she's so good with sewing up human bodies in lovely situations. He just smiles and says, "I just thought you were good at sewing. But I agree." He makes his deal, and gets magic power (mechanically, he got a partial Mage template, but he pays in his life span instead of in Mana. His players is a big fan of Mage.) Horribly, the nurse can't cure herself. Everyone else is fine, as she is able to recover and cure them over the following hours and days. But she can't heal herself, and her wounds from the battle of Dallas and the dynamite are getting infected. I made some rolls to treat the infection, but it wasn't good enough with what was left of the medical equipment after the battle. I had to make a choice: take a chance I would recover around the coming final battle, or amputate the arm. I decided to take the safe option and cut off the arm. The nurse didn't want to have sold her soul to be a miracle healer only to die of an infection days later. She was able to coach the rest of the group through the procedure and enough of them had a dot or two in medicine lying around that they didn't screw it up. The GM gave me two checks: one for the mental trauma of having one's arm amputated with very little anesthesia, and one for blood loss and losing consciousness. My poor nurse passed out, but she did not cry out beforehand. worldofdarkness.txt Minus one arm but feeling much better, the nurse and company rallied the troops to assault the magic machine city in the dustbowl to the west. We loaded angry militant hobos onto the trains as a way to get our main fighting force into the city, and the PCs took an elite group in a box van around the side of the walled city. We figured out how the bomb collars worked, disabled them, and fitted broken ones to all the train hobos. Our hope was that they would be able to get off the train undetected, and then ambush their "captors" from the inside. From there, it was basic commando tactics for them: chaos, confusion, and destruction. Their job was to be a diversion for us, who would make our way toward the center of the city, where the guy who cheated The Devil lived. To make an (already) long story short, the guy was technically dead. The Devil killed him when he cheated his way out of the deal, but he used the techno-magic power The Devil gave him to cheat death too. But all that power was costly. Keeping himself alive cost a lot of other lives, and souls. He started having hobos and other people no one would miss shipped in so he could strip them of their souls to keep his death-cheating magic alive. That magic was also creating and spreading the dustbowl for hundreds of miles around, and counting. Basically, he was a technomantic lich, and had industrialized human sacrifice. *~Metal as gently caress~* Our vet used his magic carefully up until the end, knowing that each use of magic would supernaturally age him. But when it came to bringing the bad guy's tower down, he busted out some major Matter magic and collapsed the whole thing at a weak point. Much to my surprise, he didn't turn into that Nazi from the end of The Last Crusade, but he did age about 20 years in an instant. The lich had just about completely lost his mind, and was... difficult to reason with. The nurse did her best at talking him into standing down (for the sake of saving the lives of our army, not his), but to no avail. We put an ol' fashioned beatdown on the broken down old gently caress. We lost a couple of hobos but it was otherwise pretty one-sided. I don't think the GM expected us to bring the tower down around him before initiating combat. In the aftermath, we were left with a city full of mad science tech, in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and a small army of hobos in on the hunt. The GM intended this to be an implied start to Task Force: VALKYRIE, the Tier-3 Hunter group in the modern day. I thought that was a rad ending, even if it was little random. I mean, there were a bunch of sessions about this anachronistic tech, so it wasn't out of nowhere. It did provide an interesting way for the PCs to "retire" and that group to have a pretty awful secret at it's heart in this version of history. That's the way I like Hunter: you have to become a monster in some way to beat them. Sometimes you have to sell your soul in one way or another, in this case literally.
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Nov 2, 2016 01:39
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Here's my story. It's kind of not about gaming, but the people surrounding gaming. I haven't had time to edit or let this sit, so you're getting it raw. On that note, if it's really that lovely, I will totally get rid of it if asked. I hope it doesn't e/n up the place. Without further ado: NO GAMING IS BETTER THAN BAD GAMING A Cautionary Tale for Goon and Goonette Alike My husband and I recently moved to a new city. It was, of course, very exciting for us, and we had promised ourselves that we were going to make every effort to be more social, as our social life in our last place had been very lacking. When we were invited by a friend to tag along for a potluck, we were naturally thrilled. Our first opportunity to make new pals in our new hometown! Now, this group, as we gathered on the way there, was some sort of nerd group that met monthly to do different fun things. Sometimes it would be card games, sometimes video games, and other times just getting together to eat. This time was supposed to be a screening of Rocky Horror along with food and beer. My friend had only been to it once, and had mixed feelings, so I had no idea what to expect. (It eventually ended up being The Worst, but I digress.) I was both excited and apprehensive, and, having nothing else to bring at the last minute, grabbed a big ol' cookie cake and some cider, since I figured there might be a couple of folks like me that aren't really into beer. A guy in a wolf shirt greets us at the door, jokingly demanding a toll. We show him the goods and we're in. I take a quick glance around while asking where to put our donations and my heart sinks. I'm literally the only woman. That's okay, put on your big-girl panties, Dick, you've been the only girl in the room before. Maybe some other ladies will show up later? (spoiler alert: they didn't) Aside from that, everything else seems fine. The apartment doesn't seem that bad, aside from being pretty old and being littered with horrible nerd poo poo like statues of dragons and fairies. It doesn't smell, and looks fairly clean. Seating was at a premium, since no one has a couch that seats 15 at any given time, but that's okay, because the kitchen seemed like the place to be. So, like smart people, we head in there and grab a plate, since that's what we're told to do. Beer has been handed out and everything seemed okay, except for one guy who's just sitting on the floor next to the stove drinking with his hoodie up. Knowing nerds, I didn't bother him because he may have just been shy or eccentric, or both. ...He was neither nor both. At first things seem to be going pretty well. This 18-year-old with really long hair has struck up a conversation with my friend, who is a programmer and IT professional. They're talking tech, and while it's apparent that the kid is full of poo poo (as folks that age are wont to be.) I figure they're getting along alright. I grab some admittedly pretty good chili, and ask who made it, striking up a conversation with two guys I will call the Witch and the Wolfshirt. It was the Wolfshirt's mother who made the chili because, frankly, even if any of the dudes present had a girl/boyfriend, they were all loving bachelors to the core. I give her my compliments, and somewhere along the lines of the conversation, we start talking DnD, and it somehow comes out that Wolfshirt is a furry, because of course he is. "That's alright," I say with a laugh, "At least you don't think you're like some million year old dragon or something!' Witch's eyes light up, "We have a dragon guardian!" The only thing I can do is stare, because what? "Over there," he points at one of the statues. I laugh again, thinking he was joking, "He's cute, but he doesn't look a million years old yet!" "Nah, the spirit it houses is only 25,000. He's actually quite young for a dragon." Witch explains, nodding sagely, "He keeps the bad spririts away from us. It works, I'm not kidding." Laughter dies in my throat. He's not kidding. I shouldn't have said anything else and just changed the topic, but I was somewhat curious, "Oh, are you a part of one of the more "witchy" religions? I think I have an aunt into that stuff." He grins, nodding, and is absolutely elated to tell me all the gently caress about it, mentioning how there's way more kinds of witches than just wicca and how happy he was that I didn't use that term and showing me his altar and crystals and what-have-you. I just sort of go with it, because it's his house and I didn't want to be rude, but sometimes eyeball my husband, hoping he would rescue me from this. (Disclaimer- I don't care what you believe in, witches or fairies or even dragons, since it doesn't really affect me in a meaningful way, but frankly, don't tell me about it. Especially not your dragon spirits. Or Jesus. Or that Latino dude you know named Jesus. Well, maybe tell me about him if he's your pal. I like friends.) Though my husband did not rescue me from Witch Tales: boring edition (later citing that he saw me looking at crystals, which I like and think are pretty, so he assumed I was having a good time), I manage to make my escape and settle down somewhere with my sketchbook. One of the other guys notices, and brings his out, and we're just fine, trading tips about art and talking about what we like to draw, etc. The party seems to settle into a few groups, me with art group, my husband talking about tabletop with some other guys, group of music nerds, etc. I start wondering when or if we're actually going to watch the movie when it happens: An unholy screech splits the night, a yowling like stepping on a thousand cats, and the guy from the kitchen just rockets through the livingroom, barely loving touching the floor he's running so fast. "GET THE DOOR, GET THE DOOR, GET THE DOOR!" Witch is shouting. I want to say it was Wolfshirt or