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Those are all reasonable and prudent actions to take in that situation. Looks like you got a friendly and helpful ghost.
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Nov 16, 2016 21:58
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Previously in Tanicus… http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3460258&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=222 A few months ago, our party was caught in a devilish ambush. Our Favored Soul, Aiena, dropped an Ice Storm on a whole bunch of little devils and wipe them all out. However, the edge of her storm clipped a nearby tent holding a unit of soldiers. The specific soldier (who we had nicknamed “Septimus” because he was the seventh soldier) that got caught under the template failed his save miserably and ended up becoming a statue of solid ice that was broken during the fight. Aiena, who normally has the energy of a Kender on crack, was miserable and had to be coaxed out of her depression. Sometimes fights are much harder on the PC’s than the NPC’s but it didn’t turn her into a sad depressed sack of tears for the rest of the campaign. She moved past it, and healed. ** Still making our way towards Ancellyon and a date with some standing stones, our party had finally made it out of the dry seabed and were firmly in the marshlands by this point. They were sticky, stinky, sulfuric, slimy, and spongey. Still, we pressed up as my Sorcerer kept chain casting Prestidigitation to blow the smell away from his nose and Aiena just put sandalwood incense stick behind her ears. Along the way, we run into these.   Grell. Brains on legs that do psychic damage. For the most part, we’ve been ignoring them and they’ve been ignoring us, keeping a wary distance and just observing without any muss or any fuss. Eventually though the path comes to a chokepoint, and that’s when the grell strike! By themselves they weren’t much of a problem. Their attacks hurt, but they’re incredibly squishy. The problem comes in the third round…when the sky opens up in a slash of black clouds and silver lightning. In a cloud of jagged ice and biting fog, this creature descends from the sky.   A Revenant. Named Septimus. And it has its sights set on Aiena. Revenants are undead creatures of vengeance and anger who died in a wrongful manner and crave revenge against their killers. They’re incredibly tough with a Nightmare for a horse, hit hard, and can teleport across the map with ease. They can be put down, but within 24 hours they can find a fresh corpse and reconstitute their body for another go. They can’t be stopped, they can’t be hidden from, and can pursue their target for one year, until either it’s dead or the Revenant is dragged to the afterlife, its quest for revenge unfulfilled. So our sweet, innocent, happy-go-lucky, childlike Favored Soul has a Revenant after her.  It almost killed her (she failed two death saves) before we managed to destroy its (current) body and fell the Nightmare with the help of Fallinrae’s Unicorn mount. But now Aiena, our healer, is devastated and retreats into her shell, barely managing to do anything other than heal us when we’re wounded. The thought of her casting Ice Storm or any damaging spell, even Call Lightning, causes her to curl up into a ball and sob. ** The Ancelyn are…pragmatic when it comes to warfare. When a Ancelyn dies, their bodies are recovered at all costs so they can be returned to their homeland and ensure the proper funeral rites are observed. When it comes to their Orc allies however, the Ancelyn figure that they have more use for a dead Orc than the Orcs do. Enter the Corpse Collector Golem.    It was lying in wait at the bottom of a pool of sludge as our Rogue was scouting ahead. Cullus was distracted by some very expensive looking crystals that were jutting out from the muck. While he was debating the past way to climb over to them without sinking, the Corpse Collector rose up from the ground, grabbed him…and with a Natural 20, jammed him right onto one of his shoulder spikes. I hate Golems because they’re ALWAYS immune to one type of spell damage and my character is becoming infamous enough that most golems sent against us are immune to lightning, or worse healed by it…it’s also my GM’s way of making me think outside the box. Which I did with acid damage via Acid Splash and Chromatic Orb. But the kicker of the fight was our poor Rogue, impaled on a spike, attempting to remove himself, as we just plink and plunk away at this armored monstrosity. The GM allowed him an Athletics check to pull himself free… Natural 20. quote:“Ok, it turns out you weren’t as stuck as you originally thought you were. So you can act this round to jump down….” Cullus rolls both his attacks. Two Natural 20’s. He does massive enough damage that it’s enough to take the Golem down as the GM rules that Cullus found a major gap in the Golem’s armor and strikes it down. We manage to scavenge a good bit of the scrap armor and shove it into our portable hole/ditch in case we need it later to…I don’t know, but damned if we were going to leave it lying around. **  We have a few more off-screen run-ins with the Grell. We easily brush aside the walking brains and spend more time consoling Aiena than dealing with them. At the edge of the swamp, we run into one final pack of Grell. As we get ready to cut through them, there’s a disturbance in the water nearby…and this thing rises out of it.   It’s the Grell Queen. Not the whole Queen mind you. Just the portion that’s above the surface as the rest of the massive creature sits underwater. On its first action, it…shudders…and squeezes out two more Grell. Yeah. Not only is it a Grell Queen, it’s a PREGNANT Grell Queen. So the fight is now trying to force our way through an increasing amount of Grell to take out the Queen. We take her down once we get to her, however the nickel and dime damage from the tiny Grells made it a lot closer than it should have been. ** The marshlands begin to give way to rocky foothills. Named “The Path of Flame” on our maps, the narrow valley between two mountain ranges was the most direct path into Ancellyon without going through the heavily guarded border. Why was the valley called “The Path of Flame?”   Fire Giants. And right now, two of them were casually making their way to a nearby hot spring to sit, relax, and talk about any and all things Fire Giant.. Still a bit beat up from taking on the Grell Queen, our party decided to hang back and just let the pair of them pass. No muss, no fuss, just allow them to go one their way without them every knowing we were hiding. That’s when Falinrae’s Holy Avenger demanded he smite them. Our Paladin’s new sword is a bloodthirsty yet honorable weapon who will only unlock its full potential if Falinrae proves himself “worthy.” And letting a pair of evil Fire Giants pass by without challenging them makes the Paladin unworthy in its eyes. So we all pass our Hide checks (FOR ONCE) and are getting ready to make like rocks when Falinrae strides out towards the giants and demands their attention by stabbing one of them in the foot. We ended up defeating THREE Fire Giants while the fourth one wisely escaped before we could turn out attention to him. A little later down the road, the valley becomes much more treacherous, with a lot of ledges, deadfalls, boulders and depressions, and large rock formations to climb up and over. Our party has to make Athletics rolls to maintain our footing. It’s only a target number of 5 but at one point my Sorcerer stumbles after rolling a 3. This puts him at the extreme back of the party when a group of Fire Giants pop out of their foxholes and beginning throwing boulders. And then with a roar, THIS guy leaps down from a nearby hillside right into the middle of the party and slams his sword into the ground, releasing a Fireball at point blank range.   (As a note, the new Giant models are REALLY freaking cool) So while two Giants and the Fire Giant Chieftain pound on the party, by stumbling Varis actually has a shot to make it up the hill to a nearby foxhole without being seen. I manage to do so, and as the Fire Giant inside rears back to throw a boulder, I cast Banish with Heightened Spell Metamagic behind it. Did you know Fire Giants have a +5 to their Charisma saves? I sure as hell didn’t. Neither did the rest of the party. And the DM only realized it at the last minute when he glanced at the Fire Giant’s statistics sheet. So the Fire Giant, seeing that I was doing nothing more than waggling my fingers at him, grabs me and manages to completely and utterly immobilize me. All I can do is try to break free every round using a Strength check…yeah, right…as my Pseudodragon familiar pecks and stings at his fingers (“Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.”) trying to get me free. The rest of the party meanwhile is wailing away on the Fire Giant Chieftain, trying to get him down before he can cast another Fireball. He’s down to 20 HP when one of the Fire Giants comes roaring out of his foxhole and runs full tilt towards him. Did you know Fire Giants have Paladins who can Lay on Hands? I sure as hell didn’t. Neither did the rest of the party. The Chieftain manages to get off another Fireball spell and the party is getting hammered over and over again. The Fire Giant is about three seconds away from petting and hugging and squeezing and calling me George when he leans forward and whispers into my ear. quote:”You never saw me. If the Chieftain dies, I become Chieftain. You let me go, I let you go. You talk about me, I will send the entire tribe after you.” So he lets me go and I crawl out of my hole. The party has beaten the Chieftain and his two companions down as I manage to climb over the rocks and line up a Lightning Bolt. 78 points of damage later, they’re all dead, we have a huge magical sword whose size class is “gently caress the gently caress Off,” and we ease on down the road with the rest of the party unaware of the future geo-political ramifications of the conflict. ** Another Fire Giant is sitting in the middle of the road. And this one is a LOT bigger than even the Fire Giant Chieftain. He’s hitting the side of the mountain with a hammer roughly the size of Nebraska and picking through the resulting boulders looking for what appears to be veins of iron ore. The rest of the rubble gets casually tossed into a large pile. We DEFINITELY aren’t in any shape to fight a Fire Giant of THIS size, and we’re deathly afraid that Falinrae is going to walk up and challenge it to a one-on-one duel. So it’s decided that Cullus will go back to the party and lie while Skeever goes to talk to the Fire Giant and convince him to hide while the rest of us pass.  I have to point something out that the DM brought up after game on his blog. Cullus came back and spun a really horrible lie about earthquakes and avalanches that no one in their right mind, especially a suspicious Paladin, should fall for. However, Cullus rolled incredibly well on his Deception Check and Falinrae rolled very poorly on his Sense Motive check. It was one of those moments where dice and role-playing don’t quite get along. In a lot of other games, the DM could easily go “you fall for the lie and that’s that.” Or the players could get into an argument that derails the game and leads to hurt feelings. I have to give credit to Cullus’ player and Falinrae’s player who both played out the scene to the point where Falinrae said “I have every reason to believe Cullus is lying about WHAT is up ahead, but I’m going to trust him and NOT go ahead.” And props to the DM for letting the two players handle things between them and not stepping in too early. It’s a sign of trust in his players, and vice versa.  Meanwhile Skeever had walked up to the Fire Giant. In the course of the conversation, Skeever mentions coming across “some of your kind” in the mountains. The Fire Giant immediately perks up and demands to know if this is true, that our party has found other of his kind. Because…well, it turns out that the Fire Giant before us isn’t a Fire Giant. His name is Ilholdyn, and he’s a Fergian Giant. What’s a Fergian Giant, you ask? They’re servants of Fergus, the Master Craftsman, Lawful Neutral God of crafts, smiths, and ale, also known as the god who built the world. He didn’t create it, but he followed the blueprints. Fergian Giants were the actually construction workers, the one who actually poured the foundations for the continents and helped to flood the oceans. Ilholdyn is the last of them as he hasn’t seen another of his kind in nearly two thousand years, and he’s never seen a dragonborn (Skeever) or a dragon-blooded Sorcrer (myself) before, to the point where he asked us if we’d donate our bodies to him once we died so he could study us and make blueprints for the next time he’s called on to help create a new race… The crux of the conversation however was as follows. The Ancellyn had sealed the border of Ancelyon (“they know we’re coming,” groused our Eldritch Knight) and the only way to get into the country was through the fortress city of Methryl and ten thousand screaming evil Sidheborn. Although, there was another way…the Old Lady of the Mountain who lived on the Balancing Rock at the top of Mount Waylourn, just a hop, skip, and a seven-day walk through a series of mines that once contained the very ore that was used to forge the world of Tanicus. She could help us get into Ancelyon without having to fight off hordes and hordes of evil elves. Seven days underground. The trip won’t be so bad though. According to Ilholdyn, the only creatures who live in the mines are harmless spiders.
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Nov 16, 2016 22:44
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Splicer posted:The tricky thing with insanities is finding ones that are meaningfully distinguishable from standard PC behaviour. In a Supernatural-ish FATE game our characters were trapped in a creepy haunted hospital. We tried to get out of the window, but it was unopenable/unbreakable. So I set the curtains on fire to see if that would do it (it did not). We went into the next room and the power went out, so I set the curtains on fire so we could see better. Then things started getting eschery so I suggested I keep setting curtains on fire to keep track of what rooms we'd already been in. All the other players thought these were really good ideas. At no point did anyone realise I'd been possessed by a ghost arsonist. You'll also sometimes get players who are too cautious. I did a wild west game on a forum, where the players got PMs as a replacement for GM notes. At one point I rolled for them to notice a guy standing in the lobby of the hotel they were staying at, with high rolls letting them notice suspicious behavior (the guy was an assassin casing them). I did the rolls in secret and PMed the thing they noticed so they wouldn't be spoiled by anyone else's rolls. In the case of one player who rolled a critical failure, their character saw an innocent civilian in the hotel and accidentally mistook them for an assassin drawing their gun; because the rolls were secret, I told him everything as if he had basically rolled a critical success and was seeing an impending threat. Aaaaand the player did nothing. They elected to watch cautiously instead of taking action against what they were very heavily hinted at was someone pulling a gun. Had this actually been the real assassin instead of a fake-out, he'd have been on the wrong end of a revolver in short notice.
