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A recurring joke in my Pathfinder game is Lore: Sponsorship. "I rolled a 23." "Your character finds a promo code for NordVPN." e. 10% off your next snipe too.
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Nov 12, 2023 22:03
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CobiWann posted:According to my DM, our party and their dice rolls may not be sponsored by Draft Kings or FanDuel. Wasn’t the “Lightning Lord” in your Az campaign sponsored buy a magic shop? Seem an inconsistent ruling from your GM to allow sponsorship here but not sponsorship there. I sense western puritanical hypocrisy against the institution of gambling. For shame!
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Nov 12, 2023 22:53
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MelvinBison posted:A recurring joke in my Pathfinder game is Lore: Sponsorship. a one month free trial to Skillshare would nice if learning a proficiency didn't take like half a year and one gold per day, and D&D chars can afford it unlike most real people
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Nov 13, 2023 04:26
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Golden Bee posted:Never Forget to Die! by J.C Connors No one ever got rich by dying. SHANGHAI. We start in the middle of the action. Penny An’Te and (a returning) Florence Zee are joined by a new figure. Clad in Soviet explorer uniform is Captain Semya Ivanova. Though sharp-tongued, she’s a devoted and skilled investigator, eager to spread the liberating word of nauchny kommunizm. The ladies are under the gun: they need to be on the next flight out of the city or they'll be forced to take a slow boat to their destination. Florence uses her torch singer charm on a gate agent. Captain Ivanova and Penny try a shortcut, using their contacts to gain access to the control tower, where Florence tells charming lies and gets the taxiing plane recalled so they can get on it. As they cram into their seats and put on their coats (most airplanes in 1935 weren’t heated!), they remember why they were even on this trip... “Welcome to the stage, Australia’s greatest singer and one of my best friends, Florence Zee!” The Shanghai Century Club went wild. It was a costume gala, and Florence was turning heads as the goddess Aphrodite. (Penny was a Tiki goddess; there was Devika as Odette and Captain Ivanova as a butterfly with a huge cape as wings). Florence impressed the crowd with a retelling of an adventure fighting pirate ghosts in the Caribbean. Somehow all the heroic acts and tough decisions were hers. And after a brief song, she surprised everyone by introducing the next artist… Penny An’te! A shocked Penny took to the stage and, to tepid applause, also exaggerated her role in a prior adventure. After dinner, the party drifted in different directions. Penny finally defeated Barnabas Jones at pool. She obliged when he asked if there were any more pockets she wanted to get into. Hope Lala doesn’t mind! Flo and Sem ran into the belle of the ball: Esther Crane, CEO of Crane Cosmetics (a subsidiary of Doc Midas’s conglomerate). Crane launched barbs at the Soviet, who didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, she got the capitalist bragging about her new product… Based on the Fountain of Youth in the Mekong jungle! “Hey, guys, stop daydreaming. You have to order.” The group exited their reverie, finding themselves at a French Café in Phnom Penh Vietnam. (Who says you have to run adventures in order?) they had to get a boat upriver and find the lost Wat. Allegedly, it had a 300-year-old woman, and something keeping her young! Oh, and Florence’s girlfriend Trudy was covering the Crane expedition. The party was extra diligent about research. Florence’s attempt to contact local musicians was an epic success. Not only did they tell her that Esther had arrived and left earlier that day, but they also mentioned an ambush waiting on the docks. The players continued their winning ways: they bribed local officials to increase riverside patrols, and out-negotiated skipper Van Dreesen. Penny was too smart for the bait and switch! Not only that, she drove into the Mekong to stop a saboteur, grabbing his hand drill and, with Ivanova’s help, sent him packing. The fact he was shirtless and in a loincloth did not escape the others, who teased Miss An’te. How did she keep meeting so many hot men? Also, they hired a guide nicknamed Pollyanna. If that feels perfunctory, don’t worry: she will appear and reappear throughout this adventure. A trade-off of running more than one sidekick NPC! The trip upriver was uneventful. Sampans dotted the waterway... Lush green jungle hills spread in all directions… the biggest problem was not having to pay more bribes to different government officials. Things only got tough on the second evening, when one of those officials appeared speared to a tree. Unfortunately, the jungle was filled with the Khmer Rau, an enthusiastic but underfunded rebel group. The dice started hot for the players, but luck fled. The players were outmatched by a tattooed, black-tongued warrior named Hanuman and his shield maiden. Particularly unpleasant was when Hanuman snuck up on Van Driessen, then cut his skipper hat and body in half. The players conceded the combat, heading to the rowboats and blowing up the ship’s boiler. Goodbye to the Isabella II! The jungle was easy compared to the river. Quicksand, water buffalo, mosquitoes and leeches; the players had an answer for everything. Well, mostly Captain Ivanova and Pollyanna the guide. The Captain used the flat of her saber to spank a water buffalo into retreat. Penny saved Florence; there’s no wrong time to have a lifeguard in the group! Unfortunately, there was a 300-person Khmer Rau village between the players and the Temple they were searching for. Captain Ivanova took point. She sympathized with the rebels, asked if they had seen a white woman and her retinue, and surmised they had snuck past the village. Her diplomacy was so skilled they gave her extra information: make sure to feed the giant macaques or their lives would be forfeit! Wait, is there a translation error going on? Nope. The temple with surrounded by a black water moat. There were 6-foot-tall macaws and a nearby raft with a pile of bodies. The group seemed perfectly happy to feed the “sacrifices” to the monkeys… which made Pollyanna almost vomit. Always interesting to put a “normal” person in contrast with the jaded player characters! Inside the temple, things got arch. Devika was very briefly caught in a net trap, and Penny gave away the group’s position to rescue her. But despite a lot of tough threats, nobody felt