LongHairedKid that manages to react fast enough, but I'm not even sure anymore. I'm flabbergasted as to why we're getting the door, but the door is got. "DON'T LET HIM OUT!" There is what can best be described as a kerfuffle as Hoodie tries to wrench the door open and whichever nerd it is that has it refuses to let him. Witch takes charge of the situation and half-hauls the guy upstairs. Aside from some muffled talking from upstairs, it's dead silent. None of us who didn't live in the house wanted to say it, but the unspoken "what the gently caress was that?" hung in the air. As conversation picked back up, I hask LongHair, "Uh, is your pal gonna be okay?" "Oh, he's alright, he just thinks he belongs in the garbage." "What? That's super sad! Maybe we sould get him a psych-" "No, no, no," he explained, still entirely unperturbed by this turn of events, "He literally thinks he belongs in the dumpster. He likes to go sit out there when he gets drunk because it's a dark cramped space." My expression must have belied my inward feelings, because he elaborated: "He likes to get naked and sit in the dumpster. He's an unmedicated schizophrenic and that's what he does." At this point, I hear another yell as Witch is still trying to calm him down. Upset is the understatement of understatements for how I feel here. "He needs to get treatment!" I say naively, "I'm sure we can find a doctor- hell, the ER has to take-" "He won't go," says an older dude, the guy I would later learn owned the apartment. "Won't... go?" "Yeah, he won't go, and we can't force him to." the older man says. This takes a moment to sink in. I was feeling my chest tighten up, a precursor to what I knew would be a fairly bad panic attack. Things take a little turn for the personal here, so please forgive me: I have Bipolar 2, a form of Bipolar that is characterized by hypo or "small" manias. I was very lucky to recieve treatment when I was young, and there was an awful time in which I could afford neither medicine nor help. I remember it very well, and while it is thankfully over and my illness is once again well-controlled, it was an awful time, and I was very sick both mentally and physically (if you want to be depressed, look up the withdrawals for certain SSRI medications. They are literally worse than those for heroine.) Seeing this poor boy with an uncontrolled mental illness made me both incredibly sad and incredibly furious. While I would like to stay mostly a-political in this post, I would like to say that things like this are part of why we need socialized health care and sweeping mental health care reform, because that kid most certainly didn't have the money to care for himself. My anger at what I saw, and still see, as an injustice made me act a touch impertinantly. "And alcohol exacerbates his illness, I assume?" The old guy nodded. "Then why the hell do you let him drink?!" I demanded, trying really hard not to yell. "Well," the guy said, "he's gonna get it anyways. I'd rather him drink here where I know he's safe than go off and get hurt. There's no way to stop him." No way to stop him?! No way to stop him?! How about don't have parties where it's suggested you bring alcohol?! How about having no alcohol in the house?! This person purported to care about Hoodie, but still allowed this to go on? That's not caring about someone, that's enabling them! I didn't say any of this. I wanted to, but instead, I bit my tongue so hard I tasted copper and looked to my companions. My friend was off in the corner checking out some music one of the guys had made, while my husband was still chatting away to Wolfshirt, seeing if he could maybe plan a DnD night or something. Not wanting to ruin their fun time (though, looking back on this, I maybe should have freaked out way more than I did) and not wanting to make a scene, I swallowed both a panic medication and my misgivings. Surely we could go soon. Witch comes downstairs, announcing that Hoodie was sleeping it off. Everybody but me seemed to relax, and I was starting to wonder if I was the only normal person there. Surely the people I came with were as put off as me, right? Surely, surely we could go soon. About an hour of regular nerd-chat ensued, with me surreptitiously looking to my friend every so often, trying to catch his attention, then Hoodie comes back downstairs, seemingly a little sobered up, wandering around and looking for where he put his backpack. It's beeen a good while now, so I ask if we were going to still do Rocky Horror. Yes, yes, they say. Rocky Horror is still on. In the spirit of conversation, I mention that I'm one of those wierdos that actually like the suquel better, not actually mentioning it by name for whatever reason. "Oh, Shock Treatment?" says the older fellow I was about to say yes when Hoodie shrieks "Shock treatment?! No, I'm not going back to the hospital! I'll never go back!" My heart breaks. Even though he was still barely lucid, he was legitimately terrified. He really didn't want to go back to the hospital, and after several affirmations of that fact, old guy manages to break through to him that we were talking about a movie. He wanders off, mumbling about how lovely shock treatment was and how he'd never do it again. I only noticed later that he had another beer in his hand. Again, things resume, but now interspersed with patent-pending Schizo-Breaks. As goons, I know you've heard the term "word salad". It's when someone with schizophrenia or a similar illness can't actually string words together to form even semi-coherent sentences. You've seen it in stuff like the perennial favorite, Time Cube, and on lots of different conspiracy websites. However, have you ever heard it? Like, not from someone reading one of those sites, like the F Plus or something, but real-time, an actual human brain pretty much just breaking down and shorting out. It's horrible. It's the kind of thing that would be funny, removed from the situation, but watching a person come apart like that is gut-wrenching. At least, it was to me. That's the thing that I think bugged me the most. Everyone, especially the people that actually lived in this house, just went about their business, acting as if it were perfectly normal. It was like I was the only sane person in the room with a sense of empathy or responsibility. I hate to end things on such a down note, but the fact is, once my panic medication started kicking in, the night was kind of just this din of misery and wanting to run away. There wasn't anything else really memorable aside from Hoodie pleading that he just wanted to go for a walk outside, and LongHair gathering five bucks in change to try and buy a spliff off his next door neighbor, which didn't end up working out anyway. Oh, and old guy getting mad and charging upstairs like a child when one of the music nerds was demoing some of his (actually pretty decent) tracks for the rest of us. He had to be talked down by Witch, who was still trying to keep Hoodie on some semblance of rails. Oh, yes, and the 18-year-old long hair mentioning that Witch was his "master" and Witch pulling that card on him later when he wanted some booze. So, uh, that happened. We eventually managed to bail when I finally grabbed my husband's ear and whispered, "I can't do this anymore, dude." His response? He and our friend had wanted to leave the whole time, but it looked like I was having fun talking to the other artists, so they didn't want to ruin my good time. We later decided, quite unanimously, that we were, in fact, not going to be gaming with that group later. Moral of the story? Communication is important, and sometimes No Gaming is much better than Bad Gaming. (We did call an adult welfare agency to look into Hoodie's well-being, giving them all the information we had.)
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Nov 2, 2016 01:49
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Railing Kill posted:The con man bargains for the ability to be the greatest thief in the world, and for a magic knife. He gets both, for the same price. Now this is the point where I thought you were going to end up conning the devil and steal your souls back.
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Nov 2, 2016 05:52
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DicktheCat posted:A lot of Wow, that is pretty hosed up I hope you guys find a sane gaming group and that the one guy gets the help he needs
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Nov 2, 2016 06:47
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Tunicate posted:Now this is the point where I thought you were going to end up conning the devil and steal your souls back. That's t I thought too. The con man's payer definitely tried it, but even being the best thief in the world wasn't enough. Mechanically, his gift was that the GM gave him ten dice automatically for every action that was thief-related. The ten dice weren't enough to out-con The Devil. I guess that was appropriate, given that he was only the "best thief on Earth," so that wouldn't necessarily best The Devil. I should note that The Devil did turn out to be a supernatural, albeit a souped-up one that was meant to be more of a plot device than someone we could beat into the ground like everything else. He was an archmage who used Death magic to take people's souls and use them to fuel these insane gifts. The GM left it unclear whether the devil act was deliberate or if the guy was just nuts and really thought he was The Devil. He was also not actually a southern gentleman. He was apparently some guy from Cleveland. He just liked playacting.
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Nov 2, 2016 12:10
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If I were the thief, I would have at least tried: "Well, we're on earth right now, ergo, I should be the best thief. If I am not, then the Devil has failed to uphold his end of the bargain, and I demand my soul back."
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Nov 2, 2016 12:21
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"I'd prefer that he'd do it here..." always sounds so magnanimous, until it's actually happening. Bits of that sound way too familiar. I'm sorry you went through that, and I hope Hoodie actually got some help. 