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Nov 16, 2016 23:45
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More on my DnD game, finally: In my DnD game, last time my players had been introduced to the weird and terrible power of the villain and the tumultuous psyche of the dwarven king. Following this I had planned to give the party some social engagements to let them make some alliances and enemies but I soon discovered that half of my players did not really want to do a whole lot of big social stuff, and one of the players that was happy to had a character that was a cultists styled warlock. As a result I streamlined a lot of what I had planned in regards to alliances and resources, but several things of note happened: The fighter hit on a power mage and organised a date with her, The warlock pissed off the evangelical patron of the church, The paladin managed to annoy everyone by shortcircuiting someone's attempt to leave an annoying conversation and then made them both explain in great detail how petty and obnoxious their personal feud was, The druid managed to detect secret signals from an assassin, Then the party met someone who had been hit by an explosion of volatile magic ore, and had been given a sort of magical brain damage. The simpleton (think enchantment dwarf from Dragon Age) suddenly became extremely lucid and gave some concerning prophecies for the party. At this point the party started hiring NPCs to manage and run their base. Of most amusing note was the party ignoring the dwarf banker who they had made their dragon transformation permanent and who was now terrified people would find out he was a monster, only for the fighter to arrive next session and use a combination of blackmail and the promise of a horde (managing the party finances) to get him to run their floating island base. Needing a magical fuel to power their floating island's engine, the party traveled to a mining village. The village had reports of terrible noises and missing villagers, and the mine supervisor informed the party that a twisted and misshapen monster had left the mines and died after leaving the strange black wall that had appeared in the mind. Venturing inside the party discovered creepy fleshy tunnels, with strange and caveman-esque dwarf brutes hacking into the walls and using buckets to collect the liquid metals pouring out of them. Concerned about the effects of the strange space being permanent like some of the ones in the last space they had entered into, the fighter and druid tried to use the power of the place to restore one of the dwarves to normal. This worked, and they told the dwarf to flee back to the entrance and to resist the maddening whispers within the strange fleshy nightmare of the mine compelling him to obey. At the bottom of the shafts they found the mine foreman, warped into some weird creature of metal and flesh having been made the source of the space and also mad with the notion that bathing himself in the 'blood of the earth' would transform him into a god. He certainly had a stronger and more resilient body, but the fighter took umbrage with the thought that metals and ore were the blood of the earth. In his reasoning, blood flowed through the body and a much more apt geological analogy for that would be lava. The foreman considered this argument and decided that he agreed. Now instead of a tough and strong monster to fight, the part had a strong and tough monster that could shoot out fire who had turned much of the arena into lava. The rest of the party was less than impressed with what the fighter had wrought. After defeating the foreman, the space returned to normal restoring everyone back to normal. Except for the foreman, whose body had been cut into pieces by the killing blow. The party discovered that under his metallic skin, the foreman's body had been converted entirely into a powerful but volatile magic ore. Perfect for powering their furnace, and they decided, a convenient way to hide the evidence of what happened in the mines from the villagers. The miner who had been restored to normal by the party also remained changed, but as he had been physically returned to normal the party found out before they left that the once reclusive and strange miner was now much more social than before and suddenly was interested in 'normal dwarf pastimes and interests'. Next up: The party confronts a mad preacher and manage to summon the forces of nature, an eldritch monster and the god of the dwarves into the same place and give me a headache.
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Nov 17, 2016 03:38
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HiKaizer posted:More on my DnD game, finally: I love it when a PC makes a situation WORSE...
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Nov 17, 2016 14:41
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I'm very proud of the players in my group for successfully taking down three gargantuan-sized airships. Clara the Vampire Monk pretty much took one down all by herself, using her Blooddrinker powers to sabotage the engines, while also enthralling the crew to train their guns on the other two airships. Balasar the Dragonborn Bard used temporal shenanigans to allow the party to prevent attacks before they happened, and sang a song of pacification to cause the airship cannon to not fire at all. Raiden the Cybernetic Fighter was a huge damage-dealer this fight, taking leaps off of 30-foot high parapets to jump onto one airship, tearing it asunder with his Ripper Mode, then making his way to the other airship and punching it hard enough to make it fall to the ground. Myna the Half-Orc Warlord kept the airship crews off-balance the entire time with her loud, powerful voice that also modulated enough to let them bypass the airship shields. She absorbed an incredible amount of damage - but always pulled out another Surge or THP ability before I could knock anyone down to 0. And as the airships lay wasted, Tiamat flies out of the planar tear in the skies. "Can I intimidate it?", asks Myna "Sure, give me an Intimidate check, DC 40" *rolls a 40 on the dot* "Huh ... she blinked. -1 to initiative"
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Nov 18, 2016 09:28
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Ilor posted:My favorite psychological maladies for games are ones that distort how the character perceives or interacts with reality. Schizophrenia (by which I do NOT mean Multiple Personality Disorder, but rather dissociative disorders), hallucinations, and paranoia are all great, because the GM can simply tell the player, "This is what your character sees/hears/smells/etc" and let the chips fall where they may. "You're pretty sure this NPC is lying to you," or "You notice this NPC whisper to his seneschal and catch your name as well as the word 'dagger.' As soon as they see you notice them, they part ways immediately." You don't have to make a big thing about it by saying, "your brain broke and you're crazy now." Just change the information that you give the character about his or her surroundings, ideally in a way where none of the other characters can definitively say otherwise. in Dark Heresy 1st Edition, my then Pyromancer, now Inquisitor has to drink watered down promethium because while fighting a demon, he lost a shitload of sanity due to some attack, got thrown into a promethium tank, accidentally swallowed a bunch of it, but when I used firebolt I rolled a 01 and rolled righteous fury and all except for one of them and exploded the demon. It's the little quirks that made Dark Heresy 1st edition amazing. Carebearz fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Nov 18, 2016 |
