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According to my Mage Storyteller, one of my Akashic’s foci may be “shirtlessness.”
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Aug 11, 2019 19:07
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CobiWann posted:According to my Mage Storyteller, one of my Akashic’s foci may be “shirtlessness.”
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Aug 11, 2019 19:25
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FLEX MENTALLO, HERO OF THE BEACH
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Aug 11, 2019 21:19
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The Champion’s Belt We get to the surface and find ourselves on the sandy floor of the Thalos gladitorial arena in the middle of chaos. There are two teams of gladiators standing aghast mid-combat and the ulgurstasta is crashing its way through the packed lower stands, crushing spectators too slow to get out of its way as it seeks an exit. We resume our assault on the worm-grub thing with spells and missile weapons, feathering it full of arrows and blowing chunks out of it with lightning, fire, and ice, but in a commanding voice Loris Raknian shouts, “Behold! The Apostle of Chaos is among us! There! There are the champions you seek!” He points to the gladiators in the middle of the arena and the ulgurstasta changes direction and bounds back into the arena. As we pound on it and the gladiators begin to defend themselves it scoops up one in its maw and swallows him whole. Chaos.
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Aug 12, 2019 00:53
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As a bunch of idiots with a pre-adolescent sense of humour, when a friend of ours in an old Mage: the Ascension game left the room, we quickly changed his Prime and Forces foci on his sheet. It was quite a bit later that he realised in order to cast his fireball, his character would have to begin shrieking and masturbating. It was truly Vulgar magic(k).
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Aug 12, 2019 00:55
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Coward posted:As a bunch of idiots with a pre-adolescent sense of humour, when a friend of ours in an old Mage: the Ascension game left the room, we quickly changed his Prime and Forces foci on his sheet. It was quite a bit later that he realised in order to cast his fireball, his character would have to begin shrieking and masturbating. It was truly Vulgar magic(k). I don't get it. Isn't that how you normally cast fireball? No wonder I'm never invited back to LARPs.
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Aug 12, 2019 01:07
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At my VtM larp, Elysium got attacked by a team of Hunters, including one guy armed with True Faith and a reliquary. We managed to beat them all, but in the aftermath, I've managed to put just a smidge of doubt into the Harpy that maybe her clan Tremere WAS somehow responsible. "Look, I'll admit I don't have any evidence, I'm just saying that it's more than a little convenient that the one night we DON'T have two dozen Tremere running around, and the only Tremere we DO have with us is the one who is currently in the clan doghouse, is the same night we get attacked by members of a Hunter group that your clan has encountered in the past." It's just a little seed, but hopefully it takes root. Because gently caress the Tremere, that's why.
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Aug 12, 2019 05:00
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Agrikk posted:I don't get it. Isn't that how you normally cast fireball? That's how you and I cast fireball, but it definitely wasn't for his oh-so-cool, powerful and edgy Hollow One. And the only reason that it's poor form to have shrieking and masturbating as your foci at a LARP is that it makes the rock-paper-scissors more awkward.
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Aug 12, 2019 05:28
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the_steve posted:At my VtM larp, Elysium got attacked by a team of Hunters, including one guy armed with True Faith and a reliquary. This is brilliant. Coward posted:That's how you and I cast fireball, but it definitely wasn't for his oh-so-cool, powerful and edgy Hollow One. Try having the Virtual Adept add Grindr to your Akashic's phone in-game and then sending you RL texts to get the notification sound when you're fighting a Black Spiral Dancer. I had to applaud her brilliance on that one. (And yes, the BSD ripped my Akashic's shirt off. Again)
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Aug 12, 2019 11:47
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Is this merely bad or is it cat piss material? Way back in the bad old days of college when I was going through my "bad games > no games" phase and didn't know any better, my regular gaming group consisted of two other dudes - our Forever GM and That Guy. Amongst other things, That Guy had the habit of rolling his dice. Okay, no biggie, I'm sure everyone's done that. Just two problems, though. - He did this during Shadowrun. He was a troll specializing in shooting and tanking. Just imagine the clatter of 25+ dice rolling at once, a short pause as he tallied successes, and then an additional clatter as he scooped them up in preparation for another throw. - He kept good rolls. When he got a great result, he'd leave the dice on the table. "I do the thing at the guy." "Okay, roll X." "I already did. Flail Snail saw me." Our GM, looking back, was probably in the same boat as me and just sort of went along with it so I can't fault him too much. I hated that Shadowrun game by the end of it. I think our GM finally realized that the only person having fun was That Guy during the last session. TG would beat up some dude and steal his commlink, interrupt my Borderlands session to have me crack it, drain its funds, and then go find another target. I get that Shadowrun's unofficial meta is the quest for bigger and better equipment but that just drained all the fun out of it.
