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I'm bummed because our Monday Star Wars keeps getting put off due to work circumstances. Jedi CAN be overpowered, but the DM and I make sure I'm taking the die penalties for having powers up, since they're considered "multiple actions." He's also done a great job making sure the non-Jedi have their moments in the sun. X X X X X According to my DM, my Bard cannot cast Vicious Mockery by yelling "SPRING BREAK, MICHAEL, WOOOOOO" and lifting up their chainmail shirt.
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Nov 3, 2020 14:05
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| # ? May 21, 2024 23:39 |
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Ambush Fatigued from our battle with the Nightmare Beast, we decide to explore its lair and take a badly needed rest, alternating shifts as the other sleep the remainder of the night away. I was dreaming of a comfortable bed in a well-furnished house on a beautiful river when I am shaken awake. In the dark I can barely make out the shadowy shape of Laenaya as she crouches over me. She whispers, “Wake up, Pepper. We have company. Get your gear and I’ll wake the others.” I gather my wits and my gear as Laenaya moves through the camp at the cave entrance waking people. As she moves, I see a pair of figures materialize out of the shadows outside the cave right behind her. “Laenaya! Danger!” I shout but it is too late. The horned tieflings stab wicked daggers into her back and she cries out in pain before disintegrating into a ghostly cloud that immediately moves out of the cave and into the night. Suddenly a trio of figures appears on the outside of our camp and two rush into the fray: some kind of horned demon with squat muscular legs and four arms and a creature of blazing-red skin with an immense, bulging frame that little gouts of flame spring forth across its body. And then it is a swirling mas of confusion as we scramble not to be killed by our attackers while grabbing for weapons. Snakeyes immediately takes a punch in the ribs by the flaming creature that staggers him as Ospar leaps to his feet, hands sprouting his dragon-tooth knives, engaging the two tieflings. Severance has engaged the demon and I am busy deflecting spells launched at us by the robed figure standing outside of the fracas. We are purely defensive until we get into some semblance of mutually protecting formation, taking blows and cuts, with a hobbled Snakeeyes clutching ribs and bleeding from the mouth as he engages the efreeti with his katana. But I have a flash of inspiration and yell for Severance to engage the sorcerer at the edge of camp while I focus my energy and willpower on the demon. Ospar gets in a swift stab under the leather hauberk of one of the tiefling twins and one goes down, while dodging a slashing blow from the other. I raise my hands towards the demon and point my staff. “Alla'anuniralunan'litta!” I speak the words in a voice of Command and the demon suddenly shudders in pain and leaves Severance free to disengage and attack the robed figure. It is a contest of wills as I strive to master the demon and find it already ensnared by the sorcerer, Darl Quethos. But the contest is short lived as Severance swings his blade at Darl’s head, forcing him to abandon the contest to defend himself. So now Snakeeyes is fighting the efreeti, Ospar the remaining tiefling, Severance is battling Darl Quethos even as he avoids the twisted and grasping Hand of Vecna while I subdue and eventually master the demon with spells that wrack the spirit and drain the will. “Nalhazzarath! Destroy Darl!” The demon launches itself at Darl as Snakeeye’s katana finds its way home, cleaving into the side of the efteet with as much effort as he can muster one-handed. Darl, suddenly faced with a demon and Severance, begins to make a fighting retreat from the camp even as Snakeeyes cleaves the efreeti across the middle and drops him. Ospar has been getting as good as he’s been giving from the flying feet and wicked dagger of the tiefling but manages to drop it with a stab and a slash to the throat. Darl, suddenly alone, turns and blocks the Sword of Aaqua with the Hand while Severance Slashes with the lightning sword. He then tears a hole in reality and steps through it to somewhere else before we can react. Snakeeyes falls to one knee, gasping for air as a bloody and battered Ospar rushes to his side seeking succor and healing from Hextor. Snakeeyes turns, sheathing the lightning sword then wiping the sweat and grime from his eyes. He gestures at the demon who is now crouched, snarling at me. “Wh’ t’ hells is tha’ t’ing?” “This,” I say, gesturing at the demon. “This is Nalhazzarath, also known as Alla'anuniralunan'litta.” At this the demon shudders in pain again. I have to pronounce the strange name carefully. “As it turns out, I remember reading about him in the Demonomicon. Natasha wrote an entire passage about him. Apparently this one let his truename get out and it’s been passed from mage to mage and sorcerer to sorcerer for generations.” We are tending to our wounds and Snakeeyes laughs and then coughs even as Hextor’s healing takes effect. “Seriously? How damned are you to know that your immortal existence is to be enslaved by anyone with your truename and the will to use it?” Ospar is looting the corpses as he says, “And what of Darl? And Laenaya?” Severance says, “I saw ‘er get run through. I’ she banished?” “Who knows, but she and her blades will be sorely missed, I think.” I say. “But we have Alla'anuniralunan'litta as our own little fodder now.” At mention of his true name the demon gasps. “No more!” it shudders. “No more. I will serve. I will obey!” Severance is muttering something about more pacts with fell beasts, but keeps his counsel to himself.