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Nov 18, 2016 14:30
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So I just ran the first session of what I hope ends up being a long running Ryuutama campaign. I was attempting to run the two adventures that are in the rulebook, so a small spoiler warning for those who want to get into the game. The only major modification I made to the base rules is that I allowed fantasy races and fantasy animals, though with no mechanical difference from the assumed humans and regular animals. Our cast is: Krallice - A technical type human healer who's travelling to find strange new herbs from far and wide and use them to develop new remedies. Grace Greenthumb - A magic type wood elf farmer whose backstory doesn't seem to be entirely worked out yet. She's a vegan who wields and axe. Soren - A nonbinary human magic type artisan. They're a fashion designer who specializes in capes. They don't actually want to go on a big journey, but it's an expected part of their surrounding culture, so they decided to just get it over with. Prince "Bonedog" Raekwon - The player proposed this character to me by linking me a picture and saying "This is my character."  They then described the character's gender as "skeleton." After some discussion, "Bonedog" was decided to be the result of an ancient spirit getting bored of the void and animating a gibbon skeleton, and now they're searching out more skeletons to be friends with. For those of you not familiar with Ryuutama, the idea is that it's about regular people who go on a journey in a fantasy world. The classes are things like "merchant" and "farmer." There is a combat system, and it's assumed they'll fight sometimes, but the game is more focused on other parts of the journey, and it's the kind of game where most things they run across will be friendly or at least indifferent to them. Watching over them and recording their journeys are beings called Ryuujin, who are dragon people who feed the stories they write to baby dragons. These Ryuujin often follow the party under a disguise. So I thought it might be fun for this party's Ryuujin to have forgotten to transform and be caught watching the party, and it made sense to me that the wood elf would notice. Me: It's a bright and beautiful day as you walk along a wide green grassland. Here and there, trees dot the landscape. And Grace, out of the corner of your eye, you notice that a human figure seems to be half hiding behind one and watching you. Grace's Player: I throw my axe at it! I realized at this point that I had suggested playing this to her boyfriend and told him to invite her, but never actually talked to her directly about the tone of this game. Oops. Definitely something to keep in mind for the future. But in any case, after some discussion, we all decided that this was a traditional elven greeting in this world. Luckily for them, that wasn't enough to scare the Ryuujin off. She just hid better, transformed into a cat, and followed along with them until nightfall. On their way, they ran into a weather wizard, or weazard (the actual official term according to the book) on his way to Weazcon 2016 back in the city they were just leaving. He warned them about heavy rain, but Bonedog called bullshit on his abilities and bet him 100 gold that it wouldn't rain. They woke up the next morning to a leaky tent and 100 fewer gold pieces in Bonedog's wallet. The first adventure had gone mostly according to plan aside from the axe, and since we still had time, I decided to start the second adventure the book provided, which was supposed to be about dealing with nekogoblin theives in the city. It started with the party looking around the city, and just as planned, Soren just barely avoided getting her wallet stolen, but was unable to catch the thief. Meanwhile, the rest of the party decided to see what shops and the like were around. Krallice decided to check out local hospital and wanted to see if they had any extra herbs for sale. I glanced at section of the book that listed herbs and decided it was easiest to just tell the player that all level 1 and 2 herbs on those pages were available. This was a mistake, though I didn't find out why until after I did a bit with the other players and came back to him. Krallice's player: I'm thinking I'd like to buy some Demon Lacquer (an herb whose purpose is to poison arrows). Me: OK. Just keep in mind that it expires after 24 hours. Krallice's player: OK yeah...wait, why is this in a doctor's office? Me: *looks up what it is* Well I'd think herbalists could use that as a base for more complex medicines. Krallice's player: But it's clearly a controlled substance. You can't just sell poison to anyone off the street. We need to talk to the authorities. The rest of the party agreed. I told them that they could try talking to the authorities at the castle if they really wanted to pursue this, and they went immediately. The rolled disastrously on their attempt to convince the guards to let them in, but a quick sleep spell from Grace took them down long enough that they were able to sneak in. From there the party decided it was best to split up. Bonedog and Krallice decided to try to see if they could find shipping records, figuring that whoever was shipping these guys poison was pretty shady. I decided that that made enough sense, so I had them roll to be stealthy enough to not look suspicious. And Bonedog completely botched it. Who would have thought that a horrific skeleton in an old trench coat would stand out so much? I decided that a noble child had seen him and started excited shouting about the skeleton, attracting more children. Bonedog took the opportunity to entertain them and distract everyone enough for Krallice to sneak off. Soren and Grace meanwhile decided it was best to find out who was actually in charge of overseeing medical establishments and controlled substances. Not having a better idea, they decided to just ask the first noble looking person they ran across, who luckily knew which noble had that title. Turned out it was an old man named Maximilian who received that mostly honorary post from the king, but probably never actually did anything with it. They went to his ugly, ostentatious house and luckily for them, he was delighted that he might be able to do something actually important with his position. So he decided to set up a sting with the two of them. I had them roll to keep their cool as Maximilian watched through a window. I went back to Krallice, and he rolled well enough to find what she was looking for. But I still had no idea what to do with this. So I decided to pull a Dungeon World and just asked Bonedog's player what was on the document his friend just found. They decided that it indicated that the shipment came from a location that fronted as an orphanage, but really smuggled dangerous things like this, and everyone knew it, even if they couldn't prove it. But also, it really did take in orphans and took good care of them. They decided to leave the castle to rejoin their companions only to find a smug old man leading a tied up doctor to the castle, the other party members following behind. The party decided they were pretty much done with this and accepted a reward from Maximilian. I asked if they were going to give him the shipping document for further evidence, but they decided that the party was clearly going to go to that "orphanage" in the future, and that this might be useful at that point. And that's where we ended the session. So in short, everything went wrong in the right way, and I hope it happens again next week.