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Aug 12, 2019 14:10
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Death and Destruction (and Don’t Forget the Chaos) A massive shockwave of necrotic energy explodes from the ulgurstasta and three things happen in quick succession. First, the ulgurstasta grows even more monstrous and all of the wounds we have inflicted upon it are wiped clean, like a rag across a dusty window. Second, Loris Raknian cries out in triumphant pain as he is transformed into a decaying animated corpse with two pinpoints of light in vacant eye sockets. Third, the spirits of the myriad dead that have died in the Thalos Arena rise up, a wailing, writhing blanket of rage and necromantic ruin. We are wracked by the overwhelming feeling of death and despair and feel drained and somehow lessened by the event. All around us the citizens and nobility of Thalos are subject to the same wave and, of every ten, seven or eight are slain by the ordeal, corpses piling where they fall, drained of their life force. Their bodies lie in the sand of the arena floor and in the stands. The ulgurstasta bends over and makes a massive gurgling, retching sound and vomits up the contents of its stomach, and the corpse of the warrior splashes into the sand in a pool of foul acidic bile. Stupefied, we can only watch as the corpse writhes and transforms into a ruined and twisted version of itself and gets up, animated by necromantic energy and pure hatred. But even as Severance and I destroy it with fire and ice, all of the corpses around us begin to animate and transform. Thousands of corpses, tens of thousands of corpses. Tens of thousands of wights begin to stir as the survivors of this disaster scream and push and trample each other as they flee in terror. As wights begin to slaughter the populace and the screams of living mingle with the howls of the newly undead, Loris Raknian throws his hands to the sky and a massive warhorse appears out of thin air. But this is no ordinary warhorse – black as night, with hooves and mane and tail of burning flame. Raknian mounts this beast and the pair fly off into the sky and out of the city heading east, pursued by a host of fire creatures that materialize and attack as soon as he crosses over the wall of Thalos. We run to the two gladiator teams and make quick introductions. “We must stick together if we wish to survive,” says Ospar. “Alas, but we are already weary.” The two teams are Arcane Auriga and Auric’s Warband. Arcane are four elven arcane warriors and Auric’s Warband is a mage and his three flesh golems, Auric himself being the unfortunate warrior swallowed by the ulgurstasta and transformed into a wight. “We must be careful,” says Ospar. “A wight can drain life energy from its victim and if killed, the victim can return as an animated corpse itself.” “This is madness!” cries one of the elves as she lets an arrow fly into a wight, dropping it. “The survivors are stampeding the exits and there are thousands of wights between us and the survivors!” “This way!” shouts Snakeeyes over the screams and the howls and we follow him to the chimney that the ulgurstasta made in its exit. He pulls out ever present flasks of oil and starts to splash it around the hole as we start to rappel down. He ignites the oil in a blast of heat and follows us down until we are back into the holding room below the Arena and we head back through the double doors. Above us, wights are already crossing through the blaze and following us down the walls. Severance says, “Th˙s, like this!” and sends a kinetic bolt of ice into a particularly large outcropping. I am too tired to muster the energy for an ice bolt, so I elect to use my wand to send But for the moment we are safe. Khellek, the human male wizard from Auric’s Warband, stations his golems by the three exits as guards and he, the four elves of Arcane Auriga and the four of us catch our breath next to one of the braziers. I am exhausted and collapse to the floor and one by one we all lay down or sit as the enormity of the disaster finally sinks in. Severance is almost weeping. “Th’ poor City. She donna deserve ‘tis.” Rennida Auriga is the leader of the group of elves and the others are her two cousins, dark eyed Eelyssa and fiece Anetah, and her daughter petite and slender Krinasa. Krinasa is silent and wide-eyed and Rennida says, “Thalos. City of the Dead.” Snakeeyes corrects her, “City of Death.” While the gladiators are relatively rested, we our have been battling Red Eyes, demons, and tieflings and need to rest, so they agree to watch as we simply collapse to the floor and sleep. Agrikk fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Aug 12, 2019 |
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Aug 12, 2019 15:06
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Agrikk posted:sock bolts
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Aug 12, 2019 17:32
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“Wand of sock bolts” has me laughing. I’m currently passing through TSA security at the airport and I’m pretty sure I’m the only one enjoying myself at the moment.