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Nov 2, 2016 13:05
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Spiders and Burials Right so, as a quick recap before I get into this, last time my rogue stumbled into helping a king solve some problems that he had created. I had met up with the rest of the group, solved an anagram puzzle which gave me an exp boost into the next level, and we had all been given a bunch of crappy toys or other junk as we left the city, which would undoubtedly become our One True Weapon (tm) in the fight against evil or whatever. Also a shield was up around the city so the moment we left, we could never return. Until we fixed everything, anyway. lso we got loaded down with some NPC guards, and an NPC librarian lady who was the GM's pretty face and storytime conduit, or whatever. Thankfully, she mostly stayed out of things, so not a horrible DMNPC at least. Just an infobot, with an anime face. So we left for the elven forest. On arrival it was obvious the place was deserted, and something was probably wrong. We set up camp, and then went exploring. first thing we found was a clearing with a pool. Turned out it had healing properties, or whatever, so naturally we took turns (ladies first), and then carried on. As a group, we had: My rogue. Two paladins Something else (a cleric maybe??) And some sort of special Pathfinder class involving psionics and flame and whatever with grappling. I don't remember, so it's a special snowflake. As we explore further, we come across some elven encampments. Naturally we start looting the place, because it's deserted, and everything looks like it's been dead for a long time. I get a few bits, an extra weapon, some other odds and ends. Our snowflake gets some sort of magical boost, and I think we found a spellbook or whatever. We don't find much else, but it's clear the place has been emptied of living elves. we return to camp to find most of the guards dead, and our infobot hiding. We fix things up, and head out to collect her. eventually we find her, and we also stumble onto some sort of magical lake. Which sprouts some sort of demi-goddess or whatever, who immediately tells us a bunch of the elves are dead, evil stuff is in the forest, please clear it out, also you're all dicks for robbing the dead, especially the rogue, and if I didn't need your help I'd kill you. We bow and scrape and play nice or whatever (I'm faking it of course, because I'm the drat rogue) and leave to go deal with the new side quest. we drop one of our PCs who is now an NPC because they need to go do things at the camp, along with infobot and the last remaining guard, and get exploring the rest of the forest. It gets darker, and we come across a battle scene involving lots of dead elves (all with wrecked gear, so nothing useful here), and some dead spiders. More spiders show up, so we murder them, and then I insist we bury the dead because I'm paranoid about the water elf lady. The paladins readily agree to this, so the GM handwaves it, and we carry on. Eventually we come across some sort of ruin, and we make our way inside, heading down because that's where evil usually is, right? As we make our way through the caves, we come across some kobolds chatting. I've got a few possible language choices left, but the GM won't let me quickly pick draconic, so at most we figure they're arguing or whatever. We surprise them and kill them, starting a bigger fight with a kobold sorceror, and I think some knock-off driders (because I guess if they were proper driders we'd be dead, right?). We manage to kill and loot them (because if the water lady has a problem with this, then who cares, they're not elves), and discover some sort of widget that gives us a new direction to go to find the next piece of the world-spanning puzzle for the quest we're on. There's a sizeable overworld to explore, and this was just the first stop. We make our way back to camp and are told that it seems as if we've lifted some of the evil that was on the forest. So there's that. Meet the (spirit) Cliches Which is where the third session picked up - we were down one paladin, and the other one might also need to run, and the other person (cleric??) was also leaving too, leaving just my rogue, and the snowflake to carry on if our paladin left (he did). We had made it back to the camp, when our One True Items started doing shenanigans. The Paladin had something which warped us into somewhere. Okay I'm a little fuzzy, but I think it was some sort of trial involving swords, the spirit of his Item, a shield ("aegis"?), and some talking followed by some sort of medieval sports faire type stuff where the paladin had to prove his worth. I could be wrong, but that seems right. I didn't really contribute much here, as each of these scenarios ending up being primarily about the character involved and the spirit of his or her item, while the rest of us shouted suggestions from the sidelines. As we exited that dreamscape, our paladin coughed up a marble, and his item vanished. Then we got dragged into the snowflake's dreamscape. I remember this one, because the GM played it off much better. See the snowflake had gotten the "Witchblade". Yeah, that one. So this was her unlocking it. And the spirit, as voiced by the GM, was basically a fantastic rendition of Mark Hamill's Joker VA work. Really, it was actually drat good. Hence why I remember this bit so well. And of course, this guy wants to corrupt the snowflake, and slaughter the world. Just kill everything. Murder all over the place. Etc etc etc you get the idea. My contribution was basically "Look, if you come with us you're probably going to get to murder lots of things. you'll likely get to turn bad guys into a fine meat paste. Whaddya say?" Which went over fantastically, but as I wasn't the "owner" of the Item, that sort of thinking had to come from the snowflake. She mumbled her way through it, and then (with a sinking feeling) it was my turn. I should note here that I'd volunteered for shenanigans. Specifically I'd volunteered for WoW-style worgen werewolf shenanigans, because I thought they were kind of neat, what with the whole hand full of knives (claws) sort of thing, and as a rogue it'd be nice to have a weapon on me at all times, and something that might not be taken from me, maybe. What I got was some sort of viking-style ritual of strength that you'd find in most RPGs, which (being in character) I tried to smart-rear end my way through instead. I ate raw meat, talked a bit with the spirit of my weapon ("excalibur". No, really), and eventually started a big fight which we all got dragged into. we eventually beat him down, but he said some sort of spiel that he was an ancestor of mine, that he wanted to create an empire of the wolf, where everything was subservient to him, etc etc, typical evil overlord stuff, which my character would see as neither interesting, nor profitable, and being Chaotic Good meant my character thought it sounded dumb and evil and this guy needed an rear end kicking. So that's what we did - my rapier broke (boo) but the idiot meathead gave me a replacement because he thought it was funny (yay) and I promptly used it to partially kick his rear end - the snowflake and paladin had to rescue me at the end. They did a fantastic job here, as I'm sure my character would have died if they hadn't distracted the wolf man for me before I stabbed him with the weapon he'd given me. Then my character was apparently overcome with wolfy rage and ran off into the forest - I guess he really needed to throw up the raw meat or something. We paused for half an hour here, and then carried on. After meeting up at camp, we picked a new destination and moved on, ignoring our new marbles. Or next stop was a tomb type place, underground. Much more my speed. Dungeons! Once more, we set up camp outside, and head in to find our next puzzle piece. We have to climb down a few holes, using ropes, and this is where the last paladin left us. I and the snowflake carried on, while trying to figure out how two glass cannons can handle a PF game. Rogues make fantastic skill guys, and stealth can turn everything inside out, so I figured we'd go that route, somehow. The layout of the place was wierd at first, but it turned out to be some sort of massive puzzle box of rooms and corridors. Which could have been fantastic, but the campaign ground to a halt as we were dealing with undead, locked rooms, and traps. My best part was probably borrowing a story from this and past threads, and using my rope and pitons to spiderman across the ceiling to reach an obviously trapped chest, mission impossible style. Complete success. Loot, ropes, pitons, etc, like a ninja. Naturally the floor was actually trapped, and fell away the moment I opened the chest. The whole setup seemed fascinating, but with only two players and the GM we apparently didn't have enough to carry on, so it ended here. I regret that, as I feel that the story, setup, and puzzles had a lot of potential. I'd tweak a few things, maybe, but mostly it was pretty cool. Ow stop biting me! (or Everyone Needs a Janitor) So with one campaign dead, but us willing to figure out some sort of way to carry on playing, I decided to call in a couple of friends I sort of knew from a PbP Firefly forum game from the internet. As you can imagine, this may not have been my finest decision ever, but there we go. This time, while I was still comfortable to go the werewolf route, the GM decided to go a little more anime on me, as you'll see later. Though it did turn out awesome at the end, so I guess it's not all cat-piss. So me, male human rogue. Friend 1 was a female gnome sorcerer - the player was a combination of depressed, idealistic, and cynical. Very wierd to deal with, and you can already see where the negatives are I'm sure. Snowflake was back, as a different flavour of snowflake from the D20PFSRD. Again, some flavour of psionic martial arts stuff I think. Let's just stick with "Snowflake". Friend 2 was a ranger I think (might be human, so let's go with that), but lacking a pet. I might be wrong about that though. So we started out in a town, with an even bigger hex-based overworld map. Honestly, this GM was fantastic at maps, world building, scenario design, etc. Okay so his choice in NPC design was mostly hit but occasionally miss, but I guess everyone has their foibles, and he's a pretty great