the_steve posted:

Syrian Lannister posted:

CobiWann posted:

hyphz posted:

On the easy difficulty levels, PCs get a hidden bonus to hit that escalates with each consecutive miss, and aliens get a hidden penalty that escalated with each consecutive hit.

Chaos Reborn, on the other hand, used exact percentages and died horribly due to “how can two units with a 75% chance to hit both miss?” “Well, 1 in 16 times..” “Ok, but what am I supposed to do in that situation then, not attack?”

Agrikk posted:

But wait, what happened to that other campaign that was a followup to the Third Chaos Incursion?

CobiWann posted:

I experienced a general sense of burnout and some emotional issues that prevented me from doing proper recaps, then COVID hit and all our games moved online. I'm in a better place now so I feel like I can start writing again.

Long story short, our party stopped an other-planarly doppelganger of our world's Evil Emperor from pulling a Crisis of Infinite Tanicuses.

CobiWann posted:

The Big Bad of the campaign was named Aggedon Thrain, who called himself the High King of Korvis, which is the Lawful Evil empire on Tanicus. Problem is, there's already a High King of Korvis, he's ruled for 500+ years, and he kills all his children because a prophecy said one of his children would rise up and overthrow him. On Tanicus proper, the Third Incursion of Kaos caused all kinds of holes to get ripped open between Tanicus and other realms/planes, such as Sigil and, more importantly, the Elemental Planes. Thrain was going around locking the biggest tear to each Elemental Plane open and siphoning the power. Problem was, it was causing all the weather to go haywire (as each Elemental Plane is tied to a season) and over time would end up ripping Tanicus apart. Thrain ended up promising our group that if we locked open the final node (Water), he would show us "the truth." He stated "I don't have a choice. The prophecy says you have to lock the node, and I have to show you the truth, and then I have to kill you."

We lock open the final node, and Thrain tears open a portal and tells us to follow him. Way back when, a seer told us "when the portal opens, count to three and then follow." So we did, and ended up in the middle of an armed encampment of rebels against the High King of Korvis - Aggedon Thrain. And two of us (Krowe, my Fighter PC, and Kynwal, the Wizard PC, both nobles) are recognized - Krowe for wearing the symbol of a dead family and Kynwal for being the advisor to the leader of the Resistance who was reported the dead. The leader of the Resistance was named Kaiden Griffinwing, who we knew as the Crown Prince and second-in-line to the throne behind the High Queen. When our Barbarian looks up, she realized there was no stars in the sky. "Yes," Kaiden said. "There haven't been any stars since the Third Incursion of Kaos."

I'm meta-gaming a bit here, because our DM also runs a game during the week that runs concurrent to our campaign. His wife (the Barbarian) plays in it and I've "guest starred" on occasion when he needed a flavorful NPC. Their campaign is focusing on the reappearance of an island in the middle of the ocean that was rumored to be where all life on Tanicus began, as well as home to the first temples to the first generation of gods. At one point while I was guest starring the party found the original temple of Fergus, the craftsman of the gods and creator of the world. One of the walls held a mural of Fergus creating Tanicus, using anvil and forge to blow a glass bubble to form the world...

...but on a shelf behind him were six cracked globes.

Tanicus is the seventh world Fergus created because the other six were flawed in some way, and only Tanicus is "perfect." All the other worlds were sealed away in a god's version of magic jar, never to be found.

The world the party found itself on, Tanikus, is flawed in that a minute is only fifty-seven seconds. So by stepping through three seconds after Thrain, we ended up somewhere else instead of in the place where he planned to kill us.

During our time on Tanikus, we discovered...

1 - Tanicus and Tanikus shared the same timeline until the Third Incursion of Kaos, where Az succeeded in killing all the gods.
2 - Fergus had a "backup plan" in that each god managed to contribute a godspark that was sealed away before they died. Once Kaos was defeated, then the godsparks would be released and new gods/demigods would be created.
3 - Az won, but died in the process. Since a majority of the gods were in Kaeryn during the Incursion, that kingdom was devastated, allowing Korvis to invade and take over the richest lands, leaving a disunited rump kingdom behind.
4 - Thrain took advantage of "no gods, no prophecies" to kill the High King and take over.
5 - Thrain knew if the gods came back, Kaeryn would rebel against him. So he took advantage of the tears/portals in Tanikus to find another world - Tanicus. And he invited three evil demigods to come to Tanikus, where they formed a triumvirate called "The Asylum of Insanity" to provide clerical powers to the Korvins. In return, they were the only demigods in the world, which made them the only gods in the world. Better to reign in hell...
6 - Thrain used the energies provided by the evil demigods to power a machine that blocked Fergus' failsafe from activating. Over time however, there wasn't enough energy to keep it from activating and finding new gods - who wouldn't take kindly to trespasser gods.
7 - So he's draining energy from Tanicus to power his machine, and when Tanicus blows up, he'll move on to Taniquis. And Tannicuss. And so on, until there's none left.
8 - Our counterparts in Tanikus found this out and tried to stop him. They died, but in the process we killed Thrain's right-hand, Melancholia. That hosed up the prophecy, since Melancholia was supposed to live. So Thrain did some timey-wimey bullshit and plucked Melancholia from Tanicus as a child, raised her to be his right-hand, and this time figured "we kill the PC's, you live, and everything's fine."

We confront Thrain in the final battle, kill him, Melancholia escapes (she died in the epilogue trying to get revenge on Krowe for murdering her mentor), and destroy the machine. That happens, and Io, the Mother of the Gods for all seven versions of the world shows up to activate Fergus' failsafe, Tanikus has gods and demigods now, she kicks the three evil demigods back to Tanicus, seals off Tanikus after sending the PC's home, and there you go.

Whybird posted:

I've often thought the best way to make probabilities feel fairer is instead of dice, to give players a hand of cards (that they can look at in between draws). Instead of rolling, they blindly draw a card and discard it from their hand, and when they've discarded all of them they pick their hand back up again.

CobiWann posted:

According to my DM, our Ravenloft campaign will not take us to Margaritaville.

Nor Pinacoladaburg.

BabyFur Denny posted:

Yeah RIP that group

CobiWann posted:

"Kids, let me tell you about how I met your DM."

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Bob Saget

CobiWann posted:

Oh man, that was completely unintentional.

CobiWann posted:

According to my DM, our Ravenloft campaign will not take us to Margaritaville.

Nor Pinacoladaburg.

CobiWann posted:

According to my DM, our Ravenloft campaign will not take us to Margaritaville.

wiegieman posted:

A brilliant deflection -- but don't be fooled. It's a lesser known but critical part of the Ravenloft canon.

wiegieman posted:

A brilliant deflection -- but don't be fooled. It's a lesser known but critical part of the Ravenloft canon.

CobiWann posted:

Some people say that Tatyana's to blame, but I know, it's all that drat Strahd's fault.

thecluckmeme posted:

This plays really well with the meme of "Strahd but with any other accent"

CobiWann posted:

According to my DM, our Ravenloft campaign will not take us to Margaritaville.

Nor Pinacoladaburg.

wiegieman posted:

A brilliant deflection -- but don't be fooled. It's a lesser known but critical part of the Ravenloft canon.

CobiWann posted:

According to my DM, my new character's long-term goal can't be to finally figure out what we're all supposed to be turning down for.

Reference - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMUDVMiITOU

Ichabod Sexbeast posted:

Is there an in-setting deity called Wat?

JustJeff88 posted:

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. When talking about the pantheon, Who's on first.

Captain Walker posted:

Warlock When? Why's he care about the gods all of a sudden?

CobiWann posted:

There is. Nobody's in right field.