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Yawgmoth posted:I'm always wary of GMs who call their games a "sandbox" because in my experience it means the GM goes "okay your characters are in a town. What do you do?" and then stares expectantly, like the players are supposed to come up with a plot; or it's not really a sandbox and the GM wants to have a grand story of the world but doesn't know how to tie all of his half-session plot threads into anything cohesive so it's a "sandbox world" until he takes a creative writing course. What I'm doing in my West Marches games, is I have a list of 5 or 6 missions, they can pick one, all the missions have loose callbacks to each other to push a meta plot. There were a few missions they ignored, so now I'm going to make them more valuable. I'm also going to make the things that are getting ignored have effects on the world. My idea is to write a News Post for the world and post it, explaining the things they thwarted, and why the things they left alone are now getting bigger. It's hard because my player count is now up to 21, and keeps climbing. Haha.
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Mar 4, 2017 19:47
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Ilor posted:The key to a good sandbox is to have the world around the PCs keep moving. Oh, you didn't engage with the plot threads about the rise of the Dragon Cult? That's cool, but now they run the place and are sacrificing people to the dragons. Oh, and by the way, your cousin is missing. And the more stuff you have developing organically, the better off you are, because there's always something that will pique the players' interest. And if they make it clear that they're interested in a particular thing, you make that thing central to the story - but you don't stop all of the other threads that are running. The problem with this is when the PCs also want to feel like heroes, but end up deadlocked because for everything they do there will be 4-5 things they don't and those will all get worse.
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Mar 4, 2017 20:46
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hyphz posted:The problem with this is when the PCs also want to feel like heroes, but end up deadlocked because for everything they do there will be 4-5 things they don't and those will all get worse. Then after they deal with one of them there's only 2-3 things, and hey they're good for a level 6 party now. And after that oh poo poo the "3) two warring fiefdoms" plot doesn't matter any more because the "5.1) Has anyone seen the Wizard lately?" has progressed to "5.2) Oh poo poo he's a Necromancer Lich and just turned the two fiefdoms into skeleton farms" That said, I think Ilor mainly meant it in the context of "When in Doubt Have a Man Come Through a Door with a Gun in His Hand". Everything should be moving on at a pace the PCs can handle. If, for some reason, they're not actively engaging in any of the available things, pick one speed-advance to the next "Hey PCs look over here!" stage.
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Mar 4, 2017 21:13
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hyphz posted:The problem with this is when the PCs also want to feel like heroes, but end up deadlocked because for everything they do there will be 4-5 things they don't and those will all get worse. 
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Mar 4, 2017 21:26
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Players should feel their actions has consequences and effect your world
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Mar 4, 2017 23:34
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I want to echo the sentiment that 'sandbox' far too often just means 'any old poo poo can happen'. I once played a single session in a game run by two 'legendary' local DMs (yes they literally both ran the game at the same time). They had a huge wait list and a stupid vetting process, and you had to start at level 1 no matter what level the group was. It was a 'sandbox' in the sense that I think the DM had some grand idea in mind about demons but for the most part the party hung around in taverns and occasionally followed rumors that were so obviously bog standard plot hooks it staggers the mind. Except any time you wanted to do anything - rent a horse, walk down a street without getting mugged, rent a room, check your currency, whatever - it was painfully roleplayed out. The reason people like sandbox videogames is because there's a ton of poo poo to do and a ton of variety in that poo poo, and because all of it is ostensibly entertaining. I'd like to see a sandbox game sometime that is built around the grand theft auto premise - you've got a dozen things to do, only some of which is actually adventuring, and you can engage with any of it at any time, but the list of things is known and finite. You can buy shops, or play the underworld crime organization minigame, or you can just go do that loving quest for the prince.
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Mar 5, 2017 07:54
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Mendrian posted:I want to echo the sentiment that 'sandbox' far too often just means 'any old poo poo can happen'. The last game of Pathfinder I ran was like this. I thought of it more like Fallout (since I was playing New Vegas at the time), but it was the same idea. When the players did poo poo, they would receive "Quest Cards" (short notes on 3 x 5 note cards) that indicated a new quest. Sometimes these would come from the conclusion of another quest, or sometimes they would come from something random that happened in the middle that enough people thought was interesting. Some of them were planned, and some of them I made up on the spot. But the players could pursue any quest they wanted, and very few of them had time limits just so I could give the players that freedom. Each quest also had an XP reward and loot reward. The XP reward was on the card, and the loot got listed if that information became known to the players. It all worked really well, and if my upcoming game weren't a dedicated dungeon crawl, I'd use the system again.
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Mar 5, 2017 14:01
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Mendrian posted:a stupid vetting process, and you had to start at level 1 no matter what level the group was.  levels of dumbassery because come the gently caress on, lv1 is poo poo always, why make it worse by forcing people to be unable to do anything with it? Oh, right. Gamers.
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Mar 5, 2017 15:48
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Given the focus on tavern RP and excruciating slice of life stuff, I'm suspecting several pages of written background, including apprenticeships and family tree going back to grandparents or further, and 'really good' explanations for wanting to play anything other than a human. Your basic RP MUD horror story, made worse by not being able to fake a network outage.
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Mar 5, 2017 16:04
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Yawgmoth posted:I'm always wary of GMs who call their games a "sandbox" because in my experience it means the GM goes "okay your characters are in a town. What do you do?" and then stares expectantly, like the players are supposed to come up with a plot; or it's not really a sandbox and the GM wants to have a grand story of the world but doesn't know how to tie all of his half-session plot threads into anything cohesive so it's a "sandbox world" until he takes a creative writing course. Turtlicious posted:What I'm doing in my West Marches games, is I have a list of 5 or 6 missions, they can pick one, all the missions have loose callbacks to each other to push a meta plot. Railing Kill posted:The last game of Pathfinder I ran was like this. I thought of it more like Fallout (since I was playing New Vegas at the time), but it was the same idea. When the players did poo poo, they would receive "Quest Cards" (short notes on 3 x 5 note cards) that indicated a new quest. Sometimes these would come from the conclusion of another quest, or sometimes they would come from something random that happened in the middle that enough people thought was interesting. Some of them were planned, and some of them I made up on the spot. It was frankly quite astounding that Red Markets had to have a dedicated set of rules for players seeking out to find a Job (read: quest) that they had to do, as if you actually had to tell the GM that they need to do that. But nothing surprises about this hobby anymore. Yes, you do need to tell the GM that they need to come up with something that the players want to do.