guy overall - he is not the source of cat-piss. Just the source of the occasional warning sign that largely didn't cause trouble so it all turned out okay. Actually (obviously I guess) Snowflake and Sorcerer were the two biggest catpiss sources (when they had issues, anyway - the rest of the time they were fine). Friend 2 was less catpiss and more wet blanket, as she didn't get along with Snowflake's ultra chirpy and flaky style. Imagine Snowflake as an ultra-Phoebe from friends, but gothicy, and you'll have a good guess as to what she was like most of the time. Sorcerer I've described. Ranger was more pragmatic, cynical, sarcastic, and generally someone who (when not being a little bit of a wet blanket) I have a hell of a lot of time for, as they're a great GM, a pretty good party member, and have a lot of good experience with Good Gaming. And a lot of fun/funny stories too (I'll try to borrow a few to reproduce here). I ended up being buddy cop to the Ranger, while the Sorceror and Snowflake buddied up that way, so that's how we sometimes divided down party lines. Occasionally Snowflake would bring in friends from outside the group, either to observe, or to join in by controlling odd characters, or NPCs in the hope they might join and expand the party. Ranger and my Rogue focussed on keeping the party alive through smart skill checks and skulduggery, while the Sorcerer and Snowflake played the party faces, and acted like stereotypes of women that you see on TV as portrayed by Hollywood scriptwriters. They did contribute major damage as glass cannons too, but that was about it. So from our starting town, we adventured out. First stop, some sort of skull mansion. The closer we got, the more swampy and dead everything was. The GM played this as rules-lite, as he promised the next campaign would get more rules heavy later on, as this campaign would just be to get us into the story, help with world building, and generally get us on track with understanding character stats, growth, planning, etc - he'd drop all the numbers, CRs, monsters, grids, and other random stuff on us later or next campaign. So we got to the outside of the Resident Evil Mansion (okay it wasn't but you get the idea). I snuck up to the front door, discovering no traps, and no security. Some freaky footprints, but the place was deserted. I stole inside, and the place was thick with dust. So while the rest of the group planned from outside, I began sweeping the floor. In case of traps, but also to avoid leaving footprints in the dust. Thankfully there were no traps and we began exploring the place. Some sort of necromancers lair, we checked every room we could, discovering increasingly concerning stuff, like dodgy records, strange supplies, medical rooms, etc. The sort of stuff you'd see in an umbrella secret lab. Downstairs was nastier. Cells, storage rooms of creepy crap, the occasional interesting item, but mostly just stuff you'd put to the torch, but very few bodies. We discovered why that was in the last room. Bone golems. This is what made me decide to carry a morningstar from here on, because bones are a pain to kill when you have a rapier and a shortsword. Or Sorcerer all but nuked the thing, along with the snowflake with some sort of flame explosion. This, obviously, set the place to tumbling down, so we got the hell out of there with our haul of loot, and some levelups. Our escape included killing bat-winged monsters (mini harpies maybe?), actual bats, and the occasional skeleton. We'd gathered some evidence, and our return to the town pointed us in the direction of some other part of the map. I used my levelup to add a wizard level, as I wanted to become an Arcane Trickster. There was a bit of a joke about banana-yellow robes, and a funny hat, etc etc. My rogue would end up being the straight-man to most of the campaign jokes. If this campaign had included pie throwing, it would probably have hit my character in the face. I picked some good cantrips, and a couple handy level 1 spells (things like acid splash, dancing lights, prestidigitation, magic missile, shield, mage armour, etc - I tried to have multiple elemental damage types, and focus around elemental schools, because I wanted to build up to being able to sneak attack with scorching ray spells later on). I'm a little fuzzy here, but next it was another dungeon, and this time we got captured. See we snuck through the forest, and followed some pitiful looking kobolds into a hole. Then we got clobbered and trapped into a jail cell minus most of our gear. Once we were sure the guards weren't paying attention, I used a few implements as an improvised lockpick, and broke us out of the cell along with a few friendly kobolds, and we looted some junk. I began stealth shivving guards at every turn, while taking the lead, and scouting the area, while trying to come up with good ways to use cantrips like a jerk. eventually we came up on a fork in the route out of this dungeon. We went right and nearly stumbled into an ambush. We threw a few spells - I was planning on combining an earhorn and the acid splash spell to give an ogre a really bad enema, just to drive my point home about how much these guys were jerks - but we decided to pull out instead, and rescue the few friendly kobolds instead. We may or may not have dropped the ceiling on those ogres and evil kobolds. I choose to believe we did, because that sounds more fun and murder-hobo-ey. The friendly kobolds dug out our gear for us, and gave us some extra gifts, and we went on our way, having possibly cleared out another nest of evil. The necromancer was some sort of evil overlord we needed to hunt down and oppose and was the current source of most evil in the world. So off we went back to base On the way we saw some very large wolves, and I made jokes referencing Snow Dogs and such, about biting ears or whatever. As it turned out, our base/town was now a crater in the ground. Cue levelup for everyone again, end of session. I picked a second level of rogue (I was focusing on disable device, stealth, and other rogue skills with every level before spending extra points on things like Craft: alchemy (because holy poo poo alchemy is great in PF from what little I read) or linguistics or whatever else was needed for knowledge checks). Next up we started the session heading north. We'd scraped together enough information to realise that there were friends in that direction and we needed to go there. So we started north, and encountered those wolves, because of course we did. They vanished, however, and next we find a little girl in a tree. Our Sorcerer and Snowflake immediately take pity, but somehow I end up with the job of helping feed her, and next she's biting my ear. I yell, throw her off (gently) and just keep prodding her with food to keep her mouth busy, and to shut her up, because what the hell. This is a bit blatantly obvious, but I decide to ignore it for now in favour of helping the group stay alive. We eventually reach a seaside town, and somehow (after solving a few unexciting local problems, eating some doughnuts, keeping the little girl fed and quiet, and maybe grabbing some useful gear) charter a boat across the sea to the chunk of land where our destination is. For the most part this was a relaxed social session, so it was fairly relaxed, but we get another levelup due to solving some social quests and whatnot. I think this may have been around the holidays anyway, so it was played off as very much holiday spirit type stuff. Gladiator, Schmadiator So we eventually get on our boat during the new year, and set sail for new lands, and a method to help kill this evil necromancer. Of course, monsters on the way have other plans, and we get eaten by a blue dragon. Or a kraken. Or both. Little fuzzy here, but I'm going to assume blue dragon, temporarily. Instead of dying against impossible odds, we all wake up in a dark place, me first. I gradually make sense of things, and find myself opening doors, sneaking about, and discovering a room full of levers and buttons. I also find a room full of treasure and goodies, but I ignore it as an obvious stupid person trap. there's a window too, and I can see our entire group, including a new character who joined us for the session - I guess he was one of the NPCs on the boat. The little girl has vanished somewhere, but she turns up later. In the meantime, we're having some sort of an issue, so I have to figure out what lever to pull to get which person/s out of the cells. I get them out, but now they're split up after being sucked down a drain. First up it's some sort of competitive obstacle course. The Snowflake (NPC'ed during the session) screws up first on some balance beams, but her Sorcerer companion survives. The Ranger does okay, but our onetime NPC player drops next. Those two have to stumble across some sort of jumping puzzle, and the Sorcerer drops, followed by the Ranger just as they're about to reach the end. Then we're all somehow ported into a big room, me too, and the girl, and the "dead" players are trapped in ice. The girl hides, and first to thaw is the Ranger. We're dealing with some sort of boss monster, like a draconic sorcerer type, and some other oddities, with AoE attacks, and so on. I'm using stealth and my maxxed dex points to avoid everything, while the ranger works on freeing the others. They all unthaw in order, and our Sorcerer and Snowlfake team up to flame nuke everything, while I and the Ranger hide behind them. Then we all get separated for one of those character=GM talky moments. The Sorcerer deals with a blue dragon because draconic stuff (or was that me?), the Ranger deals with some sort of ancient battle involving old allies but has to deal with a dragon, the Snowflake I can't remember, and mine was also a dragon, but then also wolves got involved, the little girl turned into a massive wolf, and her and a bunch of other wolves help me beat up the dragon. We then go to help the Ranger next, help her win her battle finally to set those souls to rest, and go support the Sorcerer with her blue dragon issue. Then we recover our Snowflake, and suddenly we wake up in a shipwreck on the shore of the continent we were trying to get to anyway. Cue a bunch of levelups (I've just got my first AT level by this point), and end session. The GM pauses here, so the Ranger runs a RIFTS campaign: I choose you (to eat me), PokeThulu! So