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Nov 4, 2020 01:29
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The Second Trial The Doomshroud Forest is a lonesome alien landscape. Its black, monolithic trees appear to shift unnaturally without the aid of wind. The canopy blocks out the dim light provided by the overcast skies, and the forest is as dark as night as a result. We push into the forest making our way through the meshed black branches of dead and dying trees and stepping though rotting undergrowth towards the forest center. As we march towards the center as the night darkens, Ospar says, “I hear the weeping of a woman who has lost her beloved.” He shudders. “What a terrible lament.” Snakeeyes shakes his head, “I only hear the cold baleful wind as it blows over a desolate graveyard.” We march on towards the source of the sound and eventually the blackened forest thins out into a large clearing. Holding dominion over this unnatural forest is a bizarre, twisted black tree. No other tree grows near this 50-foot-tall menace. The night twist sways hypnotically, its many black branches undulating like serpents, dancing to the tune of its mournful melody. As we enter the clearing I am staggered in the weight of the most crushing despair I have ever felt. It is as if all of the joy has left the world and only sorrow remains. The others are staggered and collapse as well, but Severance shakes free of the dweomer and with a muttered spell an a small hand gesture, a veil of perfect silence descends over all of us. A blessed release fills me and I try to speak my thanks to Severance but am stymied by his spell. Ospar pulls out a book and sharpened coal stylus and begins to write. I know this thing. He writes. This twist will encorcell the unwary with its siren song and those killed by a twist are doomed to join it as a twist itself. So how do we kill it? writes Snakeeyes. It’s a tree. Kill it with fire. Writes Ospar. One thing: it apparently has a nasty death curse associated with it so we need to be ready. I grab the paper away and write a message on it, hiding it in a cupped hand. Leave that to me. I turn and walk back to the edge of the forest, outside the range of the Twist’s song with Severance next to me and Nalhazzarath crouching in front of me. Ospar and Snakeyees move forward with blades drawn, with Severance modifying the spell of silence so that it moves as Snakeeyes moves. With a gesture, I send lighting at the tree as Severance launches bolts of fire at the black menace. Ospar is readying flasks of oil and throwing them at the tree as Snakeeyes slashes at whipping branches with his katana. They pull clear and Severance targets the flasks with a fire bolt and the flasks ignite with a rolling ball of oily flames. Snakeeyes and Ospar pull out of range as the tree begins to burn and Severance and I continue our barrage with fire and lightning. As the tree begins to burn in earnest I turn to Nalhazzarath. “Alla'anuniralunan'litta, I command you to fight this demon tree until it is slain. When the tree dies, I will release you back to the Abyss.” The demon slavers at me at the command but does not resist. “What about the death curse?” it hisses. “This is not my concern. If you are lucky, the curse won’t follow you out of this plane of existence. If not, perhaps destroying yourself might free you of it.” The demon howls a cry of impotent frustration and rage, but cannot refuse. Severance drops his spell of silence and casts another one on a stick that he drops to the ground. The demon picks it up and lumbers off to the fight, cracking limbs off of the tree, adding them to the fire at the base of the trunk and rending the trunk with its claws until the tree becomes sluggish and finally grows still, the song fading to a memory as it is consumed by the flames. When the tree finally dies, Nalhazzarath comes bounding back to where we are standing and, if it is actually possible, it’s face looks haunted and grim. “The deed is done, human, and I think I will rue this deed. Uphold your word.” With little fanfare, I cast my spell of banishment and send the demon back to its home and we head off to the lair of the Roc King.
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Nov 6, 2020 22:41
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Agrikk posted:It’s a tree. Kill it with fire.
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Nov 6, 2020 23:39
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Yawgmoth posted:nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure Reminds me of a solution I read years ago.
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Nov 7, 2020 01:06
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When Pepper's campaign is done, and won't that be a bittersweet day, you should make an e-book out of it.
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Nov 7, 2020 16:27
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This happened a while ago, but I thought this thread might appreciate it: I dropped out of a D&D game a few years ago for personal reasons, but the game's been running since then and I'm still in touch with the DM and all the players. The character I'd been playing was a weird, incoherent mystic, and when I left the game, the DM ran it as "Tolko hasn't come down for breakfast. When you go up to his room to investigate, the room is empty and looks like nobody has ever lived in it, and none of the NPCs have any idea who you're talking about when you ask them about him." It was a great sendoff for the character, and the players all just waved it off because they knew it was because I was leaving the game and not a plot thread they were supposed to follow. Four in-game months and two real years later, one of the character's sister (an NPC) goes missing in a similar way, and the party does a little sleuthing. They discover that she was likely taken by shadow creatures to the Shadowfell, and that when people are taken this way, memories others hold of them start to fade. Naturally they become super invested in retrieving this sister from the Shadowfell so that the character doesn't forget about the existence of her own sister. So they travel to the Shadowfell and manage to find tracks of the creatures they think took her, which they begin to follow. And then they see my character, and - per the plan the DM and I hatched together beforehand - I join the Zoom. Me: "YOU CAME TO RESCUE ME! Finally! They said you'd never come, but I knew you would! I'm so happy to see you've come here for me!" Them: "Uh, yeah..." It soon became clear that they had not traveled to the Shadowfell for me, or even looked for me at all after I vanished... Me: "So I just disappeared, and then what did you do?" One of them: "We just kind of figured that you never existed in the first place...you know, this sounds pretty bad when I say it out loud." At which point I got angry and summoned some monsters for the fight that was the original intention of the encounter. One of the players tweeted this about it after: https://twitter.com/AreisReising/status/1314047256664969216 It was pretty great, although somewhat diminished by the fact that some of the players (understandably) thought we were handwaving me back into the campaign, rather than having an encounter to explore the weird way my character left it.
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Nov 7, 2020 18:54
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This is an interesting approach and I can see how the players might have been confused. Players just behave differently when its a PC or NPC. It underscores one of the differences between PCs and NPCs: A group of people, sitting around a table in an inn and a random person comes along and it's like "Oh hey come sit with us and we'll be allies" because that person walking by is a PC rather than an NPC. If it's an NPC walking by it becomes "What are they wearing? Anything worth stealing/murdering/betraying/helping?" as if the person has a big yellow question mark or exclamation point floating above their head.