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Mar 5, 2017 16:22
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Bieeardo posted:Given the focus on tavern RP and excruciating slice of life stuff, I'm suspecting several pages of written background, including apprenticeships and family tree going back to grandparents or further, and 'really good' explanations for wanting to play anything other than a human. But you do get the visceral pleasure of laughing directly in their face, which is a plus. I'm imagining everyone's least favorite interview questions, tuned to a fantasy bent like Ye Olde Humanoid Resources. "tell me about a time you couldn't use magic to solve a problem, and how you overcame it before being eaten by a grue."
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Mar 5, 2017 16:23
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"I converted the ranger into 20% of the party's resources for the encounter, by feeding him to the grue instead."
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Mar 5, 2017 19:39
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Razorwired posted:So my current 5e party can corroborate hyperattachment to a vehicle thing. My players picked up a big shiny beetle and named it Carl in the last session and I have a feeling Carl is going to stick around until I stop running the game.
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Mar 6, 2017 06:41
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They immediately showed more affection and protective behavior towards Carl than anything else they've encountered in the game so far, including a petrified human child they were directly asked to help in the first session.
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Mar 6, 2017 06:44
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There was a guy on a podcast I was listening to (I think it was the RPPR about rpgs as therapy tools) where they had a goofy old guy as their waiter at a soup kitchen, who was then killed by the villian. Every single time the group was entirely on board with getting revenge.
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Mar 6, 2017 06:51
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Under the vegetable posted:They immediately showed more affection and protective behavior towards Carl than anything else they've encountered in the game so far, including a petrified human child they were directly asked to help in the first session. You can't make them interested in or sympathetic towards something. But they always let you know when it happens anyway.
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Mar 6, 2017 07:49
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I mean, in a Pathfinder Reign of Winter game I was in we took a bed from early on and strapped skis to it. For the rest of the adventure it served as transport, battering ram and impromptu weapon. I'd say about half of our loot ended up strapped to the bedsled in some way or another. By the end of things the GM had decided that it was a greater artifact. I guess my point is that you can never tell what players will latch onto, but they will latch onto something (unless they're not at all invested in the game, which is its own problem). And whatever they latch onto it will probably be both stupid and glorious.
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Mar 6, 2017 07:59
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One member of our party showed an unhealthy fascination for a ship that we had captured after an ill-advised attempt by its previous crew to seize the vessel we were traveling aboard. The rest of us wanted to move on. He spent two goddamned hours arguing about how we should totally take this captured ship, abandon our quest, and do dumb poo poo. After two hours of waiting for the game to loving progress, I silently signaled to our war priest, who then chopped a hole into the bottom of the captured ship with his adamantium longsword, sending it to the bottom. The player didn't notice, caught up as he was in his argument for a completely different adventure that none of the rest of us wanted and vocally opposed, until the GM interrupted him and told him "That's nice, but the ship slips beneath the waves as you watch in horror." We never heard the end of it, but we did get to keep having fun.
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Mar 6, 2017 09:36
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Under the vegetable posted:They immediately showed more affection and protective behavior towards Carl than anything else they've encountered in the game so far, including a petrified human child they were directly asked to help in the first session. Pull a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids! and send a giant scorpion after Carl 
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Mar 6, 2017 09:47
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I run a lot of sandbox games, and one thing that helps keep it manageable is to have NPCs fail in the background, or to have other heroes also stop them. You get 3-4 plot hooks at once, you deal with one, but some of the other ones will either just fail or be thwarted by other people who you can also interact with. Then you get a handful of new plot hooks, one of which is built from what the PCs already did, one is built from what they didn't do that got worse, and one may be based around interacting with these other people who may or may not be on your side. This way players always have something to interact with, they don't feel punished for skipping certain plot hooks, the world feels more real because it keeps happening around them, but since the hooks they deal with are always retroactively ones that Would Have Worked, they are ALSO important actors within the world.
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Mar 6, 2017 16:04
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Preechr posted:One member of our party showed an unhealthy fascination for a ship that we had captured after an ill-advised attempt by its previous crew to seize the vessel we were traveling aboard. The rest of us wanted to move on. He spent two goddamned hours arguing about how we should totally take this captured ship, abandon our quest, and do dumb poo poo. After two hours of waiting for the game to loving progress, I silently signaled to our war priest, who then chopped a hole into the bottom of the captured ship with his adamantium longsword, sending it to the bottom. The player didn't notice, caught up as he was in his argument for a completely different adventure that none of the rest of us wanted and vocally opposed, until the GM interrupted him and told him "That's nice, but the ship slips beneath the waves as you watch in horror." We never heard the end of it, but we did get to keep having fun. Wait, you weren't interested in lives of swashbuckling adventure on the high seas? Seems like the obvious thing to do would be keep the ship and continue with the quest (and look into swashbuckling adventure as a side gig).
