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Fivemarks posted:Man, it sounds like all these campaign settings made by creepy, horny, racist, or badly religious white dudes in the 70's and 80's all suck rear end. Hey now. Hey. That's uncalled for. It happened through the 90's too.
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Mar 11, 2023 02:07
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According to my DM, now, that Magic Missile did not get Shielded, you heard it hit the Warforged, and I... Persuasion check... was never here.
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Mar 11, 2023 02:16
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Okay, now that one I feel requires some elaboration.
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Mar 11, 2023 02:46
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Cooked Auto posted:Okay, now that one I feel requires some elaboration.  The Persuasion check is to make you think the caster was never there, like a modern magician.
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Mar 11, 2023 05:33
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It's a Hunt for Red October reference
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Mar 11, 2023 06:12
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Ah, been a while since I saw that one.
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Mar 11, 2023 11:24
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The other things that happened in my Planescape game were: After we reported the necromancers who had driven out the Wererats to the Dustmen, they later asked us to deal with them. We reported them to the Dustmen because normally necromancy can raise a couple of zombies at a time, being able to maintain 100+ undead suggested that either the necromancers were very powerful or that they had a powerful artifact allowing them to do this. Either scenario was above our level 5 pay-grade and the Dustmen generally disprove of "illegal necromancy" so we hoped they'd intervene. All their agents were busy it turned out and while it was a serious problem, it wasn't quite serious enough to pull those agents off their current assignments for it. So we were given a lot of negotiating room to facilitate this for the Dustmen. They would provide a spell to mask us from most unintelligent undead to slip closer to the necromancers but it probably wouldn't work on intelligent undead and their scrying had revealed a number of those were in the horde. While we didn't have the knowledge to know exactly what we were dealing with, we did point out that we probably needed to get stronger to handle the job. Due to the leeway on the contract we were given a 6 month period to complete it, although if we failed and had made genuine efforts to complete it in a timely manner we would not be penalised. We negotiated for a large sum of gold, a magic item for the barbarian and access to spells to scribe for my wizard and the warlock (who could scribe rituals) as long as the Dustmen actually had spellcasters who knew the spells. The current plan is to attempt this at maybe level 6 or 7. At level 6 our druid's wildshape forms natural weapons will count as magical for bypassing damage resistance which could be a serious issue fighting some particularly pernicious forms of undead. There was also the continuing saga of Jerrid the merchant. He was the sod we had been paid to evict the first night in Sigil because he refused to pay his overdue board at the boarding house we stayed at and was threatening the owner with his guard. Due to some shenanigans with illusions and sleep, he had actually only seen the bard in our party and kept sending assassins to kill him in revenge. The first one had been a gang of hired thugs, the second a professional assassin who had used sleeping gas to try and remove bystanders from interfering (and our party by extension). While we wanted revenge at this point we also didn't want to kill him (partly because as players we wanted to avoid being murder hobos). So we decided to ruin his life by using Suggestion to influence him to steal from his boss. Jerrid worked at a jeweler and his master was a Gith who had...something monstrous as a bodyguard. We haven't seen what the bodyguard is under its cloak but it's big, has clawed feet and a tail so a guess is some kind of demon or devil. Suggestion wears off when the target completes the compulsion, so the bard could tell that Jerrid had fallen for the spell almost straight away. The first time we suggested he steal something small that wouldn't be noticed. Then a few days later we went back and hiding again tempted Jerrid, this time to steal something more valuable. He'd earned it after all. Then once the bard felt the spell end we hired someone to send an anonymous message to his boss to tell him someone had stolen him. Jerrid got caught, beaten up badly and kicked out of the store. The next time we were in Sigil a few days later we checked in. There had been a spate of burglaries over the city and while we doubted Jerrid was competent enough to become a catburglar it did remind us to check in on him. The store he had been fired from had broken windows, presumably from a break in. There were wanted notices for Jerrid from his boss and Jerrid's house was deserted and had been ransacked. Then the third assassin came for the party, this time a shadow demon that was difficult to deal with due to its incorporeal nature and its strategy of attacking at nighttime when there were many shadows for it to blend and hide in. Enough was enough, we had spared Jerrid's life and although we were partly responsible for subsequently ruining it he also should have had no idea that we had been involved. The man was just incredibly petty and still held a grudge over his eviction. My wizard apprentice was roped into making a number of pamphlets to spread, offering a small reward for information about Jerrid and a few days later we got a hit. Jerrid was staying in an inn somewhere else in Sigil. The party went over there to deal with him. The bard used illusions to disguise himself and snuck upstairs. The druid used stealth and the barbarian just stayed downstairs to distract the two bruisers Jerrid