I'd been jokingly throwing around funny images during pre-game chatter, including stuff like the old PokeThulu meme. This was a thing. I chose a mech pilot, while the snowflake chose a female dogboy. The sorcerer was something else, maybe some sort of scout/soldier, while the GM tossed us a random NPC to bulk out the party a little, and follow our orders. A damage/tankbot of some sort. Our other GM wasn't too heavily involved here and he had some stuff to sort out, and also wanted to plan the next phase of the PF campaign, and also relax a little before running all that, so this RIFTS thing ran for a couple weeks. So we started out exploring some sort of underground complex that was probably an ex-nuclear bunker. Except as we got deeper we ran into some sort of bugs. Not quite xenomorphs, but wierd fungal things from RIFTS somewhere. I don't really know, but these things were swarm monsters. Real pains. We murdered our way through, and tried to rescue a few people and recover some tech for... whoever, I forgot. Of course, we got ourselves trapped. We broke our way through the ceiling, and collapsed a tunnel on the monsters, and escaped to the surface. (Okay, now I remember who the fourth guy was - a leywalker, some sort of leyline guy, and I think that *was* our PF GM). So we stumble over a leyline, and a rift opens up. We scramble into action, the dogboy cowering behind my mech when possible, and of course, Pokethulu (Pikathulu?) appears. Yeah, Cthulu Pikachu. Totally my fault. I open up doing as much MD with my gun as I can, while the dogboy does what she can, and the sorcerer's soldier type does some shenanigans. Our laywalker does the most though, and while I don't think we killed PokeThulu, we did manage to do enough damage to convince it to go away. The session ended there, and next we picked up on our way to one of the RIFTS main story cities. I think we sided with the group that was focussed around accepting psykers and such, while I tried to scrounge any tech I could to fix up and re-arm my mech. We stumbled into a new mission, and headed south to mexico, or mexico city, or whatever. Regardless, very deserty. As we closed on our target, we got attacked by vampires. This was irritating, but we mostly made out okay. The dogboy was NPCed, but the leywalker and sorcerersoldier didn't do too bad. I used my mech arms to grab a pair of vampires, and starting slamming their heads together like coconuts, crushing their heads with my fists doing aggravated MD, and whirling my arms around like a windmill, king kong style, smashing them in alternate against the floor, or just whirling them around and making them ill. So yeah, I rolled reasonably to get good grabs on their skulls. One got his head smooshed, while the other escaped with significant damage. We didn't kill many - we needed a lot of MD that we didn't have to get through their toughness. They weren't very co-ordinated, thankfully, and we were tough enough to survive. We headed into the city, and began information gathering. That session ended there, and we picked back up with the Pathfinder stuff. Not the dragonborn you wanted. So here's the final stretch of that campaign. We collected ourselves up, and began marching across the landscape, gathering what information we could. We dodged patrols, and fought a little, but mostly managed to do okay until we hit another mining town. This place was wierd, but whatever. There was a dragon statue in town, and we had decided to track down as many friendly dragons as possible, as our interaction with the blue dragon, according to the sorcerer, meant that the only way to save, or salvage, the world and beat the necromancer was to collect some mythical dragons. Given that there was a statue here, that also meant a lead or an actual dragon maybe. There was a party on, so we figured why not. Drinking, ladies and gents getting frisky, etc. Initially it was pre-party so we meandered round town, solving more social quests, trying to solve a romance, and generally trying to do good, and earn favours for later. A few creepy odds around the place which we earmarked for later investigation, some friends, and the GM brought in more typical anime girls for this stretch. On of his weaker points, for my money, but perhaps that's just me. anyway, we helped with the setup, and it all got started. Initially things went great, but me and the Ranger, and gradually he sorcerer all got suspicious. The snowflake was playing her character as being even more ditzy than the player was, so I guess she sometimes had some self-awareness. The drinks were a bit spiked, the fountain near the dragon statue must have had some sort of potion in it, and the food had issues too. the little girl had returned, and growled every time a pretty girl even so much as looked at my character. Mostly our character managed to find vaguely secure places to hide themselves (except for the snowflake who just collapsed somewhere where nobody could find her, not even the villagers), as it was apparently some sort of life and fertility festival, and we didn't want to get tied down with any commitments (read: marriages to people over-awed with adventurers). Of course we woke up in the wee hours of the morning to discover that all was not well. The villagers were apparently (some anyway) cultists. With a cult leader and connections to the BBEG. combat begins. We took to the roofs initially, and began clobbering any townie who was apparently mind controlled, dropping them as best we could. It was like a cross between a zombie survival flick, and one of those horror movie wierd village cults. Eventually we were down to the creepy guy and his boss. The creepy guy was run out of town, and the boss was either killed or scarpered (I'm reasonably sure we killed them). We got to work poring over the statue while making sure the villagers were alive but secure, and uncovered a secret entrance. Just in time, as the creepy guy was back with an evil guard force - I think he got his just desserts, or I would like to. The guards certainly did as they slowly tried to follow up down. We worked our way through this new dungeon, eventually tumbling down a hole and finding ourselves behind bars with guards moving around the outside trying to get at us. The Ranger and myself focussed on doing damage with ranges attacks, while the snowflake sort of helped, and the sorcerer worked on finding an escape route. She discovered a secret passage, and suddenly we were reinforced by the bronze dragon who was sometimes a gnome sorcerer as well. The guards all died in short order after that, and we got re-armed by the bronze dragon gnome. The two sorcerers were very buddy buddy, while the rest of us gathered as much gear as possible and dealt with our levelups. We were going to ride his airship (sort of an air battleship, like bowsers but nastier) and head to a central location to organise a defence against the necromancers assault on the last free city in the world. The next session was combination of prep work and assorted info gathering prior to our arrive, so nothing major happened there, and then for the last chunk it was about 3-4 sessions of heavy stuff. First we brought all our information, and dragon shenanigans to the King (or whoever). The ranger had gained some sort of green dragon, the sorcerer was a blue dragon, the snowflake was a red dragon, while I was... a werewolf now suddenly, and leader of The Pack? But also vaguely dragon connected. There was some sort of ball, and we all turned up as smartly as e were able, while trying to negotiate as much defence as possible and convince everyone of how hosed they were and that politics be damned, they needed to work together in the short term to fight the BBEG. Into the middle of this strolls wolf girl, except she's not a girl, she's now a grown woman, princess level beauty, amazingly dressed, etc etc etc. She begs the king for one favour in return for her support, and has me magically cursed with a giant doughnut tattoo. I get a little catpissy here myself, because I'm pissed about this lovely joke, so afterwards back on the airship I decide to run off to scout the hostile forces and/or die in the attempt. The GM basically activates autopilot after I gather some vaguely useful information, and turns my rear end around back to the warship. Then there's some sort of conference with an ancient deity who is the last line of defence against the necromancer. She shows us his history. Turns out that he was once a magical apprentice, and was in love. He was one day accosted by thugs who murdered the woman he loved, and beat him nearly to death. In grief he swore himself to dark powers, and began to slowly corrupt with world as an immortal enraged grieving almost-lich. He seeks to destroy the world and everyone in it so as to only raise or return people who will be "good" in his eyes. We get brought back to reality, and the goddess who showed us this tells us that the only way to save the world, ultimately, is to sacrifice one of us to use their soulpower to recreate their world in a new way to save everyone, and the gods too. We're not coming back from this the same as we were, maybe not even the same people we were, and maybe not even at all, and the world as it currently exists is basically hosed no matter what we do. All we can do is save what we can and build a better world in the next life/existence. Immediately the sorcerer gets depressed and volunteers, with ideas of creating some sort of world and security for the innocent involving secret assassins, and intel agencies that watch everything. I volunteer with a view more towards the Justice League style defence of good people rather than an obviously corruptible illuminati type thing, which of course our (RL depressed right now) sorcerer tries to poke holes in because she likes to die making grand sacrifices, and is both super idealistic and cynical, while I try to be more realistic about doing the most good I can. I come to my senses and apologise for being catpissy, talking it out with the GM and explaining my issues like a drat adult instead of being a big baby, and in-character fix things with the wolf-woman and the Pack and promise to become the real Pack leader or whatever. OOC I thought I was just doing my job as a rogue, and saving the Pack stuff for really bad situations, because it got described to me as being an "If you use this power, then you