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Nov 7, 2020 22:52
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The Fourth Trial “That bastard,” says Ospar as we look down at the carnage. After a harrowing climb among craggy peaks, we find ourselves looking across a small cleft in the mountainside at a bloody and trampled nest. Within the nest are the mangled remains of a gigantic bird of prey with talons capable of carrying off a large horse. “Well this should be easy after all,” I say. “What do you mean?” says Ospar, turning away from the bloody mess. “Well, let’s go fetch us a feather and be on our way!” I grin. “’Harvest of the Living Feather of the Roc King’,” says Ospar. “Roc is dead,” mutters Snakeeyes as he lights a bowl. “S’ wha’ t’ hells ‘re we t’ do?” says Severance. “Wit’ all w’ ‘ave gone t’ru t’ only fail nae?” Snakeyes exhales a cloud of smoke. “It seems insane that the world will fall to Chaos for the want of a feather.” He looks skyward. “I imagine that Darl Quethos probably harvested a feather then killed it. So I suppose now we are going to have to hunt him down and retrieve the feather, assuming that he still even has it.” “But I’m not even sure how we leave the island. Will the Wild Watchers allow us to leave alive?” I ask. “Would they allow us to come back? The fourth Watcher, Sayren-Lei, seemed like he’d rather kill us all as soon as look at us.” Ospar looks at the corpse of the roc and makes some kind of internal decision. “Perhaps Hextor knows the way and perhaps he will show me the way forward.” He pulls a small trinket from his pack and a prayer rug and moves to the edge of the nest and begins to pray, entering into some kind of trance that makes me nervous, but I don’t know why. He remains in the trance for the better part of a day, with eyes sometimes slitted, sometimes closed. At times sweat breaks out on his brow as if locked in a deep struggle, and other times he mumbles in an alien tongue. Finally, he falls over onto his side with eyes wide open and staring sightlessly while taking slow deep breaths. “’ow long a we gon’ t’ wait?” says Severance for the dozenth time. He has been pacing around the nest for hours. Snakeeyes is sanguine and seemingly unconcerned. “As long as it takes for whatever is to happen happens.” I look up from the Demonomicon that sits in my lap. “Snakeyes is right. We don’t have a path forward yet. So we wait.” So begins the second night of our vigil. Snakeeyes getting irritable because he’d run out of krrf the day before, Severance pacing endless around the nest, me reading my tome and wondering what happened to Laenaya. Finally, as dawn breaks over the craggy peaks and casts a beam of sunlight across the roc corpse Severance gives a cry, “Look! Th’ wounds on th’ roc ‘re sealin’ up!” Snakeeyes jumps up from where he was sitting. “Hextor and Ospar has brought the roc back to life?” “By the gods it certainly looks that way.” We gather up our things and watch in wonder as the carcass regains vitality. I watch it take its first breath but then I have a thought: “When this roc wakes up it’s going to be mighty upset.” Snakeeyes looks at Ospar, still lying on his side and starting sightlessly. “Drag Ospar away from here and get to safety. When I see the roc open its eyes and begin to stir, I will pluck a feather and make a run for it.” “’Make a run for it’ sounds like a good plan.” I say wryly. “Be careful.” So we strike camp with Severance carrying Ospar down the rocky path, leaving Snakeeyes behind. We are several hundred yards down the trail when Ospar closes his eyes and begins to stir with a gasp of air. Behind us nest the nest, we hear a churlish caw and then a shrill avian cry as the roc takes to the air. Seeing this elephant-sized bird take flight is a majestic sight and we watch it fade into the distance. Ospar is coming around slowly as Snakeeyes walks nonchalantly down the path towards us, carrying a brown and silver feather easily as long as his leg and smiling. “You did it Ospar!” His grin is infectious. Ospar, looking tired but content, can only manage a “Praise be to Hextor.” “Ye’ve been inna trance f’ over a day,” says Severance. “Wher’d ye’ get off t’?” Ospar can only shake his head. “I saw Hextor in his golden hall and pled our case before his heavenly host for His intercession. I lay in judgement on His altar and was deemed worthy. Any more I won’t say.” “Th’ be incredible!” cries Severance. “Th’ gods ‘ave sent us a miracle! Surely th’ do be on our side.” “Stop,” commands Ospar. “Hextor has deemed us worth of trial by combat in the coming day. Through this act he has once again set himself against Vecna and the Hand of the Lich-Lord and set the stage for a mighty battle, the victor of which, though force of arms, will either usher in the Age of Chaos or prevent it. This is as it should be.” We wait until Ospar recovers his strength and then we walk out of the mountains back to the Portal of Storms where we first spoke with the Wild Watchers. Somehow they must have known we were coming because the four of them are there waiting for us next to the Portal. “So it must begin and so it must end,” says Tylanthros. He gestures silently to the Portal of Storms, and the obsidian platform shimmers and transforms into a remarkable obsidian fountain, its waters cool and sparkling with a rainbow of scintillating light. As the fountain manifests, we are filled with a nearly overwhelming rush of nostalgia for cherished things from childhood and a strange gnawing fear of long-forgotten nightmares. Tylanthros speaks one final time. "And so you have earned the right to return the lore of the Order of Storms to the world. The Age of Chaos is upon us, and what the powers of old began so long ago falls to you to complete. Drink deep and remember. Dream the dreams of the ages."