had watching out for his enemies. My wizard made himself and the warlock invisible and we went upstairs, forming a plan with the group to ambush Jerrid that involved the druid waiting outside in case Jerrid tried to escape out the window. As dissonant whispers does not require line of sight to the target and my weasel familiar had scouted out the room and location Jerrid was in, the bard used the spell to cause Jerrid to take a lot of psychic damage and leap out of the window from the second floor. Right into the druid who turned into a tiger, pounced on the merchant and knocked him out. We convinced the assassin Jerrid had hired to bail as Jerrid was almost dead, we outnumbered her and the man was just an rear end in a top hat. After the bruisers were dealt with we took the unconscious merchant back to our encampment in Tradegate. Because my wizard might one day make some dangerous experiments that needed to be contained, the basement of his tower had a small dungeon with a cell. There weren't any shackles on the wall nor anything remotely like torture equipment, it was just a place to put something unruly if it needed it. Leaving Jerrid in there, the bard disguised himself to interrogate the man about his plans and whether he had more contracts out on us. While Jerrid didn't actually really have anything useful to tell us, the bard did get to have a fun time playing mind games with him. Until we found out about Jerrid's stash. We'd already found the small key on Jerrid's person, and the lockbox he'd hidden in his room. Opening the lockbox revealed 19 soul gems and an empty slot that presumably belonged to the soul gem the second assassin had been paid with and we'd found. Soul gems are pretty similar to the Elder Scrolls idea, magic gems that contain the trapped soul of a living creature. Evil creatures liked to use soul gems with the trapped souls of mortals as a currency and the party generally found them pretty abhorrent. Then Jerrid revealed that one of the soul gems contained the soul of a solar. If you're unfamiliar with DnD cosmology, solars are extremely powerful angels. They serve directly under gods and are more powerful than pit fiends or balors, as the respective hierarchies of good and evil planes are asymmetrical. In Judeochristian terms this was like having a gem that contained the soul of an Archangel like Michael or Gabriel. This was pretty scary both that Jerrid's boss had managed to get a hold of something like that before Jerrid had stolen it, and that if we got caught with this by anyone good aligned we'd find ourselves with extremely high bounties. We needed to try and get this soul gem back to an angel and explain what had happened, the challenge being that we needed a chance to explain ourselves as there was a likely chance they'd simply kill us before we had a chance to speak. The bard and I tried the merchant we had met on the road to Tir Na Nog, as the Master Trader was a living portal to Bytopia, a heaven of sorts and we assumed the trader would be good aligned as well. This turned out not to be the case and my wizard nearly got stranded in Bytopia alone with the soul gem before he got sent back by repudiating the deal he had made with the Master Trader. With this option a dead end the party decided that our safest option next was to find where good aligned creatures hung out in Sigil and hope we could get an intermediary. Thus we found ourselves in Little Arcadia, a bar patronised by low ranking angels, Aasimar and archons (kind of like the angel equivalent of imps and lesser demons). While usually fairly composed and charismatic the bard in a surprising change from normal form blurted out in the bar we had the gem of a solar, we wanted to give it back and that we were afraid of dying in a single breath. Naturally the bar went silent as every eye turned on us and someone ran upstairs to get someone important. The lesser angel that came down to talk to us was displeased we had soul gems even before the matter of the solar's soul was brought into the equation but he at least heard us out and did not simply kill us. The angel used magic to check we weren't evil or disguised, and then more magic to talk with his divine patron about what to do. After the matter had been sent up the chain and the answer back to the angel, they instructed to take the soul gem to Mt Celestia, the plane that is the most Judeochristian lawful good heaven in DnD. The implication of course being that it should be done immediately. And that was where our last session ended. While out of character we know our characters will be safe enough to enter, in character we are all very terrified of the possibility of a flaming sword decapitating all of us the moment we step foot into the plane. Fun times! (Edit: wow I did not realise how  this post was)
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Mar 11, 2023 13:02
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quote:the respective hierarchies of good and evil planes are asymmetrical This piqued my interest - could you elaborate? I know a fair amount about D&D cosmology, but I never heard of this. I would assume that evil, especially lawful evil, planar hierarchies are the most top-heavy as Evil is all about the accumulation of power.
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Mar 11, 2023 18:25
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HiKaizer, I'm loving your updates - the Jerrid plot line in particular has been really fun to see develop!
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Mar 11, 2023 19:12
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JustJeff88 posted:This piqued my interest - could you elaborate? I know a fair amount about D&D cosmology, but I never heard of this. I would assume that evil, especially lawful evil, planar hierarchies are the most top-heavy as Evil is all about the accumulation of power. Yeah, but evil's tricky. You need powerful creatures to be your top enforcers and your consiglieres and so on, right? But too much power, and they start looking to fill your chair, I mean, even more than they do already. Notionally, good doesn't have as much of a worry about beings bumping off their bosses and taking over their positions as evil does.