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Aug 12, 2019 17:54
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Flail Snail posted:Amongst other things, That Guy had the habit of rolling his dice. Okay, no biggie, I'm sure everyone's done that. Just two problems, though. Ok, ok I'm sorry. For starters I have to admit that while I've played some board games recently (ie Arkham, Catan, Pandemic) I've done like two (really bad) trad rpgs in my life and I mainly lurk this thread cause I like the stories, both good and bad. So forgive me for not knowing, but, are you not supposed to roll dice? (There's no story worth telling behind the bad rpgs, just me and a buddy trying to bang out a couple sessions of Rifts back in the mid 90s and being so underprepared and lousy at it we just kinda got bored and went back to playing Suikoden and listening to Jock Jams 2)
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Aug 12, 2019 17:56
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Phy posted:So forgive me for not knowing, but, are you not supposed to roll dice? Bad explanation on my part. He was always rolling his dice even when inappropriate. GM is expositing? TG is rolling. It's my turn? He's rolling. We're doing what passed as RP? Rolling rolling rolling.
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Aug 12, 2019 18:00
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Well to be fair, 25+ dice rolling at the same time can be pretty annoying. Not to mention that many dice can get all over the table too. Also I'm pretty sure keeping good rolls like that is more or less cheating. Flail Snail posted:Bad explanation on my part. He was always rolling his dice even when inappropriate. GM is expositing? TG is rolling. It's my turn? He's rolling. We're doing what passed as RP? Rolling rolling rolling. Ooooh, yeah that's an annoying habit for sure. Sounds like he's was more into the combat than anything else and just wanted to smash things.
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Aug 12, 2019 18:03
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Ah, gotcha, that's both annoying and shifty as heck.
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Aug 12, 2019 18:07
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Flail Snail posted:Bad explanation on my part. He was always rolling his dice even when inappropriate. GM is expositing? TG is rolling. It's my turn? He's rolling. We're doing what passed as RP? Rolling rolling rolling. See, I think that's a fun tactic when you're a GM to get your players used to the sound of dice just rolling and get their guard down when you check for important stuff, but as a player that's super annoying. And even as a GM you don't just do it all the time.
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Aug 12, 2019 18:19
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Yeah rolling a bunch until you get a roll you know is a success when you shoot and then saying "I shoot the guy, here is my roll" is absolutely cheating and bad.
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Aug 12, 2019 18:37
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Cheating at dice rolling in elfgames really chaps my hide. What is the point of the mechanic of character advancement if your cheating means you will always succeed? I’m going to avoid mention of the broken mechanics of random chance and plot advancement, but I will suggest that a missed die roll leads to good play and spontaneous creativity. “Well that didn’t work. What else can I try?” A guy in our long time gaming group cheated all the time. We all knew it, but we made allowances: if we wanted an honest random check of a thing, whoever was GM-ing would pick anyone else to make the roll. If we wanted to throw him a bone, we’d let him make the check knowing that he’d always make it. Sometimes it got insufferable because he’d be crowing about how much of a badass his character was, but inevitably someone else would say, “yeah but you fake your rolls.”