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Nov 7, 2020 23:41
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This is great. These abrupt exits happen all the time due t schedules/real life stuff, so It's good to see a way to retcon one in a creative way. It reminds me of how they went back in TNG and gave Tasha Yar a proper send-off after originally having her die feebly to a puddle of black goo. I'll type up another story about my daughter and I playing D&D later, but for now I have a quick one from the Undermountain game I'm playing in: We run across a room full of "vampires." The GM affects a Bela Lugosi accent and they say they can let us pass through "their domain" safely for a modest fee. My smart-alecky goth bard notices that their accents are performative, and they are wearing makeup to look pale. They're also laying it on thick, trying to charm the group (and failing). Just as our monk is saying, "We have plenty of money. Let's just pay them and not bother with this," I decide to lean into being chaotic good. I'm onto their poo poo, and these guys are assholes. They need to pay. So I go over to the one closest to our flank and pretend that his charms are working. I lean in (probably beckoning him to stoop down, given that I'm a halfling) and whisper, "We know you're all frauds. We're not paying, and if you want to live through what happens next and earn some loot, you'll help us." After an astronomical persuasion check, he nods in acknowledgment. I go back to the group, position myself in my usual pocket behind the paladin and monk, and huddle up to, "discuss how to divvy up paying the vampire lord." In the huddle I actually tell the group to attack immediately, that none of these morons are vampires. The group wheels around and gets a few surprise attacks on those closest to us. When the "vampires" begin fighting back, they outnumber us almost three-to-one and begin to turn our flank. But that's where the mundanely charmed rube is. He turns around and starts fighting them just enough to hold that side of the battlefield. Three of the bandits pile up near him but it looks like they're going to move past him on the next round. My "pocket" has collapsed and the "offensive line" is way up ahead in melee with a bunch of idiots. But the sucker did his job just long enough. Still playing dumb, just for fun now, my bard yells, "They're vampires! We have to use fire!"... and I launch a charge from a Wand of Fireballs at the cluster on the flank, including the rube. The poor sap managed to snap a glance at me before impact. I say, "Sorry. We don't have a policy of paying mercenaries," as he dies horribly.
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Nov 8, 2020 22:53
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Night10194 posted:Their past missions have involved an evil British star sorcerer tricking a local artist of the macabre into a reverse dorian grey to get their attention so he could talk to their gravity wizard (evil wizards don't just, like, call you on the phone they gotta be convoluted) I'm playing Alex, the gravity mage in question. The conversation with the star sorcerer ended with Alex mocking him and laughing off his "join me and we will rule together" speech, and then after he left, Alex rotated upside-down in midair while groaning into their hands. Which is a good summary of Alex as a character. Cocky action hero on the outside, anxious nerd on the inside.
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Nov 9, 2020 02:14
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Descent into the Dream The Fountain of Dreams is more than a mere receptacle of knowledge. It provides a strange, tenuous link with the past, with the spirits of the final surviving druids of the Order (as manifested in the forms of the Wild Watchers), and with the very nature of the demiplane of Last Resort. As a group we drink, and are immediately overwhelmed by a sudden rush of alien yet strangely familiar memories. The world around us swirls away into a vortex of lightning and wind, fire and rain, ending in the utter darkness of nothingness. For several moments, I float adrift in this silence, long enough to feel the cold perpetuity of the infinite weighing upon me. We suddenly coalesce into solid form, standing on a windy bluff overlooking an immense canyon. This is the Rift Canyon, about a hundred leagues to the east of Iggwilv’s Horn in the Katerray Plains, although it seems somehow less barren than expected: Trees grow right up to the canyon's rim, and far to the west, the faint, looming specter of Iggwilv’s Horn and the Barrier Peaks is visible. We are hundreds of miles to the north and west of where Thalos would be built and rebuilt. The din of distant battle echoes, and as if rising from the ground on ledges and mesas both near and far, armies of creatures fade into view. In the distance, cities smoke in ruin, and the sky is cast with a dark pallor. The cacophonous moans of a demon horde ride the wind. Although our immediate vicinity remains clear for now, I can see that the armies consist of huge numbers of humanoids fighting against what seems like an endless wave of demon spawn. Some of these shapes seem familiar, as described in the Demonomicon, for these are the armies of Chaos rising up from the fissures in reality at the bottom of Rift Canyon. There are geruzous and hezrous and vrocks. There are ulgurstastas and quasits and nalfeshnee. Yet there are other, more sinister creatures as well, balor, marilith and a Klurichir serving as captains of the host. But if these are the captains then the general must surely be the large armored spider with a four-armed human male torso and a human head flanked on either side with the head of a snarling wolf. This is Miska the Wolf Spider and consort to the Queen of Chaos herself. Wheeling in the distant skies above, attended by numerous smaller dragons, is a horrifying shape-a skeletal red dragon of great size. Dragotha the Dracolich. A voice rings out behind them: "You have arrived." We turn away from the battle and a small group of somber druids stands before us. The four druids at the forefront of this group of several dozen are the druids destined to become the four wild watchers. The man who addresses us is the living Tylanthros, his face gaunt with hardship, his robes matted with dirt and blood. Despite his greeting, he gives no indication that he recognizes us, for it will be 1,500 years before we meet again on Tilagos Island. As he approaches us, he speaks. "The heroes of prophecy. Your timing is perfect. As you have probably surmised, our bid to steal the Daughter of the Night from Pazuzu was successful and she is properly imprisoned. Now the Queen of Chaos sends her general to win her back.” He gestures to the battle below. “We can hold them back no longer and their march to Pesh seems assured, but we have been successful in a different task." Tylanthros indicates the dozen or so druids who stand behind him. These druids cluster around a large package, a strange container with its sides carved in the shapes of leering demonic and draconic faces. "Dragotha's phylactery is ours, yet bought at a great price. His minions even now come to reclaim it, and soon he himself shall learn of its theft. We