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Mar 11, 2023 22:35
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The Planes of Evil have more numbers than the planes of good as well. The Devil’s are constantly recruiting, and the Demons constantly spawn from the Abyss. The Yugoloths/Daemons are actually true breeding unlike pretty much all other planer creatures.
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Mar 12, 2023 00:03
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JustJeff88 posted:This piqued my interest - could you elaborate? I know a fair amount about D&D cosmology, but I never heard of this. I would assume that evil, especially lawful evil, planar hierarchies are the most top-heavy as Evil is all about the accumulation of power. I might be confusing you a little bit potentially. What I really meant is that the forces of Chaotic Evil and Lawful Evil have forces that sort of are roughly equivalent in average strength. Balors are roughly as powerful as Pit Fiends. Imps are roughly as powerful as Quasits. At least in the fiction, mechanically this isn't always the case. You can't pair lawful good angels to lawful evil devils in the same way though. There's no demon or devil opposite number to a solar. Demon Princes and Dukes of Hell are more powerful than a Solar because they can grant spells, while Balors and Pit Fiends are weaker. This happens all through the hierarchy of good creatures of which generally there are less of compared to evil. Probably because of the expectation that players would be less inclined to fight good beings than evil so there didn't need to be as wide a folio of good aligned foes to fight. When we were in the angel bar, Little Arcadia, it was actually a Lantern Archon that ran upstairs to get the angel. There were just lamps on the wall and then one of them had the light from it fly out and then go upstairs. Also I forgot to mention the side plot of us convincing the druid to not only set aside space in her greenhouse to grow some opium. In Planescape there are far worse drugs than opium, things that will seriously gently caress with your soul or general essence for example. And milk of the poppy is a classic medieval pain relief so it was just a fun silly idea to make a little money selling some as medicine or an alchemy ingredient. Then the bard's player discovered some magic crafting rules and now we're looking at using druid magic to make some really potent opium.
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Mar 12, 2023 04:25
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HiKaizer posted:I might be confusing you a little bit potentially. What I really meant is that the forces of Chaotic Evil and Lawful Evil have forces that sort of are roughly equivalent in average strength. Balors are roughly as powerful as Pit Fiends. Imps are roughly as powerful as Quasits. At least in the fiction, mechanically this isn't always the case. You can't pair lawful good angels to lawful evil devils in the same way though. There's no demon or devil opposite number to a solar. Demon Princes and Dukes of Hell are more powerful than a Solar because they can grant spells, while Balors and Pit Fiends are weaker. This happens all through the hierarchy of good creatures of which generally there are less of compared to evil. Probably because of the expectation that players would be less inclined to fight good beings than evil so there didn't need to be as wide a folio of good aligned foes to fight. I think that I understand. There are of course good deities and evil ones of roughly equal power, while Demon Princes and Dukes are quasi-divine beings that can grant spells - this puts them more in the category of a divinity, however. For non-divines, though, a solar is a cut above any Pit Fiend or Baalor. Are there any quasi-divine good beings, or even neutral ones? I knew that the princes of Hell could grant spells and so on, but I can't think of a non-evil equivalent that isn't at least a demigod.
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Mar 12, 2023 16:05
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3.5 Book of Exalted Deeds has a section on celestial paragons, which says “Unlike the rulers of the Lower Planes, the mighty celestials that govern the Upper Planes do not desire worship. Their purpose, they protest, is to encourage goodness and point mortals toward the deities of good. They do not tolerate cults organized in their names and have no ability to grant spells directly to mortals.” I never played 2e, but didn’t Dark Sun have something with the sorcerer-kings granting spells to their followers?
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Mar 12, 2023 16:21
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I think eberron has "radiant idols", which are fallen angels who decided to get worshipped, can grant spells and grow increasingly fanatical as they get more and more worshippers
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Mar 12, 2023 19:31
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And at least one of them is a Rakshasa in disguise by default I assume.
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Mar 12, 2023 19:42
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Golden Bee posted:Don’t ask me, I'm Stuffed! Race for the Electric Orb! Simon let the officer steal the wrong address. A quick call to the Sheinhert plumbing company and SS we weren’t leaving the Bronx… Devika, Lord Simon, Aldous the Butler, and newcomer Whistlin’ Inquo, Atlantean Prince turned hobo, were all commissioned by Rockefeller for a huge contest. They competed against a detachment of Nazis and the East London Adventure Society to get to the rainforest of Brazil, conquer a temple, and get an artifact that could power an entire city! Through a mixture of sabotage, bribery, good burglary skills, and dropping cash, the party stayed in the lead almost the entire time. But it turns out their biggest competition was each other! The orb was an Atlantean artifact. The thieves wanted to take it, the butler wanted to retrieve it to earn the favor of his former employer… But the charismatic Atlantean made an amazing, literally epic (+8) speech. Even the ne’er-do-wells had to admit defeat as the artifact made its way back to its rightful home beneath the waves. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Apr 30, 2024 |
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Mar 13, 2023 01:28
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Cooked Auto posted:And at least one of them is a Rakshasa in disguise by default I assume. Here is the entry on them.  quote:A radiant idol was an angel that was banished from the celestial realm of Syrania and cast down to the Material Plane. One sin led to their fall: the desire to be worshiped by mortals. Now in the mortal realm, most radiant idols gather cults of devoted followers.