will gradually eat up the Pack to power your use of it". Which I thought meant I was destroying the Pack when I used their help, but actually it just meant I could have the full Pack, or I could combine them into nastier NPC summons, or just have them all swallowed up inside me to megapower my magic/rogue stuff, like massive magic batteries or something. Oops. Everyone else is doing the usual RP of last fond farewells, and then it's on. We begin gathering our troops and deploying them around the walls, the keep, and the various important supply or magical buildings throughout the city. We reinforce as much as we can, and then the bad guys hit us. first it's in the south, and it's hordes of skeletons, with a few bats. then they hit us in the west, more skeletons, but now knights and larger monsters and golems. Our southern line gets pushed back, so our sorcerer heads back to reinforce, while I and the ranger hold the line, flinging spells and magical arrows, and unleashing the entire Pack to swamp the enemy in a wave of fur, fangs, and fury. Because gently caress it, it's the last fight of this world, so I'm throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the enemy, and this is clearly a high magic campaign, so let's nuke everything. The north gets hit by bats, flying monsters, harpies, and worse, and the snowflake is defending there, but it's not going great and she slowly gets pushed back losing more and more men. the GM links a video as flying fortresses and monsters come overhead of some anime where nazis are nuking london with napalm, and there's evil monsters and its basically hell. the north is lost as our snowflake pulls back as we lose the bonus from the church that was up there. Next I and the ranger have to pull back, and call for remaining reinforcements to come out of the keep to push back the enemy long enough to also rescue our southern flank. The east is hit as well, and we have to rely on NPCs, and the ranger has to run off to deal with that. I'm covering some sort of knightly order base, and we barely hang on, while our sorcerer is protecting some sort of inn which helps with our supply lines, but again it's getting shaky, and the east is a loss and the ranger pulls back to reinforce the keep gate and the south and the sorcerer. No more reinforcements as the keep defenders are battling fiercely just to survive on the north and east. At this point the BBEG joins the fight, and it all falls to crap. We're losing people left and right, and we're slowly being pushed back to the keep. The bronze dragon dies about here saving the sorcerer. then the goddess lady shows up, and basically commits suicide to power us up, and suddenly we've got three dragons and a dragon-werewolf, as I've now absorbed the entire Pack into myself, roaming the city, Kaiju style, keeping the tattered remnants of the city alive as we basically puree the enemy forces as we come into contact with them. But there's still the BBEG and more reinforcements. Only one thing for it - I basically cannonball up into the sky once we're sure the defenders can survive for the next in-game three minutes and the other three dragons follow me as we assault the BBEG on his flying fortress. We're basically dodging all over the place and magic is flying everywhere, and at the last minute we figure out the puzzle and begin smashing the artefacts keeping him alive while I basically supertank his attacks, and the ranger uses somesort of dragonised ise-bow attacks to keep him slowed long enough for us to actually hit him. He's partially powered by the dead spirit of the woman he loved, screaming and shrieking in agony - she's actually the goddess, but in chains, and needs us to free her and give her mortal spirit peace while her immortal god self is used as a battery to power and give life to the new world. The sorcerer is micromanaging everything, and the snowflake is powering up some sort of mega nuke that she couldn't use before. We work together, and shatter the chains of the goddess, freeing her spirit, and depowering the necromancer. The nuke goes off, killing the BBEG now that he's finally killable, but leaving us "alive" as we were with her when it nuked, so ground zero is safe, but the immediate area isn't, and the snowflake basically annhiliates the last of the BBEG - but that's not all. Last nasty attack from him wipes out the last free city in the world, and the world begins to unravel. We knew this was coming, and the remnants of the goddess stays with us as we die, and reality falls apart to be remade by the now-freed gods into something new and hopefully better. we are asked if we have any wishes, as she can grant one each. The sorcerer asks to keep what memories she can, the snowflake asks for something random, and the Ranger asks for freedom and life for her loved ones and her old allies those gosty dudes we helped her rescue in the ocean encounter, while I ask initially for something similar to the sorcerer and some random roguey stuff as a werewolf. And then I think like a real person and ask instead if we could please let all the good free people of this world somehow survive into the new world to be given a second chance in a world free of the misery and taint of the now free'd Necromancer, because dammit, going out like that wasn't fair, and if I was going to be the one sacrificed to help build this new world, then that would be my wish if I'm going to end this character here. And then... That's it. The new world is born, but we don't have a clue as to who got their wish granted, if anyone, as we're all now reborn into new, unremembering people, in a new world. We start out as late teens on an island, possibly related (the Sorcerer and Snowflake decide they are) and I and the Ranger are sort of there. I'm immediately picking rogue again, because I know drat well nobody else will, and we'll need a skill monkey, while the Sorcerer picks some sort of cleric instead, and the snowflake picks... something. The Ranger picks a ranger again I think (or it might be a warrior), and we stumble into a new campaign. This time it's villagey, and our starting stuff initially leads to us discovering pet dragons. The dragons can become anything, and are coloured like our previous ones were. Ranger is green, Cleric is bronze because the bronze dragon died while saving her in the last campaign. I've got blue this time, and the snowflake is still red I think. There's the usual shenanigans as we try to discover what's going on - the dragons can turn into things, including equipment - and then our village leaders send us out to go deal with or explore a nearby mage's tower/keep. We stumble inside, and begin puzzle solving, dealing with the odd monster, but otherwise just working through traps. It's semi abandoned, with ghosts and such, and library puzzles, and our Ranger just nopes out of this because she's just tired of dealing with Snowflake, and doesn't want to deal with Cleric ingame as they live together, and she just doesn't need any more issues there in their relationship. It's a pity because Ranger was a great sounding board to work with, but personality conflicts, and No Gaming is better than Bad Gaming, and Cleric and Snowflake are... well there's always an issue of some sort, and half the time I'm playing the Person Who Listens when it comes to problems, and tries to calm things down - it's really draining as Snowflake is very attention seeking, and Ranger is having to try to support Cleric through difficult depression, and is too drained by that to put up with Snowflake and her brattiness. Snowflake and Ranger actively hate each other by now. A library puzzle on the heels of some sort of four room puzzle about the four seasons are a pair of sessions which basically were the last straw for the Ranger, so that's that, she's done with Snowflake, and therefore done with the group. I know her worldload has gotten crazy so while I'm bummed we can't game together to chill, I understand her reasons, as does the GM. I'm not sure if Snowflake and Cleric were quite so accommodating, but whatever. We gradually explore and continue from here, sans Ranger, and keep solving stuff, and trying to help the dearly departed, as we've got another mage mansion with evil poo poo happening, which we need to fix, but without Ranger, and thanks to busy work weeks, social life, and girlfriend, my ability to attend or pay attention is severely drained. the GM is awesome though, so I'm trying to push through, because he's literally my first proper GM and is generally okay, and good at dealing with problem players (like Snowflake). We begin seeing more experiments on the second floor, which we reach after solving a floor word puzzle, and there's some shenanigans upstairs, as we explore some more, using our dragons who can now use breath attacks to support us in murdering things like yet more golems, random bat monsters, and forest tentacle-vine traps. Round about here I was asked to quit the game as my ability to really be present was apparently not enough - even though I'd tried to explain why it happened sometimes so they could reschedule or whatever, but apparently that wasn't good enough. Yeah I'm a little bitter about that because I lost a great GM. On the other hand it free'd me of Snowflake and Cleric, so I call it acceptable as a loss, and from the GM's perspective at least, I call it understandable. the campaign apparently didn't last long after that, even with Snowflake calling in even more friends who didn't stick around long. It even apparently bit her in the rear end as Snowflake and the GM initially sort of dated (for a second time apparently) but apparently she accidentally brought in a friend (we'll nickname her "Angel" because that was the name I remember her using as a screen name), and Angel and the GM hit it off. Big time. He dumped Snowflake, and went off with Angel, and last I heard they were on their way to getting married and settling down together. I still miss that GM though, as he was fantastic, but this was all done via internet, and he was in a different timezone to me, which lead to many issues. If we were around a table instead it would probably have gone much better for most everyone involved, with less distractions and issues - but probably the same or worse interpersonal crap. Thankfully I have a better gaming story for another post, where I had another good GM and a not-poo poo gaming group.