must hide it forever from his reach, for I fear its destruction at this juncture would only drive him to an unstoppable frenzy. But if we can take it from this land, he will sense its loss. He will abandon the army of Chaos and they will be weakened before arriving at Pesh, an army without air cover. You must hold off the minions that even now scramble at the edges of the cliffs around us. Our trusted ally will stall the areal forces while you must hold off the rest of the Queen’s Army long enough for us to transport the phylactery." As the druid mentions an ally, a familiar figure steps forward, a young and vivacious woman dressed in ornate silver armor who can be none other than Lashonna, her eyes bright and burning with determination. She speaks to us but there is no sense of recognition in her eyes. "I shall engage Dragotha and his children myself, but I cannot defend against the demons. They come too, scrambling up to our location even now. You must hold them off, for all is lost if you fail." With that final pronouncement, Lashonna spreads wide her arms and transforms into a magnificent silver dragon. With a single tremendous beat of her wings, she launches into the air and soars off toward the distant dracolich. As she wings away, Tylanthros speaks again. "We go now, to hide the phylactery within its cradle in Kongen-Thulnir. Protect us from the demon hordes, or Miska will successfully free the Daughter of the Night and the Age of Chaos shall doom us all!" Even as these events sink in, the demons reach the edge of our mesa, scuttling up over the rim of the cliff's edge to howl in triumph. The druids retreat to protect the phylactery and ready it for transport to the vault they've prepared in their stronghold city of Kongen-Thulnir as the demons surge forth in wave after rotten wave to assault us. We have a few moments to prepare before the onslaught. “Are we really in the Battle of Pesh?” asks Ospar. “’t woul’ appear tha’ we be fightin’ an earlier fight,” says Severance has he draws the Sword of Aaqa and the Sun Blade. Their edges glint in the sunlight, bright and clear. “Bu’ Pesh is cert’nly in thi’ future.” “Funny,” says Ospar. “When reading up on demonology and the Battle of Pesh I don’t recall reading about myself being a hero.” “Maybe because everyone here dies or something,” says Snakeeyes grimly as he hefts his katana. And then they are on us, pressing on us with sheer numerical advantage. Gibbering demons of bizarre shape and form rend us with claws and teeth as they grasp at us and attempt to pull us into the mob. Severance is launching blasts of fire and ice even as he whirls among the demons like a dervish. Snakeeyes, too, is leaping among them, carving limb from torso and is soon spattered in black blood. Nimble Ospar is feinting and weaving, closing in with an opponent to drive his dragon blades deep into demon guts to evade and tumble away. I simply lay waste to huge swaths of ground, sending walls of fire marching across the demon hordes and balls of lightning to explode in their midst. In the distance overhead I am dimly aware of the roar and cry of dragons as Lashonna takes the fight to the enemy, diving and climbing and rolling through the sky to attack with claws, fangs and a breath weapon of utter cold. Three times we are assaulted, and three times we repel the demons, but each time we are left weaker and more battered, too exhausted to recall spells Ospar barely enough time to ask Hextor for strength and succor to help us though the next assault. Then they are on us for the fourth time but behind us the druids’ incantation is complete and they disappear suddenly into thin air. I am laying about with my staff and Ospar is fighting one-handed, the other arm hanging useless by his side, when there is a mighty roar of triumph mixed with a second roar of pain and I look up to see Dragotha deliver a killing blow to Lashonna, whose body falls from the sky to be lost in the mists of the Rift Canyon below. Suddenly, we experience another gut-wrenching vortex and we are yanked out of the battlefield and return to Tilagos Island. Yet the Tilagos Island we've returned to is markedly different than the rain- and wind-soaked Tilagos Island we left. When we return from the vision, we are standing on an uninteresting barren island in the Sea of Storms. The storms that surround the island are gone and the barren rocks are covered with grass and a few copses of trees. The maze of down on the shore remains unchanged, but the Portal of Storms is weathered and ruined, as if it had lain inert for 1,500 years. I sit down and pull out the Demonomicon, thumbing through sections until I arrive at Natasha’s journal entries for her three daughters. And there they are: Rhaakhamvreesvasvaa Khishiikligamiin Astalammetuniinki “Son of a bitch,” I mutter, slamming the book shut and standing up. By activating the Fountain of Dreams we have apparently restored the lost lore of the Order of the Storm to the world. In the weeks and months to come, sages and scholars around the world slowly rediscover some of this lost lore, which seems to have magically manifested from nothingness in old texts, dusty scrolls, and even new books, often incorporating this knowledge into the flow of the text as if it had always been there. But for now we head down to the beach and greet Captain Grogriss Spit-Eye and his crew as I use the ring of lightning to fling myself onto the deck of the Golden Venture and indicate that it is safe to come close, pick us up, and take us back to Thalos... Agrikk fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Nov 15, 2020 |
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Nov 9, 2020 08:32
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Railing Kill posted:This is great. These abrupt exits happen all the time due t schedules/real life stuff, so It's good to see a way to retcon one in a creative way. It reminds me of how they went back in TNG and gave Tasha Yar a proper send-off after originally having her die feebly to a puddle of black goo. That's almost harsh, mate. Ouch. That said, why did they kill Tasha in TNG like that? I assumed that it was a contract dispute or offscreen petty drama, but I never found out.
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Nov 9, 2020 15:53
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JustJeff88 posted:That's almost harsh, mate. Ouch. tl;dr Denise Crosby felt the role was really monotonous but came back to do the weird time fuckery plots because they asked her to.
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Nov 9, 2020 18:35
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Huh, I thought she did Eliminators after TNG. Looks like her filmography is a lot more extensive than I gave her credit for too.
Bieeanshee fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Nov 9, 2020 |
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Nov 9, 2020 21:02
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JustJeff88 posted:That's almost harsh, mate. Ouch. She chose to leave. I believe it was because they weren't doing much with the character and also she wanted to do movies. (To be fair, TNG S1 was pretty awful; no one was getting much characterization.) EDIT: Whoops, didn't refresh before replying.