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Nov 21, 2016 01:30
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Welp, my Camarilla V:tM game is no longer Camarilla. One of the players suggested the ST use the Midnight Circus supplement. Now we're all trapped in a ghost-eating Circus run by demons, we're all carnies, and my Giovanni now has Clan Enmity: Giovanni because we were forced to raid a family storehouse full of Wraiths to take back to the Circus. gently caress my (un)life e: and I lost my ghost-smashin' club 
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Nov 21, 2016 03:28
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Re: Roleplaying psychological problems in games, I played in a Vampire the Masquerade game where the setting ~aesthetic~ was based off Batman Returns ("isn't that a normal Masquerade game?" you might ask) and the campaign dealt with the oncoming apocalypse. I was harboring exiled vampires from a neighboring city in my mansion's basement, trying to secure greater and greater quantities of blood to keep them sated so they wouldn't spill out into the city like a bunch of unwelcome weirdos. This eventually culminated in the sheriff and the rest of the party storming my property and bursting through the cellar doors only to find row after row of empty cots and my character ready to fight to the death for "my kin." I mean, I was a Malkavian, so they really should have seen that coming
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Nov 21, 2016 03:38
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More DnD...Dungeons and Divinities of course. There are no dragons here So last time, the party took the corpse of a mutated miner and used it to power the magical island furnace. But they still had something left to do. See when they had originally defeated the king's dark psyche and brought his positive and negative aspects together, this fixed the khaos sphere that he had made. Similarly the miner foreman was creating his own area. While the party had checked with local spellcasters and found no trace of more khaos space themselves, they did find traces of it lingering. Originally this was meant to both reflect the fact that things they had altered had been permanently altered, and also that there was a lingering effect that would dissipate over time. But despite the fact the diviner had told them it was very weak, half of the party became convinced there was someone else still left that used khaos powers in the dwarven capital. Once they had convinced the paladin and warlock to play along, who were fairly ambivalent about the affair, they began to look. My original plan had been to not have another person to fight, but the party had a witch-hunt going on and so I decided to provide a witch. Of course it would need to be someone that they had gotten on the bad side of, and who would be an entertaining one shot villain. I had someone who would suit my needs perfectly... Going to seek the audience of the king's spymaster, they found out that a certain noble had been drawing people with his passionate sermons. He was due to have one that night, and the party decided that it was only fair that they attend the party as well. After all, were they not the heroes who had saved the kingdom? Waiting until the evening when the party was due to begin, they travelled to the estate in question. Expecting the guards to bar their entry or to at least attempt to turn them away, they were instead told that they were expected and invited inside. The house itself was gaudily opulent and filled with religious symbols and art, but the party was drawn to a passage to the side that ended in curtains. Failing their notice checks in spectacular unison the party did not notice the black wall until they passed through it, the khaos sphere hidden by the curtains. Inside they found the space shaped into a great temple, and a servant showed them in to the chapel. Inside they found a great group of people eagerly awaiting the sermon, the dwarves in attendance not those of the most wealth or influence but those most searching for a messenger from their god. The warlock and fighter sensed the key to the space below, and correctly assumed it was the noble, but could not manage to affect any change on the space around them or force the noble to appear. Unlike the king and even the miner, the noble had been practising with his power for about a week and was much more capable. Making a grand entrance through a secret passage in the back of the chapel, walking onto the palm of a giant statue of the creator which carried him to the floor the noble made his entrance. The party tried to confront him, and found him remarkably agreeable. The fighter denounced him for using the power of khaos, only for the noble to point out the party had done so as well. If they were heroes, why was his using the power so evil? Next the druid tried to accuse him of using an unnatural power that was not his, only for the noble to point out that his power was granted by his god. So on it went, the party trying to paint the actions of the noble in a bad light and to discredit him in the face of the crowd. The noble for his part turned their arguments on their heads and kept speaking to the crowd. So the debate went on for about an hour, while the warlock grew increasingly bored. Deciding that if the religious fanatic dwarf could have his god, then his patron should be in attendance as well. Expect the warlock channelled more power than he had expected and had a rather personal connection to his patron for a moment. In this time, his patron made its wishes known; a simple prayer being hummed. So the warlock used his power and allowed his patron to move through him, the eldritch being taking the very song from the world itself. As this finished off, the fighter and druid in unison lost their temper and attempted to use their power. The fighter wanted to show the dwarves in attendance the true nature of the void they were in, while the druid wanted to reclaim the space in the name of nature. The end result of both actions clashing was the space being erased, with little islands of stone tiles being covered in moss, grass and roots. Much to their disappointment this only served to frighten the pilgrims in attendance, with the noble promising them that he would protect them in the name of god. At this point the paladin decided to confront the noble about what was really happening, that the noble did not want to merely be a spiritual guide. Instead the noble saw himself as the new son of the Maker, part of the holy divinity they worshipped instead. The fighter then cast the illusion of the noble off, showing him to have taken a form like a walking statue of the Maker; flawless and with regal divinity. With this revelation the warlock and the druid upped their game. The druid began to try and channel the pure essence of nature into the place, while the warlock tried to directly summon his patron. As the space began to buckle as verdant growth and unspeakable and unknowable angles and spirals began to form something happened. A tear of light ripped open in the space and a great hand came out, crying out "ENOUGH!" and seizing the noble. The khaos space suddenly shattered leaving everyone in the actual chapel of the noble's estate, a much smaller and less fantastically grand room, but now without the noble to be found. Presumably dead, and taken to the Maker's displeasure of course. Naturally having once managed to draw the attention of a god, the party now plans contingencies for trying to get a god to intervene again. A definitely healthy plan that could not possibly backfire on them. Even if the dwarven fighter is seemingly beloved by the elven goddess of the moon, bearing one of her fated blades and his hands bound in thorns...but the last part he had not discovered yet. Edit: (I would normally have prompted the party to figure out the noble's motivations sooner, but they were enjoying the philosophical arguments so I let it run on. But once the party began escalating their reality manipulation checks I needed a way to tie off the session, that was now running over late and I did not want to drag into the next one. Deus ex machina seems a little trite, but the party seemed reasonably happy with it. It also will lead into some further consequences down the line...) HiKaizer fucked around with this message at 12:15 on Nov 21, 2016 |