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Mar 13, 2023 01:35
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Was mostly making a joke that at least one adventure seed in the ECS involved one of them disguising themselves as something else from what I can remember.
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Mar 13, 2023 01:43
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Bad gaming experience: So I haven't played D&D for a few years. During an 8am team meeting on Monday at my work, my coworkers and I are discussing hobbies as part of "teambuilding" and I mention I am into board gaming and pen-and-paper roleplaying. I find out my coworker's husband had a group, and I basically got volunteered to join in their campaign. I talked to the husband, who said they play once a week for a couple hours, and have a small group of 3-4 players and they play mostly in person. This is what I'm looking for, so I say I'll join in. I figure they play on the weekend, or Friday, or whatever. On Tuesday around 11am, I get a text saying they play on Tuesdays, and I need to have a level 4 character created by 5pm that day and submitted to the DM for approval, and then at 5:30 I'm supposed to meet up with the DM so he can explain the campaign. The game starts at 6:30. I'm like, OK typical D&D basement dweller group that forgets that people outside their group might have jobs/obligations outside of the game. Whatever, I can deal. I do everything they ask, and show up to my coworker's house straight from work. Turns out, I am the only one "in person" as the rest of the group is playing online with Fantasy Grounds. My coworker's husband is all freaking out at me because I didn't bring a laptop/tablet to play with, a fact I wasn't informed I needed to do, and I end up having to play with his wife's work laptop. Whatever. I'm apparently an idiot because this is just how D&D is played now, it's common knowledge. I get everything set up and finally around 6:15 the DM logs on and basically tells me the backstory. Two of the other players, a warlock and a cleric, are trying to rescue the 3rd player (my coworker's husband) from a prison. The adventure begins! The DM proceeds to roleplay with the warlock and cleric for about 2 hours straight. Since I am not part of the rescue party, and the husband is the person being recued, we have 0 interaction or input. I message the DM directly, asking if I could get introduced as a prisoner or something, and the DM tells me it would disrupt the narrative, he has plans on introducing me. At this point it is approaching 8:30. I'm getting tired, I haven't changed out of my work clothes, anything. Then the adventure starts gettting loving WEIRD. It turns out the prison is run by like, Pinhead from Hellraiser. Literally. Leather-daddy with nails in a grid in his head that can summon meathooks on chains out of the walls to capture his prey. But these meathooks have a special feature: they have the ability to polymorph anyone they hook onto into anything Pinhead desires. One of the PCs gets hit! Apparently, Pinhead wanted the PC to turn into a pregant female halfling that is going to give birth to *my character*. I'm supposed to play a baby that rapidly ages throughout the rest of the adventure. Keep in mind, my DM approved backstory was that I am a 40 year old, wrongfully accused disgraced city guard seeking justice. HOWEVER, while rescuing husband's character, the pregnant halfling died, thereby killing my character. The DM messsages me saying I need to role up a new character. And the other character that just died, well -- that player needs to role up a new character as a prisoner who gets freed and joins the party! Literally the DM stole my idea for how to introduce a new character. But I am still not going to join the party at this point, no! He has other plans for how to introduce me. You see, the DM wants new players to have a memorable exciting introduction, and not something as simple as just "showing up" in the new party. At this point I'm sticking around only just to see where this trainwreck goes. Around 9pm, they manage to rescue the husband's character, who is basically described as Sonic the Hedgehog. 4 hours in and I have done zero roleplaying and I decide at this point to cut it off and head home.
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Mar 15, 2023 15:46
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There's that good ol' catpiss. We've been getting far too comfortable.
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Mar 15, 2023 16:02
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 that's pretty impressively awful
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Mar 15, 2023 18:39
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Did you leaving cause any issues with the coworker? I'm getting flashbacks to that old story where someone got fired over quitting their boss's game.
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Mar 15, 2023 18:42
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MelvinBison posted:Did you leaving cause any issues with the coworker? I'm getting flashbacks to that old story where someone got fired over quitting their boss's game. I mean, this all went down over the past 2 days. So far I haven't even talked with them yet. Will update if anything happens! I currently just plan on saying, if she asks, that I can't commit to anything so involved right now. I just told the group it was getting late.