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Nov 10, 2020 00:58
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sfwarlock posted:She chose to leave. I believe it was because they weren't doing much with the character and also she wanted to do movies. (To be fair, TNG S1 was pretty awful; no one was getting much characterization.) That actually makes sense. I have not watched the series for some years, but I remember season 1 being really rough compared to all that came after. My favourite ST serieses are DS9 and Voyager, the latter in spite of Chakotay.
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Nov 10, 2020 16:21
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I was trying to read this thread all the way through before submitting this story, but this thread is impossibly long and I'm impatient. This happened about a year ago, but the group still brings it up frequently. Last January, someone posted on a local FB gaming group that they were going to be starting a weekly 5e game, and did an open call for players. The game was originally intended to be a drop in game with a rotating cast of players coming and going at their will, so the DM tried to cast a wide net by posting the call to a few different groups he was a part of. Maybe too wide, it turns out. So the night of the first session comes, and I'm a little nervous because I only know one other person at the table (and if this thread shows anything, it's how unpredictable a table of randoms can be). But I get there fashionably on time and have a nice chat with the DM before everyone shows up- he's a nice enough guy, and like me, works in the wine industry, so there was plenty of drink around to help calm my nerves. I ask how many players are coming and he just sort of shrugged: "I'm not really sure, it depends on who actually follows through on their posts". Turns out a lot of people followed through, and before long there were 6 players, including me. But the DM says we're waiting on at least two more, who are coming from a town at least a 90 minute drive away. So everyone continues to hang out, drinking wine, chatting about our character builds and getting to know each other while we wait for the last two. Then a 50 year old guy shows up, Toby (obv not a real name) and as he walks into the room he loudly announces "Now I'm not the bard of the group but I do have a story to tell" and he proceeds to tell us the most insane tale of how he got to the game that evening. Basically: -He and an unnamed female acquaintance left their town (90 minutes away from the game at least) and drove in the acquaintance's car to the DM's house. -Halfway there (about 40 minutes out) the two of them stop at a Popeye's chicken. In the restaurant they have some kind of argument which culminates in her saying she doesn't feel safe with Toby. -He then says "If you don't feel safe with me, you can just leave me here and I'll make my own way to the game". She does so. -He takes a Uber the last 20+ miles to the DMs house. The whole time he's telling this story, everyone else around the table is making awkward eye contact as if to ask "Is this guy for real?" because the story has an absolutely staggering number of red flags in it. But whatever, he's here, so let's finally start the game. The game itself goes well, with the ludicrous party of 7 taking on some orcs and helping a small town. It should be pointed out here that Toby was the only player who had written a backstory at this point, and it was 3 pages long for his Human Polearm Fighter. He's definitely taking the game more seriously than the rest of the table (and strangely, he's the only guy not drinking) but we're getting along enough. Then at 10:30 the game breaks for the evening, with all of telling the DM we had a terrific time and can't wait for the continuation. But Toby has to wait for an Uber back home. And it's late in a rural county, so it takes a little while. The rest of us leave by 11, but Toby is there until 2:30 in the morning, hanging out at the DM's house and "helpfully" critiquing his DMing style, until an Uber driver takes his request (for those of you keeping score at home this is probably 60-70 miles of Uber rides for the game round-trip). Ultimately the DM's wife didn't feel comfortable with him at all and the DM "disinvited" him from the game- but until as recently as July he was still getting FB messages from Toby, asking how the game was and if there was an open seat still available. That game has now met every week for the last year with almost the same group, and we all still often talk about that first night and the crazy rando who spent hundreds of dollars on rideshares to play a boring character in one session.
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Nov 11, 2020 06:33
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Our second session in Innistrad and we've managed to avoid Blackscale being run out of town, or worse, by telling an extremely long and winding story about how he lost a bet with a bog witch and got hexed. The Kor has been called a vampire, failed to logic with ignorant peasants that he's not. Oh and the treefolk Druid has summoned a swarm of pixies to unleash non-violent mayhem on the town. They can each cast Confusion, Fly, Sleep, Entangle and Polymorph. We are no longer planning to remain much longer.
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Nov 11, 2020 11:13
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JustJeff88 posted:That's almost harsh, mate. Ouch. ??? It wasn't meant to be harsh. I didn't make the comparison to be snarky. I meant it as an abrupt exit for a character that was later 'improved upon.  Lazy like a Fox posted:I was trying to read this thread all the way through before submitting this story, but this thread is impossibly long and I'm impatient.  I love the in-game narratives in this thread, but the cat piss stories like this are the secret sauce.
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Nov 11, 2020 20:03
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According to my DM, I am not allowed to refer to hobbits as “big footy bitches.”
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Nov 11, 2020 21:18
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CobiWann posted:According to my DM, I am not allowed to refer to hobbits as “big footy bitches.” Well not without getting to know them first at least, that's very disrespectful
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Nov 11, 2020 21:52
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I may have posted this story in this thread before, but years ago I was part of a 4e group that a friend and I found on MeetUp. We had about 4-5 regular players including myself, my friend, and the DM, so we were all pretty familiar with each other. We would also regularly have new people join games, usually for not too long. This week we had a new guy come for the game who was your typical skinny bespectacled nerdy type, he was maybe late teens/early 20's. Right away we all kinda picked up something was off with this kid; he muttered a lot, would get very emotional with every good roll, and fall into an exasperated despair on bad rolls. When he went to the restroom we could hear him muttering and talking to himself. At the end of this dungeon we found ourselves on a platform surrounded by a moat, with fishmen and water monsters coming up from the water to surround us. Now 4e fights have a reputation for becoming slogs, but this fight was awful and was taking forever. Every time we dropped a fishman, another would come up from the water. We were all getting frustrated, and I was wondering what was up with all this. Normally our DM was really good about encounter length, and we all kinda joked about him being cranky from cigarette withdrawal (he was in the process of quitting cold turkey). Well if we were getting frustrated, you can imagine how the new guy was dealing with all this. His bemoaning and exasperation would increase at every new enemy until finally he went to the bathroom one more time, then announced he wasn't feeling well and would have to leave. Our DM said it was probably a good idea if he wasn't feeling well. The new guy finally leaves and I turn to the DM and ask him what the hell just happened. He said he pegged the kid as having unmedicated ADHD, so he purposely put him into a frustrating situation so he would get sick and bail. He apologized to us all for the long fight.