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Mar 6, 2017 16:48
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Our Monk Ksena dives into the waters of Starfall Lake and indeed finds a stone coffin – one that’s covered in Celestial runes and had a huge hole blasted into the top where something forced it way out. No, that’s not foreshadowing at all… Our party continues into Cullus’ hometown and gets in contact with an old female friend of his who was “turned out onto the street” by the town’s new mayor, but luckily “turned out onto the street” just meant “kicked out of her house to live on the street.” The inn of Cullus’ family, the Three Apples, is now the home base for this mysterious Cult of the Flaming Eye, who absolutely run the town and encourage people to “keep up appearances” to allay any suspicion on pain of the death of their loved one. Cullus’ brother and sister have been forced to live in the basement of the inn, residing in storerooms that have been turned into jail cells as well as being handed with a gaes that prevents them from leaving the basement on pain of severe…pain. Of course, there’s no way our party is going to stand for this. We split up – Cullus (Rogue), Aeana (Cleric/Favored Soul), and Varis (Sorcerer) will sneak into the inn via the back window and dispel/free Cullus’ siblings while the rest of the party barreled through the front door to take on and distract the cultists. Aside from the cultists, there were several other guests in the bar at the time…an Ogre who was there was muscle, and a pair of dark dwarves from deep underground, one who ran for the door after Falinrae (Paladin) landed two criticals in the same round.   Meanwhile, the party in the basement had to deal with the statuary – two statues that had been carved to look like Angels of the Host. Specifically, Az’s host. They charmed Cullus into helping them, dropped Varis down to 2 hit points with Finger of Death (oh if I had died AGAIN…) and made Aeana the damage dealer for the fight as she could cast Shatter. The dark dwarf who Falinrae had almost killed had run away to the basement, saw Varis, and snuck up behind him to backstab me into oblivion when my familiar managed to sneak up behind it, do 2 points of damage on 2d4, and dropped him.   We kill all the cultists, rescue Cullus’s brother and sister, and dispel the gaes. In return, they tell us that the cultists have been heading underground through a dwarven-built tunnel from one of the storerooms every night for the past two months. Since the cultists knew we were coming, and Varis was the only one who really took damage during that fight, our party eschews a short rest and heads down into the tunnel…where Cullus proceeds to blow nearly every “Sense Trap” roll and gets stabbed, poisoned, diseased, and stunned before Skeever takes over, and his version of “Sense Trap” is “I have a 20 Constitution score and immunity to poisons!” Of course, HE makes every “Sense Trap” and “Disarm Trap” roll…   We eventually come across a chapel area that’s been built into a small cavern. On one end is a tunnel leading deeper into the Underdark of Tanicus where the dark dwarves are coming from. On the other end…is an altar and a whole bunch of angry cultists. And on their first action, the leader turns and coup de grace’s one of them, and as we watch their arterial spray being sucked into the altar along with the rest of their blood.    So we’re trying to knock the cultists out before they can sacrifice themselves, while an Earth Elemental and his dwarven master comes flying out of the tunnel. Luckily, Ksena and Bubbles our Water Elemental are there to block…  …well. Whelming. That’s one way to tank. Eventually, enough cultists die/sacrifice themselves that the altar overflows with blood. And the leader proceeds to summon this.  An angel of Az’s host. So we’re sitting there going “we are absolutely screwed” as the angel cuts a swath through us and we’re barely managed to keep on our feet. This really looks like the end as the angel has half of us at zero hit points, but stays it hands instead of finishing us off. The leader screams “KILL THEM,” the angel replies “I have been instructed not to kill them, only humiliate them,” the leader responds “I AM YOUR MASTER.” The angel turns and says “no, you’re not,” and proceeds to Flame Strike the leader into ashes. It turns back to us and tells us “Remember this. Remember that you can’t win,” before disappearing. ***** The dwarves retreat and we collapse the tunnel before Skeever can go barreling down the tunnel and declare war on the entire dark dwarf kingdom…but he’s placated as he manages to come upon an ancient dwarven relic, a talking war hammer called “Boom-Boom Hammer” that was the personal weapon of the last Thunder King of the Dwarves who fell in combat against the dark dwarves. It’s a kick-rear end weapon with a lot of cool abilities…but it’s a little bit racist in that it doesn’t like elves. And hanging on the hip of Falinrae is a sentient elven longsword. Have you ever heard two talking weapons go back and forth while the rest of the party stands in uncomfortable silence? quote:”Och, why do we always go to the elven lands? ‘Oh, let’s go to Springtide, let’s go to Oakshadow,’ why don’t we ever bloody go to the dwarven kingdoms?” Oh, and we also found a deck of cards. 
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Mar 7, 2017 00:42
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CobiWann posted:Oh, and we also found a deck of cards.
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Mar 7, 2017 02:31
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I genuinely hope that isn't a Deck of Many Things because a GM wrecking this campaign would be criminally liable.
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Mar 7, 2017 02:40
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Kavak posted:I genuinely hope that isn't a Deck of Many Things because a GM wrecking this campaign would be criminally liable. Given the quality of posting we've received thus far, I wholly trust that we will be entertained.
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Mar 7, 2017 02:45
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Its a Deck of many psychosomatic things.
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Mar 7, 2017 02:45
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quote:"I have been instructed not to kill them, only humiliate them. Oh. Look what fell out of my pocket."
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Mar 7, 2017 02:49
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If that wasn't the plot before, it should be now.