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Nov 2, 2016 13:52
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Okay so that last post cut me off a bit due to character limits, and I remembered this just as I hit post on that one, so here goes: Totally Not-Naruto Honest! Okay so I forgot this one, but I'm not going to go back and stick in chronological order. Also, there's a 50k character limit, which this breaks. This was about the same time as the pokethulu campaign, maybe just a little after, as our GM wanted to test out a homebrew rules and campaign system. We all picked various japanese themed characters, and picked skills like tea ceremony or swords, or calligraphy or whatever. I focussed around swords, and creaded Miyamoto Musashi, basically, and used the awesome team leader guy out of Kurosawas Seven Samurai, because I like the film, and I wanted to use a non-anime character. Ranger created some sort of investigator type (or possibly a ninja), and we played buddy cops again. Sorcerer created some sort of local magical equivalent, whatever that was, so still a sorcerer I guess. Snowflake was a Kitsune Kunoichi Geisha girl, because of course she was. We start off in a neutral city. I'm from the country of water, as is the ranger, while the kitsune is from Fire, and the sorcerer might be from air. We've all picked elemental stuff so we have high points in country elements and lows or mediums in other elemental controls. You can combine elements to make different things, so some combination of points of fire and water could create steam, while fire and rock could be lava, and water and air would be mist, and varying amounts of points dumped into each would create different effects, levels of effects, or combinations. sort of a neat idea, albeit riffing off naruto heavily. So this neutral city is having mega parties, and representatives from all the countries are here. I stop to watch some of the gladiator pits as various representatives from various countries duke it out for glory. There's not supposed to be death, but occasionally someone screws up, and the people from the water country aren't doing too great for my money. we all somehow meet up, and end up staying in the same hotel place, because it's a good balance between expensive and crappy (so middle of the road, not too fancy, but not a shithole either). Murder happens, and we collectively beat back the attackers, who run off. We think it's some sort of ninja but we're not sure. The metsuke police turn up, and ask questions, and we talk our way past it, and finally leave. We're now meandering around, sort of talking, while the Sorcerer and snowflake comfort each other, and I and the Ranger try to solve the actual issue at hand. Somehow we follow clues to a quiet alley out of the way, and confront some sort of evil rogue sorcerer type plus some ninjas. The fight is on, and while we defeat a group of four ninjas, killing them in the process, the sorcerer escapes because ninjutsu. It was mostly a means for us to get a feel for the elemental situation. We follow what clues we can, and travel across the city to some sort of brothel house, and our Snowflake tries to be slutty to get us in. It doesn't really work, so we ignore her, and solve our own problem, but beating up a guard at a side entrance, and "convincing" someone to let us in dammit. We mooch through the place until we find the local representative of the country of air, and end up in the usual type of discussion, "all smiles above the table, drawn knives beneath" sort of thing. We negotiate some sort of help in dealing with the problem, and head off to talk to the fire representative. That one's mostly handled by our Snowflake being snowflakey, but it works out. Then we talk to the loyal Water representative (earth and lightning aren't going to care about us, and apparently there's a 6th element as well, who doesn't even want to know anyway). There's a rebellion on against the twisted leadership so I and the ranger are recruited in return for support later on. We go around doing a few balancing acts, trading, and generally saving face between factions to get everyone aligned against some sort of twisted conspiracy which is screwing up all of the countries. Eventually there's little more we can do, but it turns out a fight has erupted while we're back at the air brothel, so we work together with various armed forces to defend the city against undead attacks (I guess our GM really likes these, but in all honesty he does a fantastic job of selling the story, and he gives each world unique flavour all its own, so I'm comfortable with enjoying this sort of story). We gradually fight our way around the city, collecting allies as we go, until we discover the nexus of power - another sorcerer - and kick their asses with our combined forces. That goes reasonably well, but now we have to leave because politics. We head south, following some fresh clues, until we hit a temple on the border. Some sort of monk place. We try to take shelter, but the evil ninjas have followed us, and we have to fight them in some sort of ancient duel. An arena is prepared, with a mat in the centre, sort of like that bit in naruto where the Chunin fights are happening, and off we go. Our snowflake is up first, and has to fight against some sort of female Fighter type. she's convinced to use her agility as a bonus and comes out mostly okay, nothing too fantastic. The sorcerer is up next against another magic user, so it's very wizardy as they clobber eachother around the place. the sorcerer does reasonably enough that it's looking okay. The ranger is up next and has to fight a giant slab of meat - this guy is tough - so she basically draws out the fight, death of a thousand cuts, and drops him as nastily as possible. Next it's me, and I'm going up against what looks like a super slight ninja. The GM shows me an image of the masked guy from the first section of Naruto, the one who's buddy buddy with the shark ninja guy. Faceless mask, throws needles, uses ice, the whole drill. I step on and try to follow this guy, trip him up, anything, but it's not going well. Then he charges up and activates some sort of power which creates a dome of ice around us. So I'm trapped, and no chance of reinforcements, even if our side was willing to "cheat" in front of the monks organising this mess. The little jerk starts whittling me down bit by bit, just like in the show. But I'm not some kind of demon monster fox inside a small boy so I can't just straight nuke this guy. Or can I? I have strong points in water, fire, and reasonable points in air and earth, with lesser points in lightning and the one I forgot. If I combine my water, Fire, and air points into one mega attack... I basically create a fuel air bomb inside an extremely contained space, and explode the whole thing into tiny pieces. I'm basically a cartoon character after an explosion in their face, but it's worse for the guy I was fighting. See, he was hiding inside the ice, just like in the show, and flinging needles at me. But he was still in the ice when my nuke went off... He's shattered in about a thousand pieces across the floor, and his buddies are big time pissed. Oops. As it turns out, they're still just scared enough of the shaolin ninja monks that they don't cause too much fuss, and leave after threatening to kill us all. The monks offer us temporary sanctuary from the world and a chance to rest up, heal, and train to improve ourselves. The GM rules that we get a level up, a bunch of skillpoints, and gives us a training montage before ending the session (I remember something where I learn to hit water so hard I cause explosions - like a nastier version of a rasengan, so I guess the GM is turning my character into Naruto after all - I plan to change my character class into ninja because gently caress it, I may as well stop taking it seriously and just have fun instead as this is going to go off the rails (but no the GM's rails) anyway. But we never did come back to this game/campaign. Again, it had (cheesy) potential, but nothing to be done. Too bad. Thankfully I have a better more recent story to tell from during summer this year, and hopefully it'll be extended sometime during the winter holidays if we can get it organised. I'll post it when I've got it properly remembered, and have time to add it to the thread. DicktheCat posted:A very unhappy story Wow. I thought I'd heard this before, but I haven't and just wow. I hope that guy eventually got the help he actually needed and got away from those people because yikes! Sorry you went through that and had to deal with some of those super special snowflake types.
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Nov 2, 2016 13:56
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DicktheCat posted:(We did call an adult welfare agency to look into Hoodie's well-being, giving them all the information we had.)
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Nov 2, 2016 15:05
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I hope to god they looked into it like they said they would. I don't have to fortitude to look into it more than I did, because, frankly, trainwrecks like that whole situation have a tendency to spread. Thanks for all the condolences and empathy. I have no more stories because I bailed hard on all that. A good thing is that this weekend, we're going to attend our first Pathfinder Society meeting at a local gams shop! We've already gamed with these guys so hopefully we'll come out the other end cat-piss free!  If not, will post.
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Nov 2, 2016 15:29
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If you do come out without catpiss, but some great gaming stories, then post anyway, especially if you get a good GM. I like to see good stories as well as bad stories, and things like The Adventures of Varis the Lightning Lord are a great Good Gaming Story to balance out the catpiss.
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Nov 2, 2016 15:45
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Glad I found this thread. I had a one-shot "see if you click with the group" game that I didn't go back to because of cat piss. There was actually a guy there nicknamed Cat, who had a lot of cats, and smelled like cats. Imagine the smile on my face when I saw this thread's title.