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Nov 11, 2020 22:23
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Railing Kill posted:I love the in-game narratives in this thread, but the cat piss stories like this are the secret sauce. Totally this. I'm not sure why I'm drawn to the catpiss stories like a moth to a flame, but there it is. Thinking about catpiss stories, I'm reminded of a session we had once upon a time. We were moving through the Temple of Elemental Evil super module and we were all in high school back in the day. Right around this time we started to focus on the roleplaying aspect rather than the "I have the biggest plus" and the characters started gelling really will, creating super elaborate backstories and motives and whatnot. It was good fun and was a break from the dungeon crawl of ToEE, So one of us decided to bring a friend into the group and the GM said he should roll up a character at the average level of the group. This is AD&D so the character he rolls up is a GOTH GRIMDARK SINISTER ASSASSIN tryhard who immediately established his alignment as chaotic stupid by loving with all of our contacts in Hommlet, nurtured over months of real time play. During one encounter assassin-boy decided to go wander around back while we were talking to $knowledgeable_farmer_wise_in_lore and slaughter all of the cows "because they're good XP." Another time while we were resting in an inn he picked up a little child that ran up to him , I think it was the inkeep's daughter, and "I throw her into the fire. Because I'm cerazy!" We mollify everyone and expend healing stuff to save the child and quickly leave Hommlet for the Temple. At this point we are all thoroughly sick of friend's bullshit. We crawl through the dungeons and we reach the part of the module where we are travelling though elemental nodes (basically mini elemental planes) and the hook there is that every player takes small but incessant damage while exposed to the elements. We'd been using a system where we'd travel until we were low on heal spells, then throw up a Daern's instant fortress to heal ourselves. We stop, set up the tower, and the Paladin player says, "I cast detect evil on our group." The assassin radiates evil. Assassin: "What the gently caress? Why are you doing that?" Paladin: "I'm checking for evil within our group. When we are in the Temple I do this to make sure doppelgangers don't cause trouble." DM "Huh...?" Mage: "That's right! He totally does. Every night!" Paladin: "So I will not travel with evil people so out you go!" and proceeds to manhandle the assassin out the front door of the tower into the elements while the rest of the PCs watch in amusement.  We waited 2-3 days or so, then folded up the tower and proceeded with the mission, stepping over the assassin's corpse on the way out. Assassin's player never played with us again. GM decided to retcon all the damage the assassin inflicted in Hommlet, too. Agrikk fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Nov 11, 2020 |
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Nov 11, 2020 22:24
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Super Waffle posted:The new guy finally leaves and I turn to the DM and ask him what the hell just happened. He said he pegged the kid as having unmedicated ADHD, so he purposely put him into a frustrating situation so he would get sick and bail. He apologized to us all for the long fight. That's kind of hosed. Like, I get it, but drat, dude, use your words like a grown up and talk it out.
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Nov 11, 2020 22:25
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:That's kind of hosed. Like, I get it, but drat, dude, use your words like a grown up and talk it out. Oh, absolutely. I've never felt particularly good about those events but it was done before we knew what was going on.
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Nov 11, 2020 22:27
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Super Waffle posted:The new guy finally leaves and I turn to the DM and ask him what the hell just happened. He said he pegged the kid as having unmedicated ADHD, so he purposely put him into a frustrating situation so he would get sick and bail. He apologized to us all for the long fight. In lighter stories wherein I inflict my terrible sense of humor on my players, last session they needed to get a ship to Aerenal and met a totally-not-pirate named John Starling and paid and bargained for passage on his ship, the Blue Oyster. That got a loud "oh god dammit!"
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Nov 11, 2020 22:30
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hey, read the side of the screen facing you, it says i'm a dungeon-master, not a welcoming-place-of-relaxation-master
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Nov 11, 2020 22:31
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i am in a dundom relationship with all of my other players, they come to me to be punished
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Nov 11, 2020 22:33
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Help me Reddit all my players have unionized.
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Nov 11, 2020 23:38
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Yawgmoth posted:In lighter stories wherein I inflict my terrible sense of humor on my players, last session they needed to get a ship to Aerenal and met a totally-not-pirate named John Starling and paid and bargained for passage on his ship, the Blue Oyster. That got a loud "oh god dammit!" Help a fella out? John Starling was a bluegrass musician, and of course Blue Oyster Cult, but I am failing to see the groan-worthy connection.
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Nov 12, 2020 02:35
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Help a fella out? John Starling was a bluegrass musician, and of course Blue Oyster Cult, but I am failing to see the groan-worthy connection. Edit: I had no idea John Starling was an actual person because I don't listen to bluegrass, nor does anyone I know. The blue oyster cult connection was double perfect because the PCs had just finished dismantling a daelkyr cult. Yawgmoth fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Nov 12, 2020 |
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Nov 12, 2020 02:55
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Yawgmoth posted:Jack is a common nickname for John. Starlings and Sparrows are both common passerine birds. Oysters make pearls. I trust you can make the connection from there. Thank'ee! I was way off on the wrong track.