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Mar 7, 2017 04:35
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Sadly, the little punk Mayor who had taken over the town with the help of the Cult of Az had ALL the legal documention to show that legally, HE was the Mayor of the town AND still owned the Three Apples Inn, and if anything happened to him the deed would legally default to his cousin in Korvis who would burn the place down and pee on the ashes. Ksena and Cullus made a deal - the deed in exchange for escorting him to the edge of town and allowing him to Plane Shift away. Which he did. Without the deed. And without getting punched in the face. After an awkward farewell between Cullus and his female friend (“Go save the world and then maybe you’ll be wise enough to pick up on all the signals I’ve been throwing you over the years.” “Wait, what?”) we head back in the direction of Highspire. I’ve mentioned before that our party has what we’ve come to call the Rod of Hospitality – you put in into the ground and it open an extradimensional space to the Elemental Plane of Air that takes the shape of the wielder’s perfect place to rest and recuperate, complete with servants and food. On the way back, we put the Rod in the middle of a long and wide field of high grass where no one can come across it and climb inside. In the middle of a long rest however, our party is yanked out of the space as someone has pulled the Rod up from the ground, which dumps us in a pile in the middle of this field. The last thing we see is a demon cackling gleefully as it pops back to the Abyss with our Rod. We’re sitting there wondering how the HELL this thing found our Rod as we end up hiking back to Highspire without the long rest. Once we get to Highspire and pass out, Tellisyn (Eldritch Knight) has a vision from Catira, the Lady of Pain and Goddess of Vengeance, that explains what had happened.  I’ve mentioned the Revenant that’s been following our party. Aeana cast an Ice Storm on some demons and accidentally caught an NPC soldier named Septimus in the AoE and killed him, causing him to rise from the dead as a Revenant to seek revenge (and our Paladin to quip “If he came back as a Revenant, then he was evil anyway and Aeana shouldn’t beat herself up so much.”) According to the vision, someone managed to capture Septimus and mystically bind him (against his will) to a large compass that hangs in the middle of a room whose floor is a huge and incredibly detailed map of Tanicus. As Revenants ALWAYS know where the target of their vengeance can be found, he’s essentially become a homing beacon that lets whoever’s captured and bound him know exactly where Aeana is at all times, and by proxy to know exactly where our party is at all times. There’s nothing we can do about it at this time, so we get to Highspire and go about making arrangements to hire a ship to take us to a small island in the middle of the Immortal Sea. It’s time for the party to finish a quest that began WAAAAAAAAAY back at the beginning of the campaign… ***** Some background/exposition here. When the game first started nearly three years ago, the players were Falinrae, Tellisyn, Aeana, Skeever’s player, and Cullus’ player. Skeever’s character was a Gnome Bard who died in a horrible accident, and the party could only afford a Reincarnate spell. Instead of coming back as a Gnome, the Draconic God of Muses Haalal decided to send Skeever back as a lizardman (who would turn into a Dragonborn eventually) to act as his voice on Tanicus. However, Skeever’s memories of being a Gnome were completely erased, and instead he had only hazy memories of his childhood as a Lizardman in the southern swamps (which was fragments of his Gnome childhood told through the lens of being a lizardman). Cullus’ player played a Gnome named Cadavel, who was a Druid…and not a very good one. He sucked at it. Really badly. To the point where the rest of the party was unconscious and only Cadavel was up but out of spells…and kept rolling incredibly poorly on the Medicine rolls needed to stabilize everyone. As in “fumble, fumble, 2, fumble, fumble.” So with everyone about to die, Cadavel screamed to the heavens “OK! I SUCK AT BEING A DRUID! ANY GODS UP THERE LOOKING FOR A CLERIC? I’M WILLING TO CONVERT!” And because the GM found it funny, Roan, the Keeper of the Book and the Neutral God of FREAKIN’ COMMERCE AND CAPITALISM, answered him. Sadly, Cadavel died a few months later after being eaten by a flail snail…which may have been for the best, as he wasn’t a very good Cleric either. So Falinrae, Tellisyn, Aeana, Skeever pre-lizardman, and Cadavel all came together because of Tellisyn’s grandmother, who has decided she wants to bring about the end of the world because the elves never approved of her romance with the Lich King. In the first few sessions, the five of them found themselves in an abandoned temple of Cymber that had been taken over by a cult dedicated to Grandmother. Underneath this temple the party found nothing less than an Archdevil named Koeth who had been bound by four magical chains over a pit of magma for nearly a 1000 years. Each chain was attached to the chamber wall by a lock that could only be open with a specific gemstone key – keys that were being held by the four nieces and nephews of Grandmother/four cousins of Tellisyn. According to Koeth, he was actually Tellisyn’s uncle because her cousins were the offspring of himself and Grandmother. Grandmother had found a way to use ritual sacrifice to create a child that was the union of herself and Koeth without the messy act of reproduction and pregnancy. Yep. Grandmother had bound an Archdevil and was using him as a brood mare, and that was before the other benefits and power that could be gained from a bound Archdevil.  (Note - this is the actual board from two years ago. The GM plans on hanging it up in his new house someday)  So in order cut Grandmother off from a major source of her power, the five of them promised the Archdevil to found the four keys and free him. Each key was in the possession of one of the four siblings – a emerald key, a sapphire key, a ruby key, and a diamond key. Over the course of the campaign, our party (which now included Cullus, Ksena, and Varis) had collected three of the four keys with just the diamond one to go. The Cult of Az becoming a much more personal threat in recent weeks, the plan was to gather the final key and set the Archdevil free by lowering the platform into the magma, destroying his physical body and sending him back to the Nine Hells to reconstitute himself and most importantly getting him the HELL off the Prime Material Plane. ***** In a bit of a twist, the person holding the diamond key wasn’t one of Tellisyn’s cousins. In order to keep the key safe, Grandmother had instead chosen to hide the key with one of her strongest warriors, a Paladin in service to Caradoc, the Foul Destroyer and God of Strife and Conquest. This Paladin, named Arkanth, had sworn to serve Grandmother and protect the diamond key in return for the chance to wage wars in her name not realizing that in reality he would be waging for in Az’s name, probably against Caradoc and his forces. We had met Arkanth once previously when we had obtained the ruby key from a cousin when he descended from the sky on the back of a young Red Dragon named Embercoal. He told us that he held the final key but that we were not ready to face him. Once we were, Arkanth could be found on an island in the middle of the Immortal Sea claimed by the githyanki. A series of three towers (helpfully called the Tri-Towers) were suspended in mid-air, and he could be found at the top of the very last tower. And they when we finally made it to him, he would ensure we be allowed to rest and recuperate so that he could take us on at full-strength, warrior-to-warrior.  