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Aug 12, 2019 19:00
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Sock full of nickels - hurts like hell, don't ask me how I know. Not a cheating story, but once at a table I saw someone chip his tooth on one of those teeny tiny six-sided die. He was eating sweets and not paying attention.
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Aug 12, 2019 19:15
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One of the guys in my group constantly refers to multiple dice wrong. Instead of saying 2D6 or similar, he'll say "2 one D6s" and its a good wholesome chuckle every time.
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Aug 12, 2019 19:40
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I have had three people in my circle of friends who routinely cheated (and I reserve the right to exaggerate slightly for the purposes of interesting stories). The first person's cheating was a joke amongst our friends as she would regularly, due to not caring about the rules, deliberately sidestep or mess with them. Except it would turn out it was always to her detriment. There would be conversations at the table of "Wait a minute, how the hell are you able to use that weapon? No, you're actually not allowed to use that weapon according to the rules. You should be using the other weapon that does like three times the damage and stacks with the feat you took. Oh God, you've been cheating backwards again this whole time." The second person's cheating was also sort of ignorance, but more that they weren't careful in finding out whether or not there were drawbacks to particular mechanics and they just wanted to have fun. Again, it was a running joke in our group that he was in on, as despite his cheating it never made a huge difference to his odds of winning any game we were playing. Now, the third guy, let's call him Sebastian... Well, he was definitely cheating in a deliberately underhanded way in order to get ahead. And then he would feign ignorance or have an excuse for why he accidentally hadn't taken something into account. It got so sketchy that I basically refused to play any boardgames with Seb present, as it was tiresome to face that competitiveness and have to concentrate on what he was doing to make sure he couldn't get away with anything. The classic story about Seb was a Warhammer Fantasy Battle game. It was, I think, a three way battle with people who had picked 2000 point armies, so it was going to take a few hours. Seb was playing a Lizardman army - at the time it was one of the strongest armies with few weaknesses, so it wasn't surprising he was fielding one. As the game progressed, my friend Mal began noticing that Seb's units were particularly well-equipped for the troops he was fielding, and that his commanders had some decent magical items. As Seb took some time to work out the movements of his army on his turn, Mal asked to look at the Lizardman army book. Seb seemed reluctant, and carefully removed his army sheet from the book before handing it over. Making some quick calculations, Mal got very suspicious. An army sheet is the list of your troop composition, with the pricing for the units and equipment worked as a tally to confirm what you're fielding and that it's within the limit. You prepare it often long in advance and have it at the table to show your opponent so they can confirm that that block of miniatures with pikes are actually equipped with pikes and you don't want to run your cavalry into them just yet. Seb was a bit cagey about showing his list when Mal asked to check it. This was a massive red flag - why wouldn't you let someone see your army list? - and Mal and the other player insisted it be handed over. Shrugging, Seb passes it over while he continues confirming the movements of his units, ready to smash some powerful blocks of huge, scaly, heavy-hitting infantry into his opponents. There are no prices listed next to any of his troops. Mal calls Seb on this, and Seb just shrugs and says he did the calculations and not to worry about it. But Seb has forgotten Mal is bloody-minded to a fault, and he immediately sits down with the army book before Seb can ask for it back and begins pricing out the army and all its options. Seb's Lizardmen, already a very strong army type, are 300 points over. For those not familiar with Wargames, this is a pretty huge advantage especially if you already have what's regarded as a top-tier army, and is basically impossible to do accidentally. Seb breezily apologised and began explaining how he could have accidentally come up with that amount, and it was fine as he would just remove a couple of the units to bring the points back under, and he genuinely expected the players to be totally cool and okay with this, as if the cheating was a minor interruption to the game, and that you'd just fix it mechanically and move on. I believe Mal just said, "Nup", packed up and left.