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Mar 15, 2023 18:54
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Wow, that's... wow.  Hopefully there isn't any fallout for bailing! Sounds like a, uh, peculiar bunch, to be polite
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Mar 16, 2023 01:07
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Reclaimer posted:There's that good ol' catpiss. We've been getting far too comfortable.  Thank you for sharing such a hilariously awful story. Thank you for your service 
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Mar 16, 2023 02:04
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Holy poo poo lol. Thank you for bringing this one back for us.
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Mar 16, 2023 04:02
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The telling you everything last minute was pretty bad even before the creepy started. Like the creepiest thing I have ever featured was a Chain Devil controlling meat hooks, but he was only the Butcher from Diablo level, not polymorphic pregnant halfling that will give birth to you level.
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Mar 16, 2023 08:28
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McGrady posted:Bad gaming experience: If you had survived, you should have argued that the umbilical cord meant you got to add a whip to your starting equipment.
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Mar 16, 2023 22:58
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Sometimes I read stuff like that and I think There's no way they were unironically running something that hosed up. It has to be some sort of petty "I didn't actually want you to be invited and this is my way of getting rid of you" attempt. I mean, I know that people do legitimately run creepy massive red flag poo poo in their games because they're into that poo poo, but surely some of them are just putting on an act to get out of letting someone new into the group that they didn't actually want. Which is still a lovely thing to do, mind, but at least you know you didn't actually need to douse yourself in bleach when you got home.
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Mar 17, 2023 00:47
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About negative experiences in gaming: Serial killers and worse have existed throughout human history. I’ve heard enough of these stories throughout the years and in this thread to know that this stuff happened at least a few of the times people posted about it. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Mar 17, 2023 |
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Mar 17, 2023 07:21
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I've read this whole thread and absorbed it enough that every once in a while I'll have a moment when I'm running a game and I psych myself out a bit, thinking, "this isn't weird, is it?" In hindsight, it never is, but in the moment I can sometimes feel the Fear of the WhizzardTM creep into my confidence as a GM. For example, at the conclusion of a 7th Sea campaign I ran recently, the final conflict was storming an Inquisition prison to rescue a key NPC from their clutches. Now, I didn't linger on any of this, but the inquisition was setting up to torture a confession out of the NPC and then put her to death before the PCs arrived. So this is what was about to happen when the PCs kicked in the door and rapidly perforated every red hood in sight. I didn't linger on any of the potentially salacious details. I even went out of my way to note how the NPC (a fire sorceress) torched the leader of the Inquisition before his men apparently got control of the situation, and even a bit after despite their best efforts. (Cardinal Verdugo now looks like Two Face in our current continuity.) The players wanted a thrilling conclusion, so they got to storm the castle against a ticking clock, but just the inherent creepiness of an inquisition made me question myself for just a minute. But when I read true cat piss stories like the one above, I can reassure myself that, no, just "having antagonist inquisitors in a game" does not sink to the level of "a pregnant female halfling that is going to give birth to *my character*" Again, thank you for your service.
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Mar 17, 2023 21:15
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I recently found myself playing in a rather large Shadowrun chronicle, where the premise was that we were pirates roaming the North American coast from LA to Acapulco, striking against corporations and their overfull cargo ships. This week we came across a scout patrol from Aztechnology (who basically control all of modern-day Mexico and are very rumored to be involved in crazy blood rituals) roughing up a seafaring dragon turtle. They had put huge air bladders underneath it so it couldn't submerge and were drilling into its shell to harvest magic blood. Most of our characters had beef with Aztechnology so stopping this was an easy decision to make. To make a long story short, it was a pretty even match between our guns and magic and theirs, until we got lucky on a few rolls. I was able to use a terror spell on their getaway driver and instead of gunning the boat away he jumped into the water and started to swim off. One of their mages, seeing the tide begin to turn (both figuratively and literally, as we had someone beneath the turtle popping the floats), hopped into the escape craft himself. The gunner on our pirate ship turned him into Swiss cheese, which made the boat go wild ... and then run over the swimming corpo. Unfortunately the goons had managed to stall us long enough that their head wizard could complete his big blood magic extraction spell. This would have been horrible except that a spirit I summoned used the "Accident" power on him. As his big ritual finished he made one last test. Between his bad roll and my spirit's power, it was a critical glitch. Instead of absorbing all of the dragon turtle's blood for whatever nefarious purpose, the spell backfired and now the back of the turtle, as well as our team, was covered in aerosolized Aztechnology viscera. The day was saved, the turtle was happy (or so we think), and we got to deal a pretty big blow against a horrible company doing horrible things. All in all, quite a good deed for a pirate crew normally only interested in treasure.