We knew where the island was in the Immortal Sea, but we needed to hire a boat to get us there as it was in very dangerous, choppy, and shallow waters. We managed to find a firblog (sea dwarf) ship who would be willing to navigate those treacherous waters…which included fighting something that even the GM said “I don’t have a name for it, I just thought it looked REALLY cool…”  …and all the dwarf wanted in return was something very easily obtained. In fact, it just dropped out of the sky.  An rune-powered airship.  - just wanted to point out First Mate Left Shark.(Note – the GM used this opportunity to introduce gunpowder into the universe as the firblog captain had a hand cannon. The next campaign will have Gunslingers as a class option. Have I mentioned Ksena’s player is a huge Dark Tower fan?) We managed to take out the pirates and claim the airship for the firblogs. Along the way, Cullus and the goblin first mate of the airship, both equipped with Boots of Spider Climb, dueled on the bottom hull of the airship. At one point, Cullus had the upper hand, but the goblin had an ability to let him sacrifice a nearby crewman to take a hit for him if the blow would kill him. In this case…the nearest crewman was the goblin’s parrot. Which died screeching as Cullus stabbed it, and then messily as my pseudodragon smelled blood and proceeded to tear it into a mess of blood, feather, and what little meat he left on its bones. Near the end of the fight, we had assistance from the prisoners who were being held on the airship, one of which was a very powerful Sorceress, as they broke out of the brig and cleared the cannon crew and the pirates left below decks. The Sorceress immediately stormed up to Varis once the fight was over… quote:”You! Are those robes from Abeforth’s Apothecary?” Varis walks away, everyone’s looking on in shock as Varis NEVER acts like a dick, and no one notices Ksena pull out a piece of parchment and make some notes. **** The firblog send the airship back to Highspire for repairs and manages to get us close to the island where the Paladin of Caradoc is, rowing us to shore before departing. Now, we’re preparing to fight our way across an island of githyanki to get to the base of this tower before fighting out way to the very top before we can snag a rest. However, as we begin our long march when what should appear but winged gorillas from the Ethereal Plane.   Apparently, these winged gorillas have been fighting with the githyanki for decades to control the island, only for the arrival of the Paladin of Caradoc to tip the scales in the githyankis favor. In return for being teleported (via the Ethereal Plane) directly to the bottom of the tri-tower, our party promises to do our best to end the threat of the githyanki against these creatures. So instead of cutting our way through the jungle, we begin our climb up the tower to fight the Paladin and claim the diamond key. Our GM has laid out a detailed series of three towers, each one brimming with traps, creatures, and treasure… …and our response is “spike all the doors, climb to the next level. Spike THOSE doors, climb to the next level. Repeat until we’re face-to-face with the Paladin.” We end up skipping five floors of creatures. We know why we’re here and we’re saving our spells just to GET there. The only piece of loot we pick up is on the third floor, where the room the stairs are in has a very very lovely golden rug on the floor. A golden rug made from the skin of an Elder Gold Dragon which had been flayed and converted into a floor covering. The Paladin immediately says “we’re taking that rug for purification and burial,” and we ended up folding, pushing, cajoling, shoving, stomping on, and pleading the rug to get inside our portable hole. In the end, even the portable hole is bulging at the seams a little bit as we keep going. The GM shrugs, puts the index cards of loot away for another day, and instead of seven battles we end up fighting two, and the second one nearly did us in.    Our GM came up with a creature called a Bookwraith, which he borrowed and tweaked from the Pathfinder setting. It’s summoned and controlled by a githyanki Wizard, a whirlwind of paper and parchment that flings magic this way and that. Nasty magic. Really nasty magic. The Bookwraith casts a very nasty form of Greater Invisibility on the Wizard as well, one that allows the Wizard to cast spells while invisible. Since it’s drat near immune to Concentration checks (it casts the spell from its pages and you have to hit the exact page on a d100 to force the check) it keeps we have to take out the Bookwraith to find the Wizard, who’s just walking around the room throwing spells and remaining invisible the entire time. We manage to kill the Bookwraith, but the Wizard manages to Plane Shift away before we can kill him. One more floor to go…and there’s Arkanth. Who is waiting for us…with a Hero’s Feast (+15 HP, advantage on Wisdom checks for 24 hours, immunity to being poisoned and Frightened).  “Please! Sit! Eat!” So, as is ritual before all fights to the death, the party sits down and has a very nice and pleasant chat with the Paladin of Caradoc. Here’s another place where we gave the GM credit. He had two sheets prepared. One was if we went straight for the “long rest, kill them all” option which would have seen us face off against both Arkanth AND Embercoal. The other sheet was for if we tried to talk our way out of the fight…which Skeever, Falinrae, and Tellisyn attempted to do. They ran the logic that Az wanted Caradoc dead so he could claim the God of Conquest’s power, and that by serving Grandmother the Paladin was serving Az, not Caradoc. However, Arkanth responded that in truth he didn’t swear to serve Grandmother. He had only sworn to protect the key from Grandmother’s enemies, those that she had specified by name. It was Caradoc’s way to ensure that anyone who came to take the key would HAVE to take it by conquest, and therefore would be worthy enough to take the fight to Az. Skeever brought up a very good point – the seven people in the room right now were the ones taking the fight to Az. If the two parties fought, either the Paladin wins, in which case there’s no on left to take the fight to Az, or the party wins, which will probably means casualties and will definitely mean the death of Arkanth and Embercoal, which means there are fewer people to take the fight to Az. Therefore, Skeever reasons, the two sides can’t fight because Az wins in either case, which means Caradoc loses, and Caradoc does NOT like to lose. And then Cullus hits the nail right on the head. “You swore to protect the key from those Grandmother specified in name, right? So…who is sitting at this table she didn’t name?” Pause. quote:“Varis Stormglass, also known as the Lightning Lord…” So we get the diamond key, we DON’T kill a Paladin of Caradoc, and we don’t have to fight a Red Dragon. And since we’re under the effects of the Hero’s Feast for 24 hours, the decision is clear. After a long rest, the young Red Dragon will use the teleportation circle at the very top of the tower to transport Arkanth to the island containing the fallen temple of Cymbyr, where he’ll report to “ provide an update” to the powers that be. Meanwhile, the rest of us will head the OTHER way from the teleportation circle to sneak into the fallen temple of Cymbyr and free the Archdevil. It’s time to end this. **** Oh, the deck of cards? Just a harmless Deck of Illusions. This will be important later.