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Aug 13, 2019 03:21
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I know nothing of the game system, but I was at a gaming night thing where some people were playing Warhammer and there was a bit of a tiff about someone using too many points. The accused player showed his army list and his calculations... turns out that he added up and was so bad at maths that he was off by not 1 but 2... I think that he added 400 to 1800 and got 2000 because he thought that 18+4 = 20. They thought that he was possibly trying to cheat, but he got really angry and tried to work it out on a blackboard, realised how badly he was off and, Hanlon's razor, became the butt of a lot of jokes for months to come.
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Aug 13, 2019 03:33
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We're trying to smuggle half of our party into a villian's HQ by shrinking them down and stuffing them in a hollowed out Deer statue to try and steal incriminating documents. The escape plan is basically just 
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Aug 13, 2019 06:30
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The Glumslinger posted:The escape plan is basically just
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Aug 13, 2019 07:02
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Ilor posted:Oh, sounds like my old Shadowrun players. Oh we usually had plans, they were just bad plans.
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Aug 13, 2019 13:48
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The Glumslinger posted:The escape plan is basically just "Violent improvisation", aka the only real thing 2/3 of my RPG groups are good at. To be fair both groups are incredibly good at that.
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Aug 13, 2019 16:38
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I mean the original plan was to start a massive gang war as an escape plan, but we managed to talk them down to petty theft
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Aug 13, 2019 17:24
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I have a fun cheating story that actually was within the spirit of the game: One of the most popular games my group of friends used to play was Paranoia, and since I had the most tabletop experience and was the only person with the rulebook at the time I usually ended up GMing. Now initially it was pretty hard to get the players to actually backstab each other, which is pretty much the entire point of the game. They'd come up against each other whenever someone needed to fulfil a secret society objective, or if someone was obviously a mutant, but otherwise they generally stuck together as a mostly cooperative, if often chaotic and incompetent, group. More important to this story is that - because of this initial hesitance to scheme and betray each other - they rarely spent much in the way of perversity against each other (even after they got used to being massive bastards to each other, which did happen pretty quickly enough). As a side note, for those who haven't played Paranoia - perversity is basically an out of game currency used for modifying dice rolls in either direction, and you can use it on other players' rolls. You usually earn it either by being true to your character's tics or flaws, or by being funny. Anyway, I decided to try and change this by being a little more generous with awarding perversity, as well as encouraging bidding wars and my players got really into it! Soon perversity was flying freely with my players even making backroom deals with each other which is a little metagamey, but since it fit the game I felt there wasn't any harm. Soon it eventually got a little difficult to track however - so I decided that rather than bookkeeping perversity on paper, I was going to instead use chips from a poker set I had. I figured it'd also make things a little more fun and that was confirmed when my players started spending more perversity...a lot more. More than I felt should be possible. Turns out the motherfuckers were working together to steal chips every time I took one of them out of the room to scheme. I didn't find out til someone tattled on one of the others to try and get the upper hand on something. Honestly I was actually pretty proud they managed to pull something like that off for so long. Didn't stop me from killing them all with drop pods and exploding faulty weaponry though.
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Aug 13, 2019 20:17
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That is perfect.
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Aug 13, 2019 20:36
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In early 2016 wanted to play d&d for the first time since a couple of one off sessions in college (2004ish) so I browsed the internet for local LFG posts. I bailed on the first group after driving 30 minutes across town for a “new player interview” and being told that even though the party was at level 5, if you died you came back at level 1 and had to catch up. All of that plus a long drive was enough for me to avoid the group. It got worse. I went to a session ran by a very high but supremely talented artist. It was hosted at the small apartment of a large lady named Kat, who was a long haul trucker that played d&d in her downtime between being on the road. Her shabby apartment wouldn’t have bothered me if it didn’t smell so much like catpiss. Kat, of course, had one cat for every missing tooth and she was missing many teeth. I walked out of that one at the first break and didn’t look back. Finally, I found a decent group. Three older guys - one in his 50s, two in their 40s - and two younger guys in their late 20s. They were a pretty good group, and we played until the beginning of this year when players moved across the country and we took a break.