obligated to kill each other! Sure, Semya studied under the enemy skipper (careless archaeologist Otto Prochaska), and resented his lack of respect for ancient cultures. But everyone was tired out from the jungle trek… so no hard feelings! Florence found a secret staircase and headed up. Shockingly, behind a gauzy screen, among 100 lit red candles, was a gorgeous woman wearing only a ceremonial crown! She bid Florence by name… and the Aussie lesbian completely fell for it. Penny struggled to pull her away. But Captain Ivanova was suspicious. She followed a mysterious breeze to a hidden room, where an 80-year-old woman hid with a wind machine and a powerful radio. There was no fountain of youth, it was a grandma/granddaughter confidence scam! Trudy, who was protecting an anesthetized Esther, was livid. She dogwalked the younger of the scammers, saying that she was a “Hawaiian slut” and a homewrecker. It wasn’t lost on Penny how much damage her sister Gertrude had caused Florence and her sweetie. Awkward. Unfortunately, the macaques didn’t care about this revelation. They tore the roof off the Wat and began searching for more flesh! The group raided what they could from the temple, scoring a 30-pound golden statue. They tried to flee, learning that the monkeys hated the smell of kaffir limes… but realizing they would have to get through the moat. It was a breakneck escape, with no time to stop in the village and lay things out. *** Sometime later, the players were in the dining room of the Shanghai Century Club. Their newfound wealth should be spread, maybe at a dinner party. The only hard part was finding people to invite who were classy, un-evil, and didn’t have romantic entanglements. This may take a while. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Nov 13, 2023 07:21
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Golden Bee posted:Florence found a secret staircase and headed up. Shockingly, behind a gauzy screen, among 100 lit red candles, was a gorgeous woman wearing only a ceremonial crown! She bid Florence by name… and the Aussie lesbian completely fell for it. Penny struggled to pull her away. You're using FATE Accelerated right? Love me a good compel. What's Florence's relevant aspect? quote:Sometime later, the players were in the dining room of the Shanghai Century Club. Their newfound wealth should be spread, maybe at a dinner party. The only hard part was finding people to invite who were classy, un-evil, and didn’t have romantic entanglements. This may take a while. At some point you have to settle for two out of three
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Nov 14, 2023 18:54
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Captain Walker posted:You're using FATE Accelerated right? Love me a good compel. What's Florence's relevant aspect? Florence Zee (Ziegler) Aussie Torch Singer Trouble: I don't play Second Fiddle Go for broke True to Trudie? Rode the Rails ORCHESTRATE: You may take a consequence to determine the start of the round order. Normally it’s picked by whoever ended the previous round. Penelope "Penny" An'Te Hawaiian Gambling Prodigy Trouble: "We Stop when I say." Furious Protector (Formerly "Sugar" Queen of Kaua'i) Hotel Swim Instructor My purse pistol, Ahonui LET IT RIDE: Compels involving your gambling automatically start at a point of escalation. You must spend two FP to resist them, or gain 2 FP when you accept them. Capt. Semya Ivanova Inspirational Russian Explorer Trouble: Devout Communist Grew up in Science City Seven The New Soviet Woman "I am not a spy!" WELL PREPPED: When you take a mission to another country, you are automatically passingly familiar with all the major languages there. Devika Velyapur Mystic Orphan Trouble: Kids are just Smarter Ex Goddess of the Red Jasmine Cult (Formerly her Trouble) India's Richest Girl (formerly Teen High Roller) Everybody's bestie THE WHAMMY: When you share eye contact with a creature, you can use willpower to provoke. Aldous Bingen Argentine Butler To The World Trouble: I Live to Serve Appears as Needed Former Pentathlete Hard-earned Hollywood Expertise JUST THE THING: Once per session, you possess the perfect household tool, no matter how inexplicable it might be. Anything larger than a chainsaw would be unseemly. Take +1 when you use it. Gulia "La La" Santinella Firey Italian Stuntwoman Trouble: Green Eyed Monster "Aaand...ACTION!" Grew up broke Surprisingly a master chef SOLO UN GRAFFIO: You can "take zero" on an athletics or physique overcome by marking your lowest stress box. It clears after the -next- conflict. Lord Simon Alfric (Alfred Simons) Fake British Gentleman Thief Trouble: Look! Don’t look! I'm in Charge Devika's #1 Supporter Equipped for Thievery GRACEFUL EXIT: +2 on Burglary rolls to create an advantage when you’re trying to escape from a location. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Nov 28, 2023 |
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Nov 14, 2023 19:26
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Golden Bee posted:THE CHARACTERS, EXPLAINED! “Nothing good ever had that many limbs”, said the 13-year-old. Penny reached for her pistol. This is a long one, but so good. It covers two sessions. Our players: Professor Winston Callahan, misanthrope/pilot/inventor. He was joined by someone not played in a very long time, with a new player, Thaza O’Rourke! The burglar raised by apes and the man of science got along much better than one might think. Penny and Devika also returned (With Florence’s player taking over GM duties!) December 20, 1935, Cleveland Ohio! Florence Zee had a residency in the sixth Richest city in America, And Devika bought her sometime pilot Professor Callaghan. Thaza was a last-minute replacement for Lord Simon; it never hurt to know more than one cat burglar. Flo’s initial performance went well. Between numbers, the mayor took the stage to announce a new head of safety and security: Elliot Ness! Not exactly who the group wanted to see, but you can’t argue with historical fact, and EN was really brought in around this time to clean up Cleveland. (Later, when he approached the group, Devika told him how offended she was that he named his group “The Untouchables”. In India, it had a very different connotation!) Also, super awkward, but Devika was crushing on Penny. After the concert, the professor and Devika hustled an elderly John Rockefeller. It wasn’t really a scam though: the scientist had many useful Inventions, which the plutocrat definitely wanted to discuss. Meanwhile, the cat burglar stole steak knives, and Elliot Ness’s watch. The ultimate G-man visited the group in Devika’s penthouse. They were adventurers par excellence; did they want