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Mar 7, 2017 15:13
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I swear to god, I've seen that crab-siren thing in a cartoon, though I can't precisely remember which one.
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Mar 7, 2017 15:38
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Ducktales, probably. 
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Mar 7, 2017 16:35
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Bieeardo posted:I swear to god, I've seen that crab-siren thing in a cartoon, though I can't precisely remember which one. I don't know why, but it reminds me of "Aaaah! Real Monsters!"
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Mar 7, 2017 17:14
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Turn the heads into eyeballs and its an Orz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIbVYXHnaBU
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Mar 7, 2017 18:22
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The fallen temple had seen some...improvements since its last visit. The chapel area had been heavily reinforced and fortified and most importantly, full of rudderkin, Tanicus' counterpart to ratkin.  Our plan was to use one of our Immovable Rods to block the door to the outside and use Fireball (I had two scrolls and had been WAITING for this moment) to clear out as much of the low hit point stuff as possible while the melee tanks the rest through the cracks in the wall. Bane Rats (named after the Batman villain who broke his back in the comics) are fun - they're immune to Confusion and Feeblemind and hyperaggressive with advantage on their two attack rolls per round, but when they "Bane" out that automatically fail a death save every round until they keel over dead. Skeever's answer was to FINALLY, after months of hording it, chug a Potion of Enlarge and pretty much tank the sucker for three rounds. Also, one of the rudderkin was a pure albino with beady red eyes...the very same rudderkin who has massacred Falinrae's family during a rudderkin raid on their coastal village. This was the third time Falinrae had confronted him...and for the third time, the rudderkin gave him his race's version of the middle finger and immediately Dimension Door'ed the hell away. The second room was a huge swarm of rats, two massive six-legged rats who were just meatbags of hit points, and one rudderkin priest with six tits, and the GM made sure we all knew it had six tits ("I hand-painted six seperate nipples for accuracy's sake, you're GOING to notice!") as we plowed through everything. Amusing side note - the rudderkin realized that the door was blocked from the outside and one of the smarter ones scurried through a hole in the ceiling and came across the Immovable Rod...and kept trying to budge it without success. It failed it Intelligence saving throw time and time again and spent the entire battle squeaking, pulling, pushing with its arms and legs, and cursing up a storm as the drat thing wouldn't move. Even once all its friends were dead and we decended into the temple, we could still hear it trying in vain to open the doors. **** The temple is empty...or so we think. Instead of risking the potential wrath of cultists (it's a fallen temple with an Archdevil chained up inside, of COURSE there's a high chance of cultists) the party decides to follow the path of rushing water, which has carved a path over the centuries through the temple. It just means climbing down some waterfalls and a few Athletics checks... quote:"AT LAST!" And then this fiend shows up.  And by "fiend" I mean "Pit Fiend." It's huge, it's nasty, it had a mace that's on fire, and it's licking its lips as it stares at us. "I HAVE BEEN WAITING PATIENTLY, AND YOU HAVE ARRIVED FOOLISHLY!" "No," Varis says, stepping forward (mainly buying time so the rest of the party can suck down some healing potions). "We have not arrived foolishly. We have come with allies!" And with a mighty flourish, I reach into the Deck of Illusions, pull a card at random, and whip it across the table. It sails over the board, landing facedown in front of the GM's screen. He picks it up... ...and starts laughing his rear end off. quote:"OK! Varis triumphantly throws a card down at the feet of the Pit Fiend...and as everyone watches, a glowing blue spectral kobold screams a war cry as it brandishs its spear overhead, and charges the amused Pit Fiend." As the illusionary kobold proceeds to gnaw on the Pit Fiend's tail, it booms out laughing. "AMUSING! WHEN I CELEBRATE MY EPOCH BIRTHDAY I SHALL HIRE YOU AS THE MAGICAL ENTERTAINMENT!" **** Tellisyn was down. Aeana was down. Cullus was down. Skeever was down. And Falinrae was dead as the Pit Fiend coup de graced her. It was Ksena, Bubbles, and Varis. Bubbles is tanking the Barbed Devils that the Pit Fiend has summoned, Ksena is trying to get Aeana back up because she's got a Scroll of Revify to save Falinrae, and all that's left is Varis and the Pit Fiend. We had thrown everything we had against the Pit Fiend - in the end, our party had blown through 17 index cards worth of magical items, healing potions, and one-use scrolls. Varis was standing between Ksena and the Pit Fiend, who looked down at the Sorcerer... "HELLO, LITTLE SORCERER. YOU'RE NOT AS TOUGH AS THE LEGENDS SAY YOU ARE." Once again, Varis is trying to buy time. "I'm not afraid of you," I say as the Pit Fiend takes a swing and I raise my Staff... "Shield!" A sing-song voice, ala the "Sega" loading screen, rings out as a bronze "A" flashes above Varis. "Abeforth's!" And the Pit Fiend JUST misses, allowing Varis to throw out a Chain Lightning since the drat spell doesn't require an attack roll...and the Pit Fiend fails its Dexterity saving thrown WITH advantage. 72 points of damage later, the drat thing falls. And Cullus' player finds this picture on his Facebook feed later that night...  And of course, as soon as Skeever is back on his feet and learns what happened... quote:
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Mar 7, 2017 18:45
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unseenlibrarian posted:Ducktales, probably. That's the fucker, thanks.