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Mar 18, 2023 01:08
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Nice! That Shadowrun mission sounds like it was great fun! Perfectly timed+executed "accident" too, drat
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Mar 18, 2023 04:01
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Golden Bee posted:Race for the orb! Put the needle in the groove and nobody gets hurt. So this is the first time I’ve ever run an adventure, certainly a pulp adventure, based on a podcast. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/wickedest-sound/ Summer of ‘35, Jamaica. All returning players: Javid the sniper/photographer, Lord Simon the gentleman thief, stuntwoman Lala Santinella, Aldous Bingen the ever-ready butler, and Florence Zee the night club singer with ties to dark forces. The early part of the adventure was extremely flavorful, with the players stopping a dockside labor riot by jumping a motorcycle right into the middle of it. And the mystery unfolded slowly… a new record that made people try to kill each other. But with all the vinyl copying going on, who actually made the original? After surviving a Dancehall Brawl, the players interviewed local record distributor Marcus Garvey. Yes, the head of the United Negro Improvement Association, who had been receiving records from “a fan” that were given freely and then copied. By everyone. The second half of the adventure was action-packed! The man responsible for the violent tracks was a sugar magnate, Glengol McTavish OBE. The players tried to sneak up on his private island with a tramp steamer… Unfortunately, he was broadcasting the song into the water, which caused a whale to attack! The players barely escaped. Unable to fight back effectively, they fled. Of course, Glengol was ready. The music blared and the household staff rushed the group. Meanwhile, a sniper, Lionel McTavish, took potshots from the attic. The players battled to the house, Aldous sneaking through the servants’ entrance to flank. Lord Simon turned off the music but was assaulted by the Lord of the Manor, who had a claymore. The players were about to turn the tide when they went to the recording studio, one at a time… And Florence, who went first, was mesmerized by the hypnotic equipment! No longer in control, her body reverted to a demonic host. The host managed to trick almost the entire party into leaving the island without defeating Lord McTavish! Only Miss Santinella’s intense jealousy (how dare Florence solve everything!) allowed her to discover the truth, smashing the entire setup with a claymore. The group rescued the staff and returned to the city, joshing and joking. In the hotel room, Florence signed a contract for the return of her body… At even worse terms. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Apr 30, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2023 02:53
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Golden Bee posted:Wickedest Sound! I’m leaving out the best character scenes, because this was a wall-to-wall four-hour session with five great players. But there were some great emotional bits, like Javid being snooty about the aloof butler, threatening to “invoice him for the bullets that save your life” and then doing so. Lord Simon and Lala both fought for the affection of mystic orphan Devika, who spent the session recovering from a tonsillectomy. Simon was growing more and more into the role of surrogate father. But. Lala, apologizing for an incident where she gave two bottles of champagne to the unsupervised orphan in Vegas, was spending tons of money on stuffed animals and presents. Every trip back to the hotel was an exercise in one-upmanship. Simon stayed at Devika’s side, even though it cost him a chance to steal a priceless 1600s tea set. Tie game! When they found the artist who had recorded the hypnotic music, drinking himself into a stupor in an alley, Aldis did his greatest act of butlering… cleaning the man up, getting him fresh clothes and some breath mints, and sending him in a cab back to his wife with an apology note. Just amazing stuff all around. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 00:18 on May 21, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2023 03:02
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In this fortnight's episode of Planescape, the First Annual Waterdeep Book Club went to heaven! (Quick note, I got Gerrid and Yanus mixed up. Yanus is the Merchant, Gerrid is his boss who was a Githyanki dealing in soul gems. I'm also not sure on the spelling of Yanus' name but given it's Planescape and DnD I'm going with the less normal spelling) --- Having been given the platinum token by the deva in Little Arcadia the group rushed home to grab the box of soul gems, now wrapped in a few layers of lead to protect it from detection and scrying. With our package in hand we headed to Excelsior, the gatetown adjacent to Mt Celestia to make our delivery. One of the first things we noticed about Excelsior was that it seemed to have the highest concentration of paladins in the known universe. Naturally most of them were also human (which my dragonborn had opinions on but kept to himself). The paladins were certainly suspicious of our group and the package their detect good and evil couldn't see into, but we had a token from forces they didn't dare to risk displeasing so they begrudgingly let us through and told us where the stairway to heaven was. (Planescape is a 90s setting, some of the references are a little on the nose.) The stairway was inside a tower but despite the tower only looking about 50 meters tall from the outside we climbed for a full kilometer before we properly transited into Mt Celestia and immediately plunged about 2 meters into the Silver Sea. Once we had gotten to shore and my wizard and the warlock had used prestidigitation to wring out and dry the party, we began to move towards ascending the mountain. There were a lot of people all praying and meditating while surrounded by lantern archons, but all of them mostly ignored our group. Despite worrying about immediate (and potentially lethal) reception we were left to continue and ascend the mountain. Although we climbed for many hours before reaching the top of the first layer of the heaven we recovered relatively