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Nov 2, 2016 16:40
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my gaming group has been going pretty good lately but it is slowly starting to go the other way. We are playing shadowrun and the DM is probably the best in the group. He does a nice balance of organization and going with the flow. He is definitely the type of DM that "goes" with the players but, he is to lenient to me. We have a player that likes to go "chaotic stupid" alot. This puts him in very back circumstances alot of the time. Though he is smart in his own way he is very not clever in game problem solving. Just recently he decided throwing a smoke bomb and a molotov cocktail ( which was constructed multiples out of a metal flask full of liquor somehow? ) in the middle of a confined sewers was a good idea to deal with a pack of vicious sewer rats. Then he decided to just go gung-ho alone in a mob bosses house would end up okay. Which, I am all for - let the dice settle it out. But, the DM bailed him out by going "theater of the mind" and just have him describe how he took down dozens of rats and cyber punk mafia members rather than lay the risk of dying. I like shadowrun primarily because of the risk/reward of being able to die pretty quickly. he gets away with this stuff no matter the campaign/system because no one wants to kill characters but, drat. oh well.
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Nov 2, 2016 17:48
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The Mandingo posted:Glad I found this thread. I had a one-shot "see if you click with the group" game that I didn't go back to because of cat piss. There was actually a guy there nicknamed Cat, who had a lot of cats, and smelled like cats. Imagine the smile on my face when I saw this thread's title. tell the story bruh
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Nov 2, 2016 17:48
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Smash it Smash hit posted:
Oh god, I've had this too, and SR is terrible for this. If they catch a whiff of the GM improvising encounters, they'll go gung ho, because they know most GMs won't improv something that will predictably result in a PCs death because it's equivalent to a fiat kill. It comes down to dice gradation at that point and SR is awful at that.
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Nov 2, 2016 22:41
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I knew a guy who, when he got upset at our SR GM, he'd cast all of his barriers and buffs on himself and instigate a fight with the cops. The idiot GM felt compelled to rise to the occasion, every time, basically leaving the rest of us with our thumbs up our asses.
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Nov 2, 2016 23:12
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Back when I was GMing Shadowrun, I just let the dice fall where they may. Once stupid people lost enough characters, they wised up. SR, especially in 2nd and 3rd Edition was pretty rough on people who tried to go the munchkin route. I remember people going balls-deep on Wired Reflexes and what not, only to discover that when the shooting started, all it meant was that they wasted ammo faster.
Ilor fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Nov 2, 2016 |
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Nov 2, 2016 23:43
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Ilor posted:Back when I was GMing Shadowrun, I just let the dice fall where they may. Once stupid people lost enough characters, they wised up. SR, especially in 2nd and 3rd Edition was pretty rough on people who tried to go the munchkin route. I remember people going balls-deep on Wired Reflexes and what not, only to discover that when the shooting started, all it meant was that they wasted ammo faster. Which one of those was the edition where having 0 ranks in grenades was better than having 1 rank? IIRC there was some scatter mechanic where you aimed the grenade and rolled to see how far away your throw was, except if you had 0 ranks you had a super lovely vague direction throw that homed in a little.
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Nov 3, 2016 00:00
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I missed a session of my weekly 5e game due to work, but it was at a pretty boring "travel the road, roll encounters" part so I figured it wouldn't hurt. When I returned, the monk had 50,000 gold, the cleric was 4 levels higher than us and also evil, and I was dead. The GM had us all draw from the Deck of Many Things while I wasn't around. But don't worry, we're going to go get my soul back!...In the meantime I was handed a character that was a level lower than everyone else and used the standard array (our original characters were made with point buy). I was having plenty of fun just following the module 
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Nov 3, 2016 03:35
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Deck of Many Things, Strike one Killing a PC while his player's not even there, Strike two Replacement PC is shittier than the rest, Steee-rike three, you're out!
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Nov 3, 2016 03:48
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Bieeardo posted:I knew a guy who, when he got upset at our SR GM, he'd cast all of his barriers and buffs on himself and instigate a fight with the cops. The idiot GM felt compelled to rise to the occasion, every time, basically leaving the rest of us with our thumbs up our asses.
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Nov 3, 2016 10:14
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Kavak posted:Deck of Many Things, Strike one Yep. Why the GM would not have the replacement start at the same level as everyone (except for the cleric) is beyond me. It's so simple. The only explanation is that it is a punishment, and that's obviously not a good reason. Killing a PC who isn't there also makes me think it's spite. The Deck of Many Things I can take or leave, but most GMs don't know when to stop with it. 
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Nov 3, 2016 15:21
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HellCopter posted:I missed a session of my weekly 5e game due to work, but it was at a pretty boring "travel the road, roll encounters" part so I figured it wouldn't hurt. how convenient that the only character whose player was absent managed to draw the "u died" card
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Nov 3, 2016 15:30
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I'm pretty non-confrontational (I tend to leave Catpiss) but if I came back to that situation, I would've raised hell - yeah, it's elfgames but there's an unspoken rule that unless given explicit permission, you do not kill someone's character while they're absent.
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Nov 3, 2016 15:56
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HellCopter posted:I missed a session of my weekly 5e game due to work, but it was at a pretty boring "travel the road, roll encounters" part so I figured it wouldn't hurt.
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Nov 3, 2016 16:17
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Ah, I found out the reason I was a level behind. Another player had drawn the Knight card, which gives you a 4th level fighter as a servant. Which...makes it worse, I think? I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here since none of them seem like the spiteful type, and he seemed like he understood he made a mistake when I brought it up after the game. But I'm even more concerned that the game will be so unbalanced it's unplayable now.
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Nov 3, 2016 17:48
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it sucks but dnd is as fun as you make it. if you arent going to leave i suggest you embrace the knight lackey position. maybe adopting a personality like "Geoffrey" in the fresh prince. kinda the wise rear end butler that HAS to do what he is told but constantly making snide remarks at the expense of his employer
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Nov 3, 2016 17:52
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The only good use I ever saw of a Deck of Many Things was an adventure themed around one. Different doors in the dungeon had cards on them and opening them triggered the card. They did include the "lose your soul" card, but the device that the soul was trapped in was in the dungeon too (and not at the end) so the party could go get it back.
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Nov 3, 2016 20:52
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HellCopter posted:The GM had us all draw from the Deck of Many Things... I have heard that artifact referred to as the Deck of Campaign Ending. I very much agree with that name.
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Nov 3, 2016 21:23
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Yeah, the Deck of Many Things is fun, but it's a "last week of classes, so campaign is over" thing, not a "here draw from this" thing. It's a tradition for my campaigns on the last session to play poker with a deck of cards that winds up being a deck of many things.
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Nov 3, 2016 21:31
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I had a D&D derail because the sorcerer/barbarian/dragon disciple ignored my in and out of character warnings not to draw from the deck, and lost his giant collection of magic items that "Were the only reason my build worked". He then demanded that the rest of the party draw from the deck in an effort to get his poo poo back because he wasn't going to play otherwise. My character drew the "You are immediately slain and your soul is in the possession of Aszmodan" card, he proceeded to loot my corpse of all my magic swag and left my corpse rotting in a cave because "gently caress it he's a half-elf and in character we're not supposed to like them anyway." He then proceeded to bitch me out because I didn't use the weapons/armor that he specialized in, and refused to come to the next session anyway because of "That Deck Bullshit". The campaign ended shortly thereafter but not before I came back as a twinked to the gills gunslinger investigating my previous character's disappearance and being very very suspicious of all these shady folk. Even better when we ran into some Mirror Entities and I got to figure out who was on our side or not by blanketing the entire hallway in liberal amounts of dragonfire rounds.
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Nov 3, 2016 21:54
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HellCopter posted:Ah, I found out the reason I was a level behind. Another player had drawn the Knight card, which gives you a 4th level fighter as a servant. Which...makes it worse, I think? Wait, so you're playing the 4th level knight servant. And you're one level behind everyone but the cleric. So your DM had you find a deck of many things at level 5!?
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Nov 3, 2016 22:00
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...how long has this guy been DMing? I mean, in general. Because this is some really amateur hour poo poo.
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Nov 3, 2016 22:09
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