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Mar 7, 2017 21:11
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Been running with an Adventurer's League Curse of Strahd game for some time now and last night's game was a hilarious example of Bad Decisions in progress. Swear our competence must go up and down in cycles since the session before saw the amazing shutdown of a caster the arcanolith(sp?) in the Amber Temple thanks to my bard dropping silence and another player cleverly entrapping him in the area with a wall of ice. This session however we were stuck trying to figure out what to do with our rather heavy haul of loot from the location we left. We resolved to leave it in a secure location Van Richten's tower we had managed to open the magic lock to in one of our earlier bouts of competence. Unfortunately we picked up an evil apprentice wizard (who managed to obtain a shield golem along the way when accompanying us) who decided he was just going to "hang out" with the treasure. This naturally sparked a wave of over-clever planning to try to leave then come back and catch him red-handed stealing the loot. This wound up with us having one character doing the correct motions to open the magic lock under invisibility while another character decided to make the wrong motions (the player decided the "Thriller dance" was appropriate given the campaign) in the background to throw off any of Strahd's observers in the forest around us (like I said, over-clever). Naturally the magic lock only saw the person doing the wrong motions and proceeded to summon a blue dragon guardian. Whoops!  On the bright side I suppose we have our excuse for coming back early to catch the apprentice - "We saw a dragon coming for you!".
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Mar 7, 2017 21:15
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Beyond too clever by half, you guys are too clever by 3/4ths!
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Mar 7, 2017 21:43
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So a friend of mine decided to knock the dust off his Burning Wheel Gold book and start up a game again for our group. The last BW game we played ended ~3 years ago, so it's been a while and we're all pretty rusty (plus we have a couple of players brand-new to the system), but so far it's been pretty good. This game is the third set in his D&D world, called Lathidia, though this is the first time we're playing it without using D&D rules. I figured I'd share the first log here. (It's a little long.) After generations of on-again, off-again wars, three great nations have gathered together for talks in the hopes that a lasting peace could be forged: The Bra’Tel Empire: Called the “Empire of Dust” by the uneducated, the Bra’Tel Empire long ago conquered their island with their exotic war machines. Now their once-lush island is mostly a blasted desert, a side-effect of their strange techno-magic. Another side effect of the use of techno-magic is Dust, a valuable powder they use in everything from cooking to weaponry. Aecofin: Founded by a mysterious group the history books call the Athar, this is an anti-religious nation that believes it is responsible for saving the world. Their knightly orders organize around sacred sites that hold ancient religious artifacts they deem too dangerous to be left unguarded, but too powerful to merely destroy. An aggressive, bureaucratic, militaristic nation bent on accumulation and assimilation with bickering heads of state and a paranoid Lord General. At the south of the nation standing between Aecofin and the Freelands, live the dwarves of the Hammerfist Mountains, who have sworn fealty to Aecofin under mysterious circumstances. The Freelands: Often caught between the two above nations, this is a collection of semi-independent city states and petty kingdoms. A very cosmopolitan nation with a variety of cultures and peoples, with a deep-founded respect for traditional ways. They generally have little interest in warfare and conquest, but have had to defend their borders against incursions from both Aecofin and the Bra’Tel Empire on many occasions. The Freelands is also the seat of power for the various Druidic Orders. The peace talks are slated to take place in Port Desolation, a part of Aecofin equidistant from the Bra’Tel Empire and the Freelands – so named for its tremendous numbers of poor and destitute refugees from war and famine. The product of countless hours of diplomatic efforts, a lot is riding on this event – and plenty of groups see it as an opportunity to jockey for power or trade. As such, every important group from these nations have sent envoys to ensure their interests are represented. These envoys include: -Sir Durnik, a hedge knight, representing his Lord and the city-state of Port Nightveil (of the Freelands) -Grumblin Flamehammer, a dwarven cobbler representing the Hammerfist Mountains. -Gwlitharyddeilen Serenaryngweilgïoedd (aka Sera), an elven etharch-in-training, representing the elven peoples of the Freelands. -Arzhul Dustroof, recently-graduated druid there to represent the Druidic Order. -Sana el-Amin, the spooky weather witch, first mate of the pirate junk the Dauntless Star, and Bra’Tel rebel. Not quite an envoy, she’s nonetheless there as a representative of a pirate island. Other individuals are there as winners of the lottery. An annual event in which the destitute of Port Desolation can win a chance to speak with their rulers directly, seeking redress for whatever issues they have before a watching crowd (though with no guarantee that anything will actually be done.) Since the lottery coincides with the peace talks, it is wrapped up into the ceremonies. This year’s lottery winners include: -Baldric the Leper, human ratcatcher-turned-philosopher. (He doesn’t actually have leprosy, but he does suffer from a strange, communicable disease that has continually defied diagnosis.) -Master Lydia, the lonely, reluctant roden cultist. The day before the ceremonies kicking off the final bout of peace talks begins, the Merchant-Prince Budam (a Bra’Tel expat) invites a select group of envoys and lottery winners (specifically, the PCs) to a great feast at his estate. For all of us, the feast is the best meal we’ve had in a long time. For some of us, it’s the best meal we’ve had, ever. But it seems a bit random, and Sana is always suspicious of any fellow Bra’Tel’s motives, so she asks him why he invited these eight strangers to dine with him. None of us seem important enough or in any position to help grow his trade empire. Particularly the leper. “I understand this may seem strange,” admits Budam, “but I am desperate. My daughter, Min, is sick. She and all her friends caught a strange disease, and she is the last one alive. I invited you all here because my seers told me to seek you out, that you might hold the key to a cure.” Furthermore, it seems that her symptoms are very similar to those shown by Baldric. Some of the group ask about potential causes of the disease. Did she do anything out of the ordinary lately? Go anyplace strange? (No and no.) How long ago did the first of her friends get sick? (Three months ago.) Those of us with medical training (Arzhul, Sera, and Grumblin) promise to see what we can do for the girl once our duties as envoys are completed. Those of us with magical ability (Arzhul, Sana, and Master Lydia) promise to assist the medical treatment however they can. Sir Durnik just sort of scratches his head, but he’s glad to be of assistance if the opportunity arises. Suddenly, Budam's right-hand