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Aug 14, 2019 00:27
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We had a guy who cheated, constantly. Stat rolls, to-hit rolls, skill checks, you name it. It got to the point where most of us had complained to the DM, save cheater's protege, who was developing the same lovely habit. So the DM pulled a sting. We were playing the old, old Ruins of Adventure/Pool of Radiance book, and the party was sent in to clear a tenement house of kobolds. There were over a hundred locked and trapped doors in there, prime work for cheater's thief. He blew maybe two rolls, and we figured that was only because he hadn't guessed the DC on the checks yet. Each time he made a check, the DM's wife quietly recorded the result. A couple of hundred rolls, and dude didn't roll below a 17 on d20, save for those two glitches. Sadly, confronting him was the most toothless display I've ever seen; the DM refused to directly accuse him of cheating, and he just weaseled around with his responses.
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Aug 14, 2019 01:01
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Some people are just really lucky, but getting above 17 in a 100+ rolls is absolutely some kind of cheating.
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Aug 14, 2019 07:13
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Confronting people over cheating in tabletop games never has a satisfying conclusion in my experience. Much like moderating any community to be honest. They've just denied it or gotten angry and left. If someone else has had a better experience than this I'm glad for them, but I've never seen it in person myself and I saw enough people fudging rolls or outright cheating in my college club.
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Aug 14, 2019 07:59
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Back in community college my group'ss DM had two D20s he'd customized with like a dremel or something: one that had only 19 20s and a 1 and one that had 19 1s and a 20. He'd let you roll the good one once per session but in return he'd make you use the bad on one roll of his choosing.
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Aug 14, 2019 08:19
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Back in community college my group'ss DM had two D20s he'd customized with like a dremel or something: one that had only 19 20s and a 1 and one that had 19 1s and a 20. He'd let you roll the good one once per session but in return he'd make you use the bad on one roll of his choosing. This is an awesome idea.
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Aug 14, 2019 13:49
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HiKaizer posted:Confronting people over cheating in tabletop games never has a satisfying conclusion in my experience. Much like moderating any community to be honest. They've just denied it or gotten angry and left. If someone else has had a better experience than this I'm glad for them, but I've never seen it in person myself and I saw enough people fudging rolls or outright cheating in my college club. It boils down to what people want from their game. In my group, the one guy who faked his rolls just wanted to be the toughest, baddest, lethalest, competent-est person. He wanted to “win” the campaign, and probably reads the end of books first. Personally, I like it when the dice get me into a jam that I have to figure out how to escape. Some of my favorite sessions are when I’ve botched a roll and gotten myself captured or whatever and then say, “okay, GM, what’s in the room?” What can I use to get out of this mess? Roll-faker never gets into those situations because his PC cleaned out the base of bad guys with his twenty critical hits. It’s like cheat codes in video games: sure you can give yourself infinite ammo and god mode, but why would you want to?
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Aug 14, 2019 16:33
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Agrikk posted:It’s like cheat codes in video games: sure you can give yourself infinite ammo and god mode, but why would you want to? Not really a good comparison. Video games do all kinds of weird, interesting things when you start messing with their core assumptions. I used to play StarCraft: Brood War with infinite money and island bases, set up an impenetrable defense, and then run around the map with stealth units watching all the weird stuff the AI gets up to when it has an 8-way stalemate and limitless resources. "Cheating" in the sense of grasping control of variables that aren't part of normal play is incredibly fun. The problem with cheating in a tabletop game is that you're breaking the social contract with the rest of the group.
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Aug 14, 2019 20:15
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Agrikk posted:In my group, the one guy who faked his rolls just wanted to be the toughest, baddest, lethalest, competent-est person. He wanted to “win” the campaign, and probably reads the end of books first. Also hottest. He habitually played female characters with 'naturally' high charisma/looks/whatever scores, and got amusingly upset if someone else's character ended up being better looking. I think the DM sussed out that he was reading from a copy of the adventure too, but that's so generic a dick move that it could have been anyone else.
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Aug 14, 2019 20:43
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