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Nov 21, 2016 12:11
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my group just defeated an evil witch that used Resurrection magic to bring back people he killed in his likeness. one party member thought it would be good to attune the sacrificial dagger to him. which is a boss dagger that turns crit to 19/20 and does d10 damage and allows them to reroll the "crit chart" only one problem the dagger is sentient and talks like a redneck used car salesman and there is a percentage roll/char save each long rest for the character to adopt a new randomly selected "flaw" that stacks with all previous. The idea is to turn the character into a total poo poo head/socially terrible person but quite deadly
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Nov 21, 2016 15:01
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ellbent posted:Re: Roleplaying psychological problems in games, I played in a Vampire the Masquerade game where the setting ~aesthetic~ was based off Batman Returns ("isn't that a normal Masquerade game?" you might ask) and the campaign dealt with the oncoming apocalypse. I was harboring exiled vampires from a neighboring city in my mansion's basement, trying to secure greater and greater quantities of blood to keep them sated so they wouldn't spill out into the city like a bunch of unwelcome weirdos. This is downright responsible compared to most Malkavians I've played with. I mean, it's not ideal, but at least it isn't "I light my teddy bear on fire and throw it at the Prince in the middle of court, apropos of nothing." loving Teddy Bear Malkavians. I played in a Dark Ages Vampire game a while back, and we had a good Malkavian in our party. The GM was running a modified version of The Transylvania Chronicles, which starts in about 1000 AD and goes all the way to the present day. By about the 1600's, our Malkavian had...  Assaulted no less than five NPCs with chairs and tables, deliberately like a professional wrestler would. One of those was a climatic battle with an Assamite elder who had sold his soul to the devil. In preparation for the battle, the Malkavian had a wooden table made with a holy relic built into it and consecrated by the monk he hired to make it. It did agg damage to the Assamite. More discipline dots in Potence, Celerity, and Fortitude than his in-clan Malk disciplines (Auspex, Dominate, and Obfuscate). My Salubri carried more of the Auspex load, and our Lassombra carried Dominate. Obfuscate is for weaklings that aren't carrying around large wooden tables. More dots in Status: Brujah (4) than dots in Status: Malkavian (2). He sat with the Brujah delegation at the Council of Thorns (the convention that formalizes the Camarilla and starts the war with the Sabbat). His derangement was a personality disorder that made him have identity crises on the reg. Just a bit. Was named an Archon (read: Camarilla kill-stick) by the Brujah Justicar.He was the fourth (of five) most lethal member of our party by 1800. The GM had the wisdom to, at a certain point, just ask for us to describe how we'd deal with combat, and just narrate it from there. We'd still roll out combats with elders and really ugly poo poo, but it was kind of a "you must be sixth generation to ride this ride" kind of deal.
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Nov 21, 2016 15:28
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My boyfriend played a Malk in his college LARP chapter, and his derangement was "I have no internal monologue -- what I think, I say." It always struck me as a good choice for being interesting/disruptive without going ~wackity schmackity~ about it.
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Nov 21, 2016 20:52
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I knew a guy who played a Malkavian with multiple personalities. Two of them. One was Captain loving Kirk. The other was a redshirt that Kirk sublimated himself into in order to 'transport' cross-town. He thought that Nosferatu were Klingons. I think the personalities actually kind of worked, but he should have tagged all of the clans as goofy aliens.
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Nov 21, 2016 21:02
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Antivehicular posted:My boyfriend played a Malk in his college LARP chapter, and his derangement was "I have no internal monologue -- what I think, I say." It always struck me as a good choice for being interesting/disruptive without going ~wackity schmackity~ about it. That's a good solution. The big problem with Malks is that 1) They automatically attract the ~wackity schmackity~ players by their nature, and 2) Even the good players have to do a bit of homework to play derangements without them just gravitating toward goofiness. What constitutes "too goofy" depends on the rest of the players and the GM, but usually a Malk with the mind of a child, for example, is the lamest option. It's a really tough clan to play, but it often attracts players that aren't up to the challenge. If I ever see another LARPer carrying a child's toy and using their character as an excuse to act like a child, I'll go out of my way to gently caress with them in-character. I'll figure out a reason. No game needs more Teddy Bear Malkavians. Bieeardo posted:I knew a guy who played a Malkavian with multiple personalities. Two of them. See, this is fine. Goofy without carrying around a loving teddy bear. BTW: Ventrue are obviously Vulcans: mind control, and smug as hell.
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Nov 21, 2016 21:25
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 on the whole "gently caress Teddy Bear Malkavians" thing. The ~wackity schmackity~ players can go eat a bag of dicks. Being legit crazy should be loving scary to all the normies in the room. I briefly played a Malkavian who was convinced he was the second-coming of Christ. Nobody came out of an interaction with me saying, "Oh, that wacky Jesus, he's such a card." Instead, they were all like, "That fucker's a serious nutbag who is going to get us all killed, and he needs to be stopped. Like, now."
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Nov 21, 2016 22:21
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Railing Kill posted:BTW: Ventrue are obviously Vulcans: mind control, and smug as hell. Edit: and Caine is clearly Q. 
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Nov 21, 2016 22:51
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Ilor posted:
The problem with that it tables can then decide "no, you're too crazy and you need to dial it back." The Malk in question was, surprisingly, the muscle and intimidator of the group and had, for reference, decided to chime in during negotiation for important information. They noted how many bones made up this rear end in a top hat Ventrue's hand and proceeded to snap each one individually, casually noting the scientific name of each and asking said bone the same request for information they made originally, snapping it if they didn't comply. After doing so, they proceeded to remove one of the intact nailbones, strip the flesh off with their mouth, and pick their teeth with it. It was decided at the end of the session that this Malk went Too Far.
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Nov 21, 2016 23:21
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Yeah, I guess it depends on how much of a "party" the PCs are supposed to be. In this particular game there was a "plot" I guess, but it was pretty sandboxy. My character wasn't violently unstable or anything like that. Quite the opposite, actually. But he was convinced of his own divinity and the righteousness of his actions, and had little to no regard for "the rules" that vampire society (un)lived by. That made him dangerous. I fully expected the rest of the party to eventually have to kill me, but I was OK with that going in.