quickly, the blessings of the realm restoring our life and stamina quickly even at this low level. There was a strange doorway standing in the middle of a clearing with handles on the door which upon opening revealed another clearing on the other side. Our party stepped through and while we began to adjust to the second layer, where our senses were assaulted by a world three times as bright, colourful, vibrant, fragrant, melodious and serene as the layer we had just left we were finally greeted by angels who were expecting us. Quickly realising that they had known we were there and had just made us climb as both a show of their superiority over mortals and also as some kind of test of our dedication and honesty to the task of delivering the soul gem we were told that they were not the ones who would deal with the box and its contents. Fortunately we would not have to continue to climb, and the leading deva gave each member of our group a feather to protect us from simply being obliterated by the layer of Mt Celestia we had to go to. The angel produced a key from its toga (apparently in older editions at least angels wore togas) it unlocked the portal we had just used, connecting it directly to the 5th layer of Mt Celestia, which from the second layer just looked like a blinding world of pure silver light. But with the blessing of the deva we were shielded from much of the influence of that layer and so were able to not only avoid bodily and soul obliteration we were also able to perceive the realm we were in. A city of gold and silver bricks populated by angels and other divine beings, with fountains of healing holy water and only the most beautiful and ephemeral harp music playing all around us. The party was somewhat awed but not impressed, angels were surprisingly ostentatious and gaudy. But we were lead into a large building where a senior angel received us to deal with the box, and this beautiful creature didn't even have the dignity to speak with words, instead speaking with harp notes and the party just understanding what it was saying. Taking the box (but refusing to touch it, instead floating it above its palm) the angel took out the soul gems and released the souls of the 19 mortals who flew off in rainbow lights and the soul of the solar, whose soul was a very bright pure silver light instead. When offered a boon in reward for our task the party first tried to explain how we were stranded in the planes and wondered if the powerful angel might have any insight about what force had afflicted us. It did not but suspected it knew beings who could. Then we mentioned that we had some undead to take on, which the angels could assist with but tested us by asking if we would use the boon of heaven on such a petty thing. My wizard tried to be humble and downplay our involvement which pleased the angel, but the bard then spoke up and started making some more specific suggestions on what the boon might be. Although the angel was slightly annoyed by this as they loved being morally superior and judgemental of mortals the bard had been fairly good until that point about not asking for something so it couldn't exactly fault the group. We received four blessings as a reward for helping free the solar. First was a letter of introduction to someone in Sigil who could maybe help us with our inability to travel to the Prime, or at least set up a two way portal for us so our family could come and visit us. There was a second token which was a crystal with a keyhole in it that would "help us with the portal" once it was established apparently. Thirdly we would be able to ask the deva in Little Arcadia for a blessing to fight the undead when we were ready to deal with the necromancers, and finally for the druid she was given a special seed for some tree or plant we could not recognise. After we were then promptly dismissed we were given the quick exit out of Mt Celestia, a portal to the alley behind the Little Arcadia bar in Sigil. While we were initially annoyed that we had to walk all the way, we then realised that the devas didn't have the power to protect us from being that high in the plane unless the deva was inside of the plane itself where its powers were stronger. (Although they absolutely did make us walk the first layer because they could). With the angels promising to take care of Gerrid that left us with Yanus in our dungeons. Deciding that his usefulness had now expired after asking a few more questions and tricking him into signing a letter to reassign his assassin contracts from us to Gerrid we decided to kill him. This sort of escalated weirdly. My wizard said we should make sure Yanus didn't know we had killed him and had held him prisoner because potentially someone could raise his soul and ask him about who had found the soul gems. The bard suggested we drug him, which then turned into letting Yanus have some opium to at least go out while he was high but this then morphed into letting him overdose which we decided was probably both evil and unnecessary. So in the end my wizard used invisibility to make sure Yanus couldn't see him while pretending to be asleep and then killed him in his sleep before taking his body out to the woods and burying him. We didn't want his body buried on our land as that might link him to our group. (I don't know if this is really canon to 4e or 5e dragonborn in the Forgotten Realms, but the bard said he'd read that dragonborn had a strong martial culture of warriors and hunters so this is why my character was more pragmatic about killing Yanus. He doesn't leap to murder and violence as a first solution, but he's not going to go out of his way to avoid it if it seems required. It also ties into his backstory; his parents work as city guards in Waterdeep and wanted him to grow up to be some kind of martial character. As Arzkatesh wanted to be a wizard they basically kicked him out of home until he changed his mind and decided to get a proper and honest job. He keeps in contact with his family through his older sister who he gets along with, and she's a town guard as well so the parents are hoping she'll influence my character to give up on his foolish wizard ambitions) As Mt Celestia had blessed us, healing any curses or injuries and rejuvenating us as though we'd had a long rest we were able to head off the next