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Nov 12, 2020 03:14
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Today the Double Cross heroes confronted a dread hive of wasp-like fairy cops, before discovering the realm of their adversary was like a cruising 1950s teen movie and facing a fairy lord resplendent in his golden mail and oaken spear, behind the wheel of his '69 convertible of legend after he pontificated at them while being photographed shirtless by his fawning court. I also actually forgot their gravity wizard had a 'direct an AoE to only hit me' spell and that outright stopped said fairy lord's ultimate attack from kicking their asses, because Double Cross is the kind of game that simulates anime fights well enough to include actual mechanically supported NANI!? moments where someone pulls their own bullshit to shut down someone else's bullshit.
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Nov 12, 2020 04:08
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Night10194 posted:facing a fairy lord resplendent in his golden mail and oaken spear, behind the wheel of his '69 convertible of legend after he pontificated at them while being photographed shirtless by his fawning court.
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Nov 12, 2020 05:29
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Night10194 posted:Today the Double Cross heroes confronted a dread hive of wasp-like fairy cops, before discovering the realm of their adversary was like a cruising 1950s teen movie and facing a fairy lord resplendent in his golden mail and oaken spear, behind the wheel of his '69 convertible of legend after he pontificated at them while being photographed shirtless by his fawning court. Also my nemesis, a star wizard/stuffy British aristocrat, was in the car, having gotten his rear end kicked by said fairy lord. It was the best thing to happen to Alex all week. They are definitely selling those polaroids to the Sun.
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Nov 12, 2020 06:16
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Railing Kill posted:
That game has spawned a lot of great stories, but I don't lie when I say that one is somehow my favorite. Here's an in-game story that just happened: Two of our players, S & J, are married, and have been playing RPGs together for several years. So at that first session they were the only two characters that had a linked backstory- Eucalip the gnome Bard and Immer the elven Barbarian had been traveling together for some time before the rest of the party had met, and they would find fun times in RP to bring it up. But our game has a lot of players and definitely focuses on set-piece combat more than RP, so they rarely got a lot of time to discuss it. But when they did, it was adorable and everyone loved it. Over the course of the campaign, the party develops a lot of "ticks" and inside jokes, including J, who played Immer, saying "I would like to rage" in a very polite voice every time he used his defining class feature. Fastforward almost a year, and the DM gives some of the players a chance to roll new characters if they're getting bored. Three of us take him up on the offer, including J, who wanted to switch over to a monk. S doesn't say much about the choice, except to occasionally complain in a joking manner that half her backstory is now irrelevant. Then this past week happens. In an earlier session, Eucalip had picked up a Scimitar of Speed, which has turned her normally support-focused bard into a little bit of a damage dealer and a surprising force in combat, and many jokes were made about her being the new DPS face of the party. Then, in a battle against some especially lovely ghosts, Eucalip takes some damage. A lot of damage. But she doesn't go down. We're all relieved (there have been several combats where we've all taken turns throwing ourselves in front of bigger enemies to save the adorable gnomish bard). On her turn, S describes her actions thusly: "Eucalip gets a fire in her eyes, then dips a finger into the blood running from her arm and makes a streak under each of her eyes. I would like to rage please" and reveals that she had taken a level in Barbarian at her last level up and had kept the secret from the rest of us for two weeks so that she could unveil it at the right moment. The entire room exploded into shocked laughter, and Eucalip, the new Bard-barian, cut down our enemies and took her rightful place as the party's damage dealer.
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Nov 12, 2020 08:10
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Our 5e group had a heist session where we were supposed to plant a ledger that proved someone was a slaver in their mansion, but misunderstandings on time led to the plant happening before the mark had actually left his house, meaning he could still discover it. A Sending spell to our contact led us to an urgent need to ensure that the mark did not have an opportunity to discover the ledger, so our druid decided she would reach out to her contact at the local council to call an emergency meeting that would lead to the mark being called away from his house to this meeting. During the high stakes conversation, our druid answered that the meeting not only needed to include the lower council that the mark was part of, but also needed to include the higher council. In our world, the Elves are at war with a Dragonborn nation that wants to gather all magical artifacts and destroy them. We are all currently in the largest Human civilization on the continent that has not yet made a decision on whether or not to get involved in the war one way or another. With the scene thus set, we all gathered around to best help our collogue. She cast "enhance ability: Charisma" on herself, and I, as the party cleric, cast Guidance on her every chance he got. As we were in the midst of a COVID outbreak in Iowa, we were operating remotely, with a Zoom session for conversation, and a roll20 for battlemaps. As we progressed through the council meeting, our druid went into her speech to the council by sharing a video over Zoom to the rest of the party. The video was Greta Thunberg's speech to the UN, but with our druid speaking over it, talking about why the Humans should go to war in support of the Elves, and also recycle. She proceeds to roll extremely well for the entirety of the speech, and at the conclusion, the Human metropolis of the Lovelands decides to support the Elves in the battle against the Dragonborn. That's the story of how the Human metropolis has decided to embrace our Druid's motto of "reduce, reuse, recycle". Ginger Beer Belly fucked around with this message at 11:09 on Nov 12, 2020 |
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Nov 12, 2020 11:07
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Yawgmoth posted:this is the most Utena thing I have ever heard in a game. We had "Akio car" queued up and everything. Night's so good at OH NO moments, and we all collectively went OH NO when he described our current adversary's realm as basically every single 1950 teen movie ever.
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Nov 12, 2020 13:27
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Super Waffle posted:The new guy finally leaves and I turn to the DM and ask him what the hell just happened. He said he pegged the kid as having unmedicated ADHD, so he purposely put him into a frustrating situation so he would get sick and bail. He apologized to us all for the long fight. As someone with some of those symptoms, your DM is a loving rear end in a top hat. Just wanted to say that.
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Nov 12, 2020 14:53
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