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Nov 21, 2016 23:40
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I accidentally made my Vampire a Malkavian the last time I played because someone incorrectly told me we were playing a game in the 1980s Everyone else in the game was playing a sad goth and me and my friend roll in with Wolfman Jack the Nosferatu and came into the last episode of the adventure to confront the ultra dracula in the sewers. And we had no combat skills. We weren't invited back but that's okay because the DM smoked inside his own house.
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Nov 22, 2016 00:44
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Yawgmoth posted:That means Lasombra are Romulans. Who're the Ferengi in this? That's also acceptable. The Ventrue are the closest thing to pure capitalists in Masquerade, so they would be the Ferengi if they were more grognardy and misogynistic. I'm not sure anyone else comes close enough. Lasombra as Romulans, Ventrue as Vulcans? That might work.  Ilor posted:
Exactly. This is what makes the Malkavians fit into a game that's supposed to be a horror story. I mean, some WoD games aren't horror stories, but most are, and that's the path of least resistance in the source material. Malk derangement should be unnerving, not whimsical. It should confront players and characters with horror, not provide comic relief. I'm not even that try-hard about the genre, either. I don't mind a bit of strangeness or even dark humor, as long as there is an undercurrent of horror in the game. For example: that Malk in our Dark Ages party smashed opponents with tables like a pro wrestler. That was goofy. But two times he did that, he completely lost it to anger frenzy. He pulped one of them with the short side of his table, caving the poor sap's head in. The scene went from  to  in about a second, in a good way.I'll always defend playing in-genre for most games, especially WoD, because that's usually the players' expectation with those games. If I want to play a more light-hearted game, I'll play something light-hearted by nature, or at least neutral like D&D. Teddy Bear Malks are The loving WorstTM because they break the genre's tone despite trying (poorly) to play into it. It's even worse than someone just deliberately playing out of tone and genre.
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Nov 22, 2016 01:33
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quote:they would be the Ferengi if they were more grognardy and misogynistic.
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Nov 22, 2016 01:51
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Tunicate posted:Ferengi are the WW staff 
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Nov 22, 2016 02:10
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Ominous Jazz posted:I accidentally made my Vampire a Malkavian the last time I played because someone incorrectly told me we were playing a game in the 1980s IIRC you were playing a Toreador transfixed by the beauty in 1980s Pepsi Adman business cards because you still thought it was the same day you were Embraced, and I was "oWOD Art Bell but a Nosferatu." But yeah this is true, including us being the goofiest dracula guest stars in a shared megacampaign set in the 1990s and dominated by 30-somethings who probably wore trenchcoats and listened to Marilyn Manson back then.
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Nov 22, 2016 02:31
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My favourite sort of Malk was the kind you'd never peg. No props, no catchphrases, no obvious tics. When other players finally realize what you are, they get to wonder just what variety of psycho you are underneath.
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Nov 22, 2016 06:27
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Bieeardo posted:My favourite sort of Malk was the kind you'd never peg. No props, no catchphrases, no obvious tics. When other players finally realize what you are, they get to wonder just what variety of psycho you are underneath. The kind where you get six months into a campaign and the party has placed many huge responsibilities in the Malk's calm and capable hands, and then right before a major confrontation, the Malk leans in and whispers to another PC, with no irony, "I hope Jerry is right about this meeting with Hardestadt." Who's Jerry, the PC might ask, suddenly realizing that such a person does not exist. Who the gently caress is Jerry? At that moment, Hardestadt walks into the room to negotiate. 
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Nov 22, 2016 13:55
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In our vampire games we've swung all ways with Malks; Jorge Bizarro, aka Ricky Spanish, aka the Ruckus & the Beef. A Malkavian mercenary our rivals hired to gently caress with us, had a dissociative personality in the form of The Beef, who always wanted to bring the ruckus, because you can't have beef without a ruckus. Most notably he would use animalism to make us frenzy at inopportune times, such as at a nightclub full of mortals, or in an important meeting with one of the prince's advisors. We eventually bought him out and had him work for us. Dude also had a knack for Demolitions. Jorge was great because the Beef was a conglomerate entity who talked through him, and was formed of all players at the table throwing out whatever suggestions sounded fun at the time, preferably destructive. Usually went badly for us, but was always fun to encounter since it wasn't just the GM talking to themselves. "Slick" was a PC Malkavian embraced in the 20s with pretty classic megalomania - he refused to believe he was anything but the best at everything, and thought himself totally invincible and invulnerable. Dressed like a 20s gangster and carried a Tommy gun, and had enough luck and criminal skills to get away with most of it, save for botching a frenzy check vs a giant flaming snake/setite and diablerizing a Ravnos. Maybe. Not sure if that actually happened or he was just pinned for it. Died at the end of the campaign along with everyone else after they invited a baali into the city to deal with a salubri rival. It was our first VtM game and we had no idea what a Baali was - we now know much better. Nina was a brief but great malk, who had an actual True Love from before her embrace and tried very hard to keep him safe. Mostly from her own delusions of Group Stalking. Nina was terrifying. Mostly because the player was fantastic at RPing out her delusions, and because she had a >0 chance of absolutely wrecking a social encounter by flipping out at someone. A good Malkavian is great to interact with.
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Nov 22, 2016 14:57
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Ambi posted:"Slick" was a PC Malkavian embraced in the 20s with pretty classic megalomania - he refused to believe he was anything but the best at everything, and thought himself totally invincible and invulnerable. Dressed like a 20s gangster and carried a Tommy gun, and had enough luck and criminal skills to get away with most of it, save for botching a frenzy check vs a giant flaming snake/setite and diablerizing a Ravnos. Maybe. Not sure if that actually happened or he was just pinned for it. Died at the end of the campaign along with everyone else after they invited a baali into the city to deal with a salubri rival. It was our first VtM game and we had no idea what a Baali was - we now know much better. Hahaha. Yep. That'll do it. I played a Salubri in the aforementioned Dark Ages game. I'm not usually "that guy" in a game, the one who wants to play the special snowflake from supplements way outside the core book. But I had a good concept specifically for a Salubri, and the GM was down for it. Playing a clan that by the start of the game is on the tail-end of a pogrom was a challenge that I actually wanted, so off we went. I embraced an NPC with True Faith by the end of the fourth session. The party's Lasombra almost attacked my character over bringing yet another marked Salubri into the party, but ultimately the party supported it. My PC and the NPC were blood bonded to each other a while later. At a certain point in the plot, that became a liability (duh), so my PC went on a sort of pilgrimage/hermitage to shake off the blood bond. During that time, she was seduced by the Baali and converted by some horrific ritual. The next time we saw her, the party Brujah and I had to mow her down in order to stop her coven from summon something from hell. The scene was deliberately reminiscent of Rosemary's Baby with some poo poo form Jacob's Ladder thrown in there. From the start of that plot to the mentally excruciating end of it, my character lost 3 Humanity and dropped Path of Humanity altogether. Mistakes: I've made a few.