day despite our evening excursion (after a small nap from my STR 8 wizard who'd lugged a corpse a few hours, buried it and walked back) we were free to make our delivery to Automata. Automata is another gatetown like Tradegate and Excelsior, although it borders Mechanus which is the plane of perfect neutral law and order. The town had several pages of rules we were required to sign that we understood and obey at all times before we were allowed entry. We also got the quick processing as we were only visiting on business, the other process would have taken hours to complete. The town had a lot of rules which were mostly sensible and good in basic principle but taken to detailed degrees. For example we could not cast magic on people without their permission, but we also could only make deliveries between 2 and 3pm in the afternoon. We couldn't stand around for more than 10 minutes otherwise we would be loitering. There were specific limits on the amount of drinks that could be purchased, meals were at specific hours and had to conform to certain standards. You had to check out between sunrise and 2 hours after, vagrancy was not permitted. Three pages of small print laws to follow, which were also the basic visitor primer. We were in town to try and make connections so we had a look around and went to the inn. We booked rooms and had lunch, which was bland but tasted acceptable. While there was a rumour about a hill that had grown unexpectedly like a zit outside of the town and that the explorer who had discovered it had disappeared there were no other interesting pieces of information being discussed by the community. Much of it was simply our party learning about how the bureaucracy and leadership of the town worked and who to talk to if we wanted to investigate or make trade contracts. One person on the ruling council was a clockmaker who ran a shop which we visited (Automata has a lot of clocks and exports them as they make the most precise clocks in the planes outside of Mechanus itself). The craftsman and store owner wouldn't see us without an appointment, even though he had an opening right then which we took. He had some neat clocks but they were outside of our price range and we discovered that although he needed high quality wood and metal for the clocks that actually becoming a supplier would require dealing with a migraine inducing volume of bureaucracy. Also if we made even the smallest violation of their many detailed import and export rules we would be permanently blacklisted. What I can say about Automata is at least the delivery was straightforward and un-noteworthy. The undercity however was complete chaos and anarchy, the polar opposite to the bastion of perfect order above that kept it anchored and prevented it from sliding into Mechanus. To reach it we had to take a ladder that was hidden at the back of the stables, climbing down into the town of Anarchy. Anarchy was filled with thieves, muggers and the destitute which gave it a rather unsavoury and...pungent atmosphere. We even saw an Erinyes (a devil that looks like a fallen angel with black wings, they're sort of the lawful evil counterpart to succubi) on the way to the tavern which was charmingly named the "Tainted Tipple". When we made our delivery the bartender wanted to test the goods to make sure they were in good condition, which she did by demanding a patron come over to her and then force feeding the wastrel a vial of some odd coloured liquid which turned out to be a poison. Over the now collapsed and foaming at the mouth body at her feet she was satisfied and signed off for the delivery. All of the party were pretty concerned about the extremely dangerous place we had found ourselves in and wanted to leave straight away, although the orc barbarian liked the vibe far more than upstairs. On our way back from stables to the inn we noticed a resident of Anarchy climbing up a house to break in and burgle, so in a fit of mischief my wizard decided to call out to him to ask if he needed a light as it was dark. The man fell off the building and then scurried away while we also made our way back to the inn quickly to avoid a patrol. While there was no curfew to break there were few plausible explanations to be outside after dark in Automata and my character had unintentionally broken the law when he called out to the burglar, as that would constitute as disturbing the peace. We checked out of the inn and then left Automata without incident or events of note in the morning and returned home to Tradegate to rest and enjoy some slightly less rigid order. --- I suspect the GM will probably have the Githzerai, Gerrid, come after our party at some point as we made enough of a point to worry about it and avoid leaving evidence for him to find as it made sense in character to be concerned about such things. While we have tried to cover our steps, a person with the power to trap a solar or with the connections and wealth to pay someone else to do so can probably eventually track the trail from the assassins and angel enforcers back to us. While Gerrid is in Sigil the more powerful angels are unable to reach him so he can probably manage to evade them long enough to come after us. When we're a higher level and ready to start dealing with him of course. Our session this week finished with us visiting the contact the angels gave to us about looking into portals so the plot about us being unable to return home should begin to move on soon. Also we leveled up to level 6, so the druid can turn into a polar bear which is fun, and terrifying!
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Mar 20, 2023 09:17
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According to my DM, there’s no such spell as Power Word: Funkadelic.
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Mar 26, 2023 21:07
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CobiWann posted:According to my DM, there’s no such spell as Power Word: Funkadelic. Did you try casting Dancing Lights?
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Mar 26, 2023 21:44
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Did you try casting Dancing Lights? This, plus Otto's Irresistible Dance.
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Mar 26, 2023 22:06
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