to do something extremely valuable? After some negotiation (Devi trading the guy his own watch for an advance), he laid out the case: Someone was dismembering the people of Cleveland, seven so far. Arms and heads separated, to the point it was hard to tell who was who! The bodies were dumped in a wash outside of town, near the hobo camps and railroad tracks. Unfortunately, no one in the group was good at “investigating”. (Random composition can kill you like that.) Instead, they relied on chicanery. Thaza, furious that her stolen property had been returned, kept trying to get even with Devika by inviting every suspect onto her plane for a joyride. The local gangs knew nothing, so the quartet went to the crime scene. There, the heavily bundled Penny surveyed the unhoused. We learned that a lot of people were missing, including a girl with strawberry hair down to her knees, known as Hoboken Red. Near the body disposal site, Devika used her mystical senses instead of her normal ones. Opening her third eye, she saw dark ritual magic: It wasn’t a spree killer, it was someone practicing necromancy! quote:She also apologized to Thaza, who tried to “obey the code of the jungle” and threatened the 13-year-old with a knife. Unfortunately for the Borneo-born wild woman, her anger was no defense against The Whammy! A brief scrap with railroad bulls led the group to the train station. Sneaking in, the group found a nightmare! The heads of the victims were used in an electric pentagram. The professor diffused the surging hazards so Thaza could clamber higher into this station. Meanwhile, Devi and Penny tried to hold off the resuscitated ghoul…HOBOKEN RED!? The living-dead woman slashed at Devi. Penny fired her pistol to little effect. But then Thaza plunged from above with steak knives in both hands and one in her prehensile foot! Miss Velyapur shoved Red into position, and Thaza did the rest. The group found a hidden journal. It turned out the killer was a sad sack they had met briefly at the concert. A major architect with a dead brother, he was doing everything he could to resurrect his sibling. But his ritual had failed because he needed more salt… Like the amount you could get at the salt mine across town. TO BE CONTINUED!… Right now! (We ended the session on a cliffhanger and returned the next week with different players. Penny and Devika returned, as well as Professor Winston Callahan (with his original player, not the new guy), as well as bureaucratic explorer Kabir Rupert OBE! We hadn’t seen him in a year of playtime.) Flashback: Hyderabad, 1925. Devika’s Parents are throwing a garden party as their toddler finger-paints on the nearby wall. They’re chatting up their rich pal Kabir, already making waves in the field of agricultural management, and ask if he can help out their daughter. He seems reticent to make promises, until she comes over and hugs his pant leg. Blue paint on his casual khakis. “Kuhbeer!” She says, and he’s charmed. He’ll do everything he can to get her into Oxford. Back to Cleveland, 1935. Penny An’Te and Devika return to the hotel, hustling to gear up before confronting the serial killer. In the lobby, the 13-year-old millionaire peered over Rupert’s newspaper. “Anything new in farming?” He was in town for Florence’s show as well, and agreed to join in when Devika describes the lurid details. “Oh, sacrifice -and- limb removal? I imagine I can help.” The salt reserve showed signs of forced entry. A limo was out front with wheelbarrow tracks headed into the mine itself. Inside, two headless security guards stumbled around, zombified but ineffective. The party tied them up and continued. The bottom level was cavernous. The air was painfully full of salt. The chauffeur hid behind a pillar, trying to take potshots, before the group talked him down. He could run away or be charged as an accessory to murder. He didn’t expect it to go this far… And fled. From down the hallway, Devika felt emanations of severe dark energy! In the main chamber, Opie had created another magi-tek pentagram, but this one was actively reviving his brother! The undead brother lurched forward, seemingly immune to Penny’s bullets. It was then that Winston Callahan joined the game. Despite the player’s lack of awareness of what was going on, he invoked the rocket sled ‘he’ had built in the previous adventure to show up just in the nick of time. As a part-time “scientist of the Dubious”, he easily deactivated the device, sapping the unliving brother’s strength. In response, the architect/serial killer charged Callahan with a butcher’s knife! Only Kabir’s intervention prevented calamity. He (and the ever-helpful Miss D. Velyapur) wrenched the knife away and apprehended the psychopath. All that was left was to explain the case to an incredulous Elliot Ness. — Since we knew the Cleveland wrapup wouldn’t take a full session, I ran STUMBLE IN THE BRONX! March 17, 1935. We started with Florence and the others at the Edgar Allen Poe cottage in everyone’s favorite borough, the Bronx. They were giving Rupert’s pal J.R.R. Tolkien a tour of NYC, and this was a place of literary significance. Unfortunately, the front door burst open, with two revelers “wanting to see the Raven guy.” Florence politely but firmly sent them on their way, but noticed that the street was full of drunks. But not normal St. Patrick’s Day drunks; sloshed, pissed, and thick as a rush-hour subway car. It was time to investigate… But also get lunch. The two Brits (Professor Callahan and Kabir) rolled up their sleeves and began punching their way across the land once colonized by Jonas Bronck. (Two people in the group had lore at +3, so the trivia quotient was high.) It wasn’t long before they reached the relative safely of the Simon’s family deli! quote:The group strategized over matzoh ball soup and knishes. Penny took some time to let Devika down easy (“You’re too young, you’re not my type, and since you’re co-owner of Florence’s detective agency, you’re my boss.” “Uhhhhhh…fair…”). Winston and Simon reminisced about simpler times, tracking down and destroying a floating Nazi airbase. Kabir, the only one on mission, rifled through the newspapers. There were some ads for green beer, but someone had clipped all the coupons on the other side. Luckily, they knew someone who was both an expert in beer and this part of the city…STEEL EAGLE! The players cleverly avoided main streets and the subway, instead heading east and grabbing a boat. (There was a fun subplot here where the very British duo taunted some Irish mariners. One crashed chasing them, and Penny was obligated as a lifeguard to save his life…after sobering up and apologizing, he just stayed on the boat the rest of the adventure.) The fivesome (Everybody and J.R.R.) drove their boat up the river to Steel Eagle’s haunt, the Yankee [stadium] Tavern. Callahan asked how they would know if Gyatso was in. The prof was answered by a body flying out the front window. The Tibetan spirit of the Bronx and his Polish sidekick Eddie Pulaski were in their element, brawling through waves of boozers. After clearing the floor, the bartender volunteered information: Someone was giving out tons of green beer, for free, and every bar in the city was serving it. Why not? It’s hard not to profit on free! “Well, the reason why not is…” The Oxford debater gestured around the destroyed bar. The players argued about who had the cash to pay for it, while Professor Callahan repaired the phone…and rolled a perfect result. Somehow, he had turned the nickel-taking device into an international radio, able to reach any phone. Following up on the suspicion, Florence called the Midas subsidiary, Crane Pharmaceuticals. The secretary acted extremely suspicious when asked about any breweries. Whatta lead! Further up the river, the players smelled the factories before they saw them. Tolkien and the mariner stayed on the boat as the players entered the industrial district. And while breaking in was easy, nobody in the group had any faculty for stealth. They were immediately caught by the evil chemist responsible… Their old rival Célia Nachtnebel! She summoned her security team, and hit a button, sending Florence into a vat of the green beer! Seeing the torch singer swim out safely, the group was overly tactful and indecisive. The guards responded to this with gunfire. This was a major fight, and the mook squads were a match for the heroes (except for one defeated by Kabir’s words, which sent the security squad into unstoppable infighting). Célia dropped her bon-mots on Penny, infuriating her. “I didn’t know Devika’s coattails reached all the way to the distillery. And you haven’t gotten anywhere without riding them.” Callahan threw some elbows, clearing his way to some massive machinery and sabotaging it. Florence held her own despite a lack of fighting talent; her time as a hobo meant she could take some hits. Célia Nachtnebel fled, with Penny compelled to chase her through a dangerous maze of equipment. The Hawaiian pushed through the door to an outside catwalk… But it was a trap! Below, a janitor sprayed a crowd of rioting locals. Green beer fell onto the New Yorkers… And Celia tried to hurl Penny down three stories into the fray! The gambling prodigy managed to keep her balance, and as the two grappled, Penny pleaded with the chemist; didn’t Celia remember her rescue in Montenegro? Unfortunately, whatever gratitude Celia had was boiled away perfecting alcoholic madness! And worse, Penny was being leaned off the edge… “It’s just a shame, An’Te… I wish I was killing the girl.” Elsewhere, Kabir searched for Penny. Obviously he was the leader of the group (Since he had the Order of the British Empire). It would be ridiculous to not take care of all the group members… he arrived just in time to save Penny from Nachtnebel’s manicured choke! Meanwhile, distillery security noticed all the dials going into the red. They didn’t want to die for a crummy gig… But if Professor Callahan didn’t undo what he did, the entire building would blow up! Outside, Penny scrambled to her feet, and tried to rush away…and was sprayed by the hose man! Only her years of lifeguard training allowed her to grab the catwalk instead of being knocked to her death! Meanwhile, security, Florence and the Prof struggled to undo his sabotage. With only seconds remaining, they released the steam-tension and drained the toxic beer into the waste tanks. Kabir appealed to Celia’s sense of self-preservation. Surely there was more to life than sabotaging New Yorkers, causing misery? She paused, thinking over his words, then gave him a piece of her mind. Straight onto his dress shirt. Penny blew smoke off her purse pistol. Celia scowled. “What a bitch.” The madwoman took half a step before plummeting to the brickyard below. ——— Back at the deli, the group had dinner and debriefed. Drunk Florence was willing to eat anything. Callahan used his phone hacking skills to call Doc Midas’s private outgoing phone. Unfortunately, the professor wasn’t a great judge of character. He was bowled over by Midas’s lies (“I never met that woman, this wasn’t authorized, she’s fired… What do you mean dead?! Well, I guess I should donate a few barrels of my all-natural health elixir to the hungover masses…”). Oh well. Time for kugel. Penny gave Devi an overprotective hug. Elsewhere, Jimmy Pulaski comforted Steel Eagle. “I don’t know why they didn’t invite you, boss. Maybe they weren’t going to punch anybody.” Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Nov 27, 2023 07:10
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Golden Bee posted:Slaughter in the Sixth City / STUMBLE in the Bronx! lol I do love a group where no one can pull off stealth. It's one of those skills that the party can work around sometimes, but inevitably there will come a time when that is exactly what they need with no substitutions. 
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Nov 27, 2023 12:46
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Golden Bee posted:Slaughter in the Sixth City / STUMBLE in the Bronx! Do my BIDDING! Based on an adventure in Pulp Cthulhu by Mike Mason, Alan Bligh, James Lowder, and many, many other credited writers. How much would you pay for a machine that broke reality? Hopefully, I can just hit the highlights without giving you a blow-by-blow. We started with Raymond “Jonesy” Jones. The kiwi scrap mechanic was returning after nearly a year away from the group! In Santa Monica, he was receiving an early birthday present: a set of keys to a DC-3 (an aircraft with internal heating!), and a chauffeur hat. quote:"How's about a job, Ray? We already sewed your name on the seat." Ray was poked out of his reverie by Devika. “Hey, it’s getting good!” At the front of the room was the Los Angeles DA. At the defense table was Florence, charged with arson, and Abogado Numero Uno, Tacito Uriel Velasco! (I compelled her “rode the rails” aspect to explain why the LA Combination was trying to pin a crime on her. Obviously, she was an ex-hobo, used to starting fires, and there were people who saw her start a massive fire at Maude’s residence in Pasadena…) Luckily, the group (rounded out by Penny An’Te and Aldous Bingen) was able to discredit the prosecution’s star witness.“You rich lawyers, you’re getting paid hundreds while I’m only here because they gave me 20 bucks!” The group was planning the next stage of the defense when a palooka stood up at the back of the courtroom and opened fire on Boss Dragna! Tacito responded by using the fire hose, fighting fire with water. The gunman fled. (Obviously there’s a fire hose there, haven’t you seen Disorder in the Court?) The group chased down and defeated the gunner and his pals, earning a trial dismissal. The group celebrated at the Cocoanut Grove and had a weird encounter. Jones, the pilot of the Vivian Leigh, met the ACTUAL Vivian Leigh. His failed schmoozing earned an injunction that was only Papered over by Tacito. Maybe instead of a lawsuit, a royalty plan? Meanwhile, Penny spent her time in Los Angeles gambling. At three in the morning, she left the Roosevelt Hotel, having missed a half dozen “come see me” messages from Lala. Oops. On the plus side, Penny'd won a hot tip: there was a disintegration ray being auctioned next week at a hotel in Scotland! The group investigated the ray, and all the n’er-do-wells who wanted it. The auction was being held at a remote hotel near Inverness… And that’s when the problems started. Among the bettors were a weapons trafficker and a member of the Black Hand. There was also the question of the inventor, a sickly man who was five years older than his wife but looked 70. There was a great bit as Jonesy snuck his way past the device’s guards, letting them go on break to watch Florence sing in the lobby: Guard: “If you play nice, I’m not gonna tell anyone you were in here.” Jonesy: “And I won’t tell anyone you weren’t.” The scrap mechanic discovered something strange: The device worked, but 90% of its casing was superfluous. Florence worked her charms on the inventor’s wife, discovering the urgency of the sale and his lack of technical talent. Tacito discovered something else: The machine, when activated, messed with phone lines and radios, as well as making him feel a little queasy. Maybe that’s why long-term exposure had aged the “inventor”? The night of the auction, things went strangely. The device disintegrated a statue, as promised, but Devika pointed out two things: 1. The device was emanating magic; 2. Between the cheating, mixed feelings, and blowing her off, Penny’s relationship with Lala should go on break. Thick fog rolled in from the loch. The players speculated that the inventor had just wrapped mechanical gizmos around a magical device. Solved! They just needed to win the auction. After dinner and the first round of secret bidding, a 9-foot-tall, gray-skinned man approached and put in his own bid: a huge sack of gold coins. An Am Fear Liath Mòr! As if a creature of folklore wasn’t bad enough, bright lights pierced the fog. Aliens ALSO wanted the device! Jonesy rushed to his plane, helping Penny into the gunner seat. Florence rushed to find Trudy (on location to cover the story), ending up in a nearby barn. Tacito and Aldous had their hands full stopping everyone else from flat out stealing the disintegrator! In the barn, heavy petting was interrupted by a bright orange light. It was a flame beam from the UFO, interrupting the Aussie girls’ roll the hay! On the ground, the boxer/lawyer made short work of the mafioso bidder. It didn’t matter the continent, he cleaned crooks' clocks. In the sky, Jonesy flew dangerously close to the saucer, analyzing its anti-gravity potentiator. If Penny could attach a hook, they could swing it in another direction, sending it flying outta Scotland... Unfortunately, their first attempt lodged the ship into the top floor of the hotel! Meanwhile, two of the greedier attendees were trying to steal the device on behalf of the gray giant. Florence, now up front, analyzed the situation… The Mòr was afraid of touching the device. And as a magic creature, he was particularly susceptible to Tacito’s spirit boxing. It was a mostly even fight, except that the creature kept melting into the fog, then attacking from impossible directions. In a stroke of brilliance, the butler aimed the high beams into the fight, weakening the grey man… Above, Penny finally attached the tow cables sideways, launching the aliens far away, probably becoming a meteor over the Arctic. Below, Florence turned the disintegration beam directly into the fog man, turning the tips of her hair gray and earning wrinkles in the process. Saving the day always required sacrifice…time to get to the beautician. Jonesy inverted the machine, laughing as it destroyed itself. But what would he tell Vivian? Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 06:43 on May 13, 2024 |
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Dec 4, 2023 05:53
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Golden Bee posted:Slaughter in the Sixth City / STUMBLE in the Bronx! Golden Bee posted:Do my BIDDING! Never stop posting these, regardless of the appalling lack of kudos they receive. I love your diverse cast too! Unlikely pulp heroes from everywhere in the world except New England, but including a Black baseball star from before "Black" or "African-American" were terms in common use. Golden Bee posted:She paused, thinking over his words, then gave him a piece of her mind. Straight onto his dress shirt. Especially never stop posting winning lines like these
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Dec 6, 2023 19:33
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Captain Walker posted:Never stop posting these, regardless of the appalling lack of kudos they receive. I love your diverse cast too! Unlikely pulp heroes from everywhere in the world except New England, but including a Black baseball star from before "Black" or "African-American" were terms in common use.  My 7th Sea GM and I stumbled into a hilarious retcon the other day. I have to work at 4 AM tomorrow so I'll write it up tomorrow after work. It blew my mind.
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Dec 7, 2023 03:12
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Captain Walker posted:Never stop posting these, regardless of the appalling lack of kudos they receive. I love your diverse cast too! Unlikely pulp heroes from everywhere in the world except New England, but including a Black baseball star from before "Black" or "African-American" were terms in common use. I don’t understand how the game system works or why there are so many exclamation points involved, but I’m stepping out of lurk mode to agree: never stop posting these.
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Dec 7, 2023 03:43
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started a new masks campaign and the players concept for halcyon city was that it was LA after faux superman used his laser eyes to cut off california from the continential united states like bugs bunny in that one gif.
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Dec 7, 2023 03:48
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Let me just say: I am a big fan of Philip K. Dick, so maybe the retroactive, circular time-fuckery here uniquely appeals to me. But here goes: I've been playing in this 7th Sea campaign set in a continuity that myself and two other folks have now run campaigns in. In the last campaign that I ran, the PCs were tasked with delivering secret messages to NPCs all over Theah. The big reveal was that these messages pertained to the Vaticine (Catholic) Church about to hold a conclave of cardinals to elect a new Hierophant (pope). This has major implications up and down the setting, and the PCs spoiled the inquisition's power play by taking out the evil noble who was going to act as the inquisition cardinal's muscle at the conclave. I dropped an antagonist NPC into that campaign who was a character I meant to use as a PC but just never had a chance to. That's a typical story for serial GMs like myself, but this NPC worked well for this plot. Her background is that she is a Vesten (Viking) pressed into the service of the hated Vendel League. This character is a hunter by choice and a bounty hunter for the Vendel League by coercion. Her position with the Vendel put her in a good spot in this campaign: the Vendel have a vested interest in spoiling the election of a Hierophant, because as long as that seat is empty, it favors their Objectionist (Protestant) faction. So the Vendel League sends her after the group of PCs, and she is a constant threat to them as she chases them across Theah. In the end, though, she face-turns and betrays her hated employer when she realizes that what the PCs are doing is more important than moving money around up in Vendel. She helps the PCs escape the shitstorm that ensues when they assassinate a major NPC villain in his own castle. The PCs did all of the important stuff, but they did so in a way that necessitated a bit of a bailout. Luckily, the timing worked for her face-turn. Fast-forward to now: I am a player in the new campaign, and I decided to run that same character as a PC, finally. This campaign is unfolding over many years, with a year worth of downtime between each of the campaign's chapters. I had been chugging along, just assuming that this is like a retcon of my character, and her appearance in the previous campaign would be like Ensign Ro vs. Kira Nerys in DS9: conspicuously similar, so much so that they were probably meant to be the same at some point, but nonetheless divergent. Then the current campaign had every PC join Die Kreuzritter, the secret Praetorian Guard for the non-existent Hierophant. This clicks a piece into place because one of the PCs during the last game joined Die Kreuzritter during the game, kind of by accident. Then the GM narrates something that dates the current campaign:  it is before the last one, and always was. When this was revealed we were two years behind the last game. Then the whole current party joins Die Kreuzritter. This means that my character, as an NPC in the last game, was (retroactively) an agent for Die Kreuzritter all along. The whole time she was seemingly acting on orders from the Vendel League to hunt down the PCs and foil them, she was acting on orders from Die Kreuzritter to foil their plans to influence the election of the Hierophant.  Retroactively, the background I wrote for the character was turned into a front for Die Kreuzritter.We just got to the last campaign's year. So I took my downtime as "I'm just going to plug in the whole last campaign here." But here's the extra hosed up thing: I wrote an epilogue to the last game, which included the results of the resulting papal election. The PCs actions thwarted the inquisition's bid for the Hierophant's seat. But the most sane option, a kind and rational old man, also got sick during the conclave of cardinals and was taken out of contention. Insider information assumed that the inquisition poisoned him to take him off the board. The winner ended up being a little nod to that PC that joined Die Kreuzritter during that campaign. The new Hierophant is Erika Durkheim, a silent patron of Die Kreuzritter. In the present campaign, our last mission was to find some mushrooms that are untraceable, indistinguishable from common button mushrooms, and toxic but not lethal. Die Kreuzritter sent us to go get the tool to take a kind old man off the board during the conclave of cardinals, to get their girl to win the election. And do it in a way that the few people who knew would surely blame the inquisition. So we're in downtimes this week. My character is [doing the whole last campaign] and carrying a small pouch of mushrooms on her person, destined for a very specific, predetermined purpose. She is crossing Theah, ostensibly on a mission from the Vendel League, just as it always was. 
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Dec 8, 2023 03:14
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Hell yeah, very nice! That sounds like it all came together super well - perfect! (Definitively wheels-within-wheels that you've been planning for ahead of time... that's what you tell the other players, at least  )
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Dec 8, 2023 03:51
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Railing Kill posted:just as it always was. Jesus loving christ just inject that good poo poo straight into my veins. Don't get me wrong, I dig lots of the other stories that get posted here, but I just love the poo poo out of multiple multi-year, seemingly tangentally related campaigns that end up being totally related, actually.
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Dec 10, 2023 07:30
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Glad ya'll like these!Golden Bee posted:Do my BIDDING! Two rich girls versus a floating city of fascists. This was a two-hander adventure between mystic orphan Devika Velyapur and Gertrude Contessa “Trudy” Truman. A rich girl reporter first introduced as Florence‘s constantly imperiled girlfriend, she and Devi had instant chemistry. (We nearly had three players. A player arrived late with notice, said one sentence in character, then had a family emergency. It was the least gaming I’ve seen out of someone who actually showed up.) April, 1935. Devika was in Venice for a fashion show. The fascist government was trying to whitewash its image, and that meant beautiful foreign models and ridiculous outfits. The Hyderabadi girl ruled the runway in a variety of bird-themed outfits, posing for the cameras and quick-changing behind the curtain. As you’ll see, this adventure had a huge number of outfit changes. On the way back to the hotel, Devi pestered Trudy about an exclusive interview. The Aussie countered that she had already interviewed D after the last adventure, and the girl hadn’t done anything new interesting! Being notable was the cost of appearing in the newspaper. The streets were starting to flood though… Maybe the duo should head to the hotel for a change of clothes? Caccola stopped them in the lobby. Who’s he? Apparently a kid who’d been robbed of a family artifact! Trudy sensed BS though, getting the kid to admit that the “thieves” had stashed it in an active church. “Sounds notable,” offered Devi. (She also said some complicated intellectual stuff, and mean mugged the kid when he made faces at her!) There’s an old saying in journalism: if your mother says she loves you, check it out. Trudy Truman wasn’t going to take the word of a waif, and her initial contacting revealed a few fun facts: *He was a member of the blackshirt kids brigade. *The boy’s name was Italian for booger. * Steel Eagle, the Tibetan spirit of the Bronx, was in the city for a “cultural exchange” but had been tactfully uninvited from all of the events. He and his sidekick (Eddie-Jim Pulaski) were day drinking in a taverna. And they’d be happy to accompany the ladies! The quartet made their way to the Church of San Zaccaria. Inside were tessellated tiles and amazing frescos. Trudy worked her charm on the priest, who gave the players more info: a leader named Commander Giallo was after them. Inconvenient! Devi sensed the artifact in the basement; the implication of a large donation gave the group privacy in the crypts. The place was half flooded (there’s a reason most places in Venice don’t have basements!), but the group continued. When they extracted the artifact, the room started to flood and the upstairs door locked! The group swam to the stairs, where Steel Eagle used his special “Fordham crowbar strike” to break the door. In the main church, the kindly father was being held at gunpoint by Giallo! They gave over the artifact, no one would get hurt. Sure, Devika could probably warp his mind with her psionic whammy… but that might give the game away. Instead, Trudy used an essential journalism skill… Blathering. First, she didn’t know if she or Devika had the artifact, did anyone know who had it? And second, they might’ve grabbed the wrong thing, could he describe the artifact? When Giallo’s focus was completely gone, Steel Eagle threw him a Bible… Then punched him in the face, caught the Bible, and delivered a spin kick. “Proverbs 13:24!” The group led the priest to safety, throwing coins across the square to cause a traffic jam and deny pursuit. At the hotel (and after another costume change), Devika and Trudy got deep. The kid millionaire opened up about her birth parents, her alienation, her suppressed crush on Penny… they were about to make a breakthrough when Steel Eagle knocked on the door. “Guys in bird masks are watching you.” Trudy headed to the roof and scanned a full 360° around the city. (+4 base notice and an additional +4 on the dice for a perfect epic result; musta been one one of those Assassin’s Creed style synchronizations.) Not only did she notice every rooftop masquerader… she also saw the one hiding behind the hotel’s chimney. He explained that he was the leader of the Brotherhood of the Wave, the Fratellanza dell'Onda; since the city’s founding, they had kept it safe with the help of an Atlantean artifact. Mussolini’s goons wanted it, and they already had half. Not only did they need the fascist’s piece, but there was a secret word that was printed on the top of the Bible held by the lion on top of a huge pillar in Saint Mark’s Square. Without all three things, massive floods were imminent. The group split up duties: Trudy called in favors to set up a meeting between the local authorities and the “international fascist friendship league.” Devi hired a tour group to make trouble at the far end of the square, giving the Steel Eagle time to climb and study the lion. After dinner, it was time for the final costume change of the adventure! Devi had up uniforms for the entire group, with faux leather accouterments and angular fits. She also gave herself a fake mustache; “no one wants to pick a fight with a dangerous midget.” A bit of blathering and the plan went perfectly! Perfectly except for the part where after cutting the power, the girls discovered that the only escape route was out the balcony window and into the canal. The two left (Miss Velyapur going first, Trudy following and quipping “When in Rome...”). Devi sighed as her mustache floated away. Oddly enough, the two were instant experts at gondoliering, easily escaping their pursuers. They made their way to the secret anti-fascist gondolier clubhouse and got dry clothes (oops, another costume change!), then rendezvoused with the order. Venice was saved. No thanks to Booger. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Dec 11, 2023 03:59
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Golden Bee posted:*He was a member of the blackshirt kids brigade. I like this kid already
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Dec 11, 2023 07:37
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Evertar: the Lerst Erbendar (Part One) My Saturday group's GM is taking the whole month of December off due to holiday season schedule stuff, so I decided to run an Avatar: the Last Airbender game using Everway. For the uninitiated, Everway is a diceless system that uses 4 stats that fit concepts like logic, intuition, power, and action into four elements: air, water, earth, and fire. So it fits the IP like a glove, even if it was designed a decade prior. It also uses a deck not unlike the tarot's major arcana to settle anything that would require a die roll. This puts a lot on the GM (or the GM and the players if they are let into this decision) to interpret the cards to describe results. I know these players well and I know what I'm doing so this is no problem. The system is written for a world-hopping setting similar to Planescape, but I've scuttled that for this game's setting. I've also told everyone that if you want a Power, it's bending. If not, you can have some extra points at character creation as a trade-off. This being a short-run game meant to run over just three sessions, I expedited character creation a bit and did a trick I've used a couple times before. I asked the players "oracular" questions that, behind the screen, moves their position around a grid that has character concepts all over it. However they settle after their answers gives them their Nation, and an "adjective noun" barebones concept to go with it. We pull Fate Cards to guide the character's virtue, flaw, and fate, per normal Everway rules. Then it's up to the players to divvy out attribute points, choose a skill specialty for each of the four attributes, and decide whether or not they want to be benders. The story is taking place just prior to the first series, so: -The Avatar is missing -The Fire Nation has attacked the Earth Nation but has not yet attacked the Water Nation -The Air Nomads are scattered but not extinct (partly for balance, and partly because I always thought it was unrealistic to wipe out literally everyone of an ethnic group, especially given that they're nomads) We ended up with: An Air Bender "Prodigal Son." His player took that to mean, "I am the bad boy of my community because I am mad and taking violent action about the genocide of my people." His return to his people has meant going rogue and taking on terrorist missions on behalf of a people that functionally no longer exist. He is the saddest, angriest teen. A Fire Bender "Courageous Deserter." Her player got this concept, sat down to watch the series for the first time immediately afterward, and fell in love with the Kiyoshi Warriors. So she's a Kiyoshi Warrior with Fire Bending who got shanghaied into the Fire Lord's army because of the bending but deserted as soon as she was able because she's an ethnic minority in this imperial state. A Water Bender "Orphaned Sailor." His player decided that, based on the fate card pulls he would be a sailor-turned-agent for the Water Nation. His specialty is exfiltrating people away from the Fire Nation. A Water Nation Spirit Bender "Comical Guru." One of a couple unique easter eggs on the secret grid, this one's concept let the player opt into having Spirit Bending instead of Water Bending. The player took it, so they're an old Water Nation shaman version of that old guru from the end of the series, but also the comic relief guy. So that's where we ended up at the end of the first session, ready to hit the ground running in the second session. Oh, wait. I forgot about the other GM. See, The two other times I've run Everway, we used a rotating cast of GMs, so that everyone ran the game whenever the game was taking place in a plane of their design (or their PCs home plane). It was fun and became part of the game's fingerprint to this group. But Avatar isn't about world-hopping so I did something else: I asked my daughter to write some of the plot and NPCs. She's nine and has seen the show all the way through twice. So I had her answer the following questions (her answers are in italics): Describe a cool character who can help the players. An old bookkeeper who is secretly a warrior Describe a cool character who could help or hurt the players, depending on what happens. A thief that lives out in the wild Brainstorm a list of hybrid animals. Tiger monkeys, mosquito bees, snake dogs, beaver cats Where will the story take place? What nation? Any specific region, city, or terrain? Fire Nation, in a small coastal town Who is the antagonist? Describe him or her.  An evil platypus bear with an army of turtle ducksWhat is the antagonist doing that the players will have to deal with? Scaring the people of the town so much that they won't even talk but there's a secret that the good guys need  WELP.Next time: session two, the first half of the story.
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Dec 17, 2023 05:06
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Railing Kill posted:Who is the antagonist? Describe him or her. The moment pride and terror shared by GMs and parents alike: your creation has grown beyond you. You have no control. Maybe you never did. Good.
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Dec 17, 2023 06:16
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Railing Kill posted:Who is the antagonist? Describe him or her. I mean, wrap that up in an aggrieved spirit and it's not too far off from some Aang-era plot developments.
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Dec 17, 2023 07:11
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Railing Kill posted:decide whether or not they want to be benders. Given that I'm British and that I haven't any idea what Avatar: The Last Airbender is, this phrase took on a whole new meaning.
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Dec 17, 2023 23:39
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JustJeff88 posted:Given that I'm British and that I haven't any idea what Avatar: The Last Airbender is, this phrase took on a whole new meaning. "Bending" is the setting's word for sorcery. Each of the four elemental nations have a bending style that corresponds to their element: air, earth, fire, and water. Some of that will become clearer once I write up the second session, which was yesterday. When the players actually start playing and use the stuff, it becomes a lot clearer. I had just assumed that every nerd on these forums, especially in TG, had seen ATLA, but that's on me. I suppose it is 20 years old at this point, so that's not a great assumption to make. It's real good, and as a children's show it has no business being as good as it is. It's a bunch of tweens and teens running around having adventures and beating up imperial goons. It has more heart and brains than a pithy description can give it, though. Also, this is a children's show that starts with a genocide. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Dec 18, 2023 02:26
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Golden Bee posted:Waters of Venice! To Florence, melting mutants meant a future imperfect. Sometimes you plan an interesting adventure and the players blindside you from the start. That was the case this time, when I situated a little scene of financial drama… and it went sideways. Lord Simon and Lala Santinella were contacted by Devika’s financial manager. The 13-year-old millionaire had made both of them the chief beneficiary of her will… did they want to handle the paperwork and the assets, in case something bad happened? Both of the characters grew up poor, so I thought this would be an interesting back-and-forth social combat…then Lord Simon pulled out a ring and proposed. Sure, he was gay, and Lala was interested in other people, but this solved all their problems, right?* She didn’t say no to the offer, and the problem was kicked down the road! The main focus of the adventure (because again, I did not prep for that!) was about Florence Zee releasing her world music album at a refurbished world fair. After some heartfelt speeches from the other PCs, a “journalist” in the crowd hypnotized her… the fake reporter was Amram S. Khan, her nemesis from Baltimore! Throughout the adventure, the hypnotism passed from person to person, causing Florence and Simon to relieve key moments of their past. Florence was making a deal with a devil in a railway car; Simon, pulling a scam in India, accidentally met Devika, then recalled one of his failed schemes, which left them sleeping in a rainy alley in London. Worse yet, the park had been overtaken by former security guards, transformed by genetically modified meat into containment suit-wearing Goo-Troopers. So-called because their deaths led to explosions of green muck. The main attractions were the Aboriginal art Temple, the Bank of Tomorrow (which Simon felt compelled to burgle), the farm of the future, suburbia ‘55, and the News Plaza. Each needed to be navigated to unlock the central tower, which was the most likely hiding spot of the villain. The futuristic house was the site of the most drama. Florence and her beloved, Trudy, finally talked honestly about their future. Kabir questioned Lord Simon’s need for a fake marriage. Devi and Lala discussed the failure of her Hollywood movie, and Devika‘s need for a constant mother, not a celebrity. Awkwardly, all the arguments carried through the echoey home. Worse, Devi and Lala were attacked by the goo troopers in the laundry room. At least clean up was super easy! There were many, many misadventures (including a tank/train engine Lala found, called the “Orientation Express”), but one stands above any other. The players confronted Amram S Khan, master Mystic, in a slipshod way. They were very clever to divert reinforcements, so he tried to flee the way he had before; a puff of smoke and his clothes left on the floor. Unfortunately, his invisibility spell failed, and he fled starkers. He evaded Florence’s attempted trip, sending her tumbling down the stairs (to be caught by Kabir). Khan fled to the elevator, heading towards the basement garage… where Lala was waiting with her motorcycle. He tried hypnosis, but she pinned him to the wall and he had a quick, painful death. Few could believe the movie actress killed a nemesis by “running over his dinger”, but it happened. With an army of mutoids between them and the villain, the players hatched a scheme. First, they broke radio etiquette until the mastermind yelled at them, revealing their identity… Bebe Brossard! Yes, Florence’s greatest rival was here to ruin her album release. (The swarm of thugs was just a lucky coincidence.) As the party fought off swarms, desperate to protect the broadcast tower, Florence goaded Bebe into a meeting. And in the third huge shocker of the session, Zee went alone… and apologized. She gave an amazing, historically splendid apology, so pure that Bebe’s hug exorcised the last traces of Flo’s demon. *This led to the line of the night. Lala boosted Simon up to a rooftop as Devika griped, completely innocently, “Husbands and wives shouldn’t be climbing all over each other.” Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 17:19 on May 17, 2024 |
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Dec 18, 2023 02:42
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According to my DM, my Cleric may not roll with Advent-age during the holiday season. Also, new Tanicus campaign via Pathfinder 2.0 begins recapping this January. It's eldritch horror themed. 
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Dec 21, 2023 19:19
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In our Blood Bowl League, my ogre both caused like 5 turnovers for my side in one game and ruined two drives. He also knocked out both enemy super mummies and then took one out of the game entirely when they came back. Both teams had cause to nominate him for MVP.
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Dec 23, 2023 00:21
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Golden Bee posted:VINYL Fantasy! The best art is visceral. Here’s an extremely suspicious phrase: “I didn’t spend a lot on your Christmas present. Now get packed.” Devika gave Florence a mailbox shaped like a treasure chest… That was assigned to a hut in Rura Tonga, a remote tropical island northeast of Australia. She could share it with Trudy (no house of the future, but what is?), while Aldous got one of his own. There’s nothing funnier than giving a fastidious butler a dirt floor hut; It was an hour before Devika revealed that there was actually fitted stone flooring waiting at the dock. The mailbox said Ziegler Investigations: South Seas, and promised tons of adventure! The final two members of the team, inventor Professor Callahan and wandering Martial artist Xiao Yun, were eager to solve some crimes and set things right.* Any day now. Surely there was -some- action on an island with a population of 105? ——— So after a very, very relaxed holiday season, the gang was eager to return to Los Angeles for an actual case. Outsider artist Christian