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Nov 22, 2016 15:24
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Hopefully Yawg comes in to flesh this out a little bit more but last night was awesome. Somehow the Avatar of Zuggtmoy we were fighting slipped on the ice slick I conjured beneath her, which really pissed her off. I was sure she was about to eat me until I successfully escalated my Call Cranial Encyster spell and all five Encysters grappled her successfully. Meanwhile it's raining blood indoors, again.
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Nov 22, 2016 17:45
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Can anyone give me the two dollar tour of the whole Salubri/Baali thing? Played quite a bit of oWoD but never read what all the cryptic passages were alluding to.
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Nov 22, 2016 19:10
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PJOmega posted:Can anyone give me the two dollar tour of the whole Salubri/Baali thing? Played quite a bit of oWoD but never read what all the cryptic passages were alluding to. Sure. Saulot is the first Antidilluvian (3rd gen) vampire. He is the progenitor of the Salubri clan. There are apocryphal sources (the books leave it unclear whether they are true or not) that say that after he founds the clan, he kind of follows Cain out into the East to find his way. He finds these guys, I think they're ancient Assyrians or Babylonians (I don't remember which), who are doing horrible poo poo. He tries to reason with them and not necessarily get them to stop being evil, but at least be a bit more balanced. They don't buy it. He ends up leaving them in a hole in the ground or something, and they just retreat further into hate and madness. Saulot realizes that it's not these guys who need balance, but maybe he does. So he uses some ancient, forgotten magic to found a second, separate bloodline: the Baali. These guys end up running around worshipping Baal, Mammon, Angra Manyu, Satan, and whatever other near-eastern incarnation of evil they can get their mitts on. Meanwhile, Saulot continues to wander, and eventually sleeps, saying nothing aloud to resolve the conundrum. Fast-forward a few thousand years. The Salubri have found out about Dad's Little Mistake, and have been in a shadow war with their brothers even since. They even have the Baali almost extinct at a couple of points. But by about 900 AD or 1000 AD, an early version of the Sabbat Revolt takes place. A bunch of clans rise up and try to take out their Antidilluvians. At the same time, there's a group of mortal wizards who are vying for immortality. The Baali find out about those clowns and point them in the direction of Saulot. The mages eat him, and one of them basically becomes the progenitor of Clan Tremere. They then start a pogrom against the Salubri in order to legitimize their claim to the bloodline. The Baali sit back and laugh about it. TL;DR: the Salubri and Baali are like half-brothers, and the Baali tricked a bunch of dumb wizards into destroying the Salubri a thousand years ago. Edit: In the present, Saulot eventually wakes up and eats the head of Clan Tremere from the inside of his soul, out. Oh, and the whole of Clan Tremere is blood-bound to that body, so guess who has a whole clan to be his puppets as the end of world approaches? Guess it's not a good idea to eat the soul of a dude who has unfathomable mastery over the mind and soul! 
Railing Kill fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Nov 22, 2016 |
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Nov 22, 2016 19:24
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In my time as a White Wolf player, I’ve played two Malkavians. One was a cyromaniac. He liked things COLD. His haven had the AC cranked as high as it could go and his coffin was in a deep freezer. His way of torturing supernatural beings was to freeze their limbs and use a sledgehammer on them. One time he caught outside in a “Storm of the Century” and spent a week buried in a four-foot Chicago snowdrift because he couldn’t make it back to his Haven and it was the only way to stay out of the sun. The other? Believed 100% to the bottom of his soul/psyche that he was actually a member of Clan Ventrue. CobiWann fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Nov 22, 2016 |
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Nov 22, 2016 20:31
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CobiWann posted:
Hank or Dean?
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Nov 22, 2016 20:45
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The Bee posted:Hank or Dean? 
CobiWann fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Nov 22, 2016 |
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Nov 22, 2016 20:46
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The Bee posted:Hank or Dean? Primary derangement: Histrionic Personality Disorder. Secondary derangement: Dyslexia.
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Nov 22, 2016 21:06
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I'm considering making my next character a Malkavian who literally believes he is Loki, and has been cursed by Odin for thinking stealing his ravens was a sweet prank
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Nov 22, 2016 21:52
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FrostyPox posted:I'm considering making my next character a Malkavian who literally believes he is Loki, and has been cursed by Odin for thinking stealing his ravens was a sweet prank This now makes me wonder if trying to recreate Old Man Henderson as a Malkavian would achieve any degree of success.
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Nov 22, 2016 22:26
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I was not involved with this personally, but an old friend of mine from uni was involved in possibly a LARP, possibly just P&P Masquerade where they had a Malkavian who was perfectly normal, balanced and personable apart from the fact that he firmly, unequivocally did not think that he was actually a vampire. Everything about him that was supernatural, from his sensitivity to sunlight and nocturnal habits as well as his disciplines, were handwaved with some glib explanation. It's been some years and my memory of the conversation isn't as keen as it was, but it was a hell of a discussion. Apparently he was somehow able to process food and drink apart from alcohol, it just provided him no sustenance. So, he would eat and drink fairly normally and would have literally no memory of consuming blood from humans. If he was given blood, he would insist that it was red wine and that anyone insisting otherwise was just having him on.
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Nov 23, 2016 02:27
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JUST MAKING CHILI posted:Hopefully Yawg comes in to flesh this out a little bit more but last night was awesome.
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Nov 23, 2016 03:14
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