man, Dos del-Riz. chokes on some fish. Grumblin, trained as a Khirurgeon, leaps to the man’s aid. Grumblin leaps into action to attempt to help del-Riz. Baldric, an expert on poisons, notes that the man has actually been poisoned. Together, they manage to save the man. However, Arzhul and Sir Durnik notice a servant using the distraction to slip into a nearby room. The servant is found with in the chambers of Budam’s sick daughter, with a vial of yellowish bile in hand. A brief scuffle ensues, and Sir Durnik and Arzhul manage to snatch the vial away from him before he flees through the window. They return to the main chamber with the poison vial and explain that del-Riz's poisoning was obviously a distraction to get at the real assassination target. Except it wasn’t an attempted assassination – at least, not a straightforward one. Sara examines the vial's contents and discovers the contents is a poison called Carcossian Crocus Extract – a man-made flower created artificially using magic. This is a sleeping poison that puts someone into a death-like stasis for upwards of a week. The Merchant Prince thanks us all for our intervention, promising to provide us an appropriate reward soon, and orders guards placed at his daughter’s chambers. Master Lydia slinks off, intent on doing some solo investigation. In the estate grounds, she finds a six-toed footprint in the path the poisoner took during his escape. This is a trait she recognizes as common among certain cultist groups who worship the so-called “old gods.” She attempts to track him, but unfortunately the poisoner catches a glimpse of her and evades her – but he recognizes her (being a former cultist herself), and reports her presence to his superiors. Meanwhile, Lydia returns and tells the rest of the group what she’s found – Sana sends word to her crew to keep an eye out for any six-toed people. Back at the dinner, Sana explains to the group that she has come to the peace summit because she has had a vision of a great and terrible disaster coming. She speaks of visions of strange fogs and terrible creatures. The phrasing seems familiar to Sera, who consults her tome of elven lore (a family heirloom) and finds some ancient passages written by her ancestors that correlate with Sana’s prophecy. The passages talk of a cryptic passage about the return of the old gods, when “the ships come home to Aecofin, guided by the long fingers of Leng.” Since the peace summit ceremonies are supposed to kick off with a showing of the Bra’Tel armada, this is a problem. Unfortunately, this bit of research on Sera’s part takes the rest of the night, so by the time we realize this it’s already morning and a roiling fog has descended upon the city. We discuss things. We could try to prevent the brigada from casting off, but we seem to lack the means. Warning anyone would make us seem like madmen, and while Budam is willing to help us he only has so much pull – insufficient to convince the Bra’Tel to stay off their show of their naval might. We decide the best we can probably manage is to prepare for the coming disaster. One of Sana’s crew finds her in the morning, telling her that the six-toed poisoner was found at a local inn, having hung himself there. She, Baldric, and Master Lydia go there to investigate. Master Lydia weaves a spell to speak with the poisoner’s corpse (“Don’t worry, it’s not really necromancy! Well, maybe. But only barely.”) “The people of Leng,” groans the corpse, “have long had ambitions in the world...” It seems the poison was meant to throw Merchant-Prince Budam off – hopefully even causing him to accidentally kill his daughter afterwards during the embalming of her death-like corpse. The entire plot was to see that the peace talks failed – those who “whisper from beyond the veil” do not want a unified force waiting for them when they get here. The corpse then falls silent. They’re about to leave, when Baldric stops to question one of the rats at the inn. The rat explains that the poisoner did *not* kill himself – he was strangled and strung up by a creature it described as a vaguely humanoid thing made of shadows and tentacles. We’ve run out of time, so the group of us goes to the harbour for the ceremonies. Almost the entirety of the city has come out to watch the proceedings. It starts off with the procession of the Bra’Tel armada, and… Nothing happens. All the envoys are invited onto stage (Baldric and Master Lydia stay in the crowd). With great pomp and ceremony, the Bra’Tel give a massive warship as a gift to Aecofin, and a collection of treasures and Dust to the Freelands. The crowd cheers as it seems that things are getting off to an excellent start – maybe peace really IS within reach? The ceremonies continue without incident. Arzhul grows a little embarrassed at his prior anxiety, though most of the group only get more tense and things proceed and no disaster occurs. Of course, it was never going to last. The Bra’Tel are in the midst of showing off their war cannons, when a group of ancient, dilapidated ships appear fromi beyond the fog. Okay, so THOSE were the ships we should have been worried about. Good to know. Sana steps forward and attempts to convince the crowd to disperse and flee, but most seem too curious about what’s going on even in the face of elven charisma. The winds blow the fog inland just behind the lead ships, and when the fogs touch people they… change. Some grow tentacles, others extra eyes, etc. Those who mutate turn violent, attacking their fellows and either killing them or mutating them in turn. The crowd panics and stampedes through the streets. Everything is chaos. Sana rushes into the crowd and grabs her sister – the Captain of the Dauntless Star – and casts a brief charm to know the direction of the winds, managing to outmanoeuvre the fog’s tendrils. Master Lydia panics and flees but gets caught in the fog, while Arzhul does the same but escapes it. Sir Durnik, ever chivalrous, rushes to rescue Budam’s daughter Min – the fog just touches her, and she becomes infested by... something. He is unaware of this fact, though. Grumblin breaks for the treasures given to the Freelands representatives, but gets lost in the ensuing panic and rioting crowds – Prince Budam finds him and drags him to safety. Sera is caught by the fog, which interacts with her elven blood in a strange way – it flays her tongue. All of us make our way out of the city as quickly as we can manage, heading to the mouth of a nearby river. Looking back, we see the derelict ships hovering in the sky above Port Desolation as the fog envelops it. The group of us, plus about twenty other survivors, are all that remains of the city. The first part of the prophecy is fulfilled. The old gods are coming back, and who knows whether the strange fog will stop at Port Desolation, or whether it will move inland to claim more communities. We need to warn the world, we realize. We board the Dauntless Star (Sana's pirate junk capable of river and ocean travel) and begin heading upriver, hoping to get to the Aecofin capital of Swordhold as soon as we can.
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Mar 8, 2017 21:54
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Intriguing...
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Mar 8, 2017 22:28
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Ilor posted:Intriguing... Agreed. Loving the Lovecraftian influence in the game, whilst NOT being directly CoC.
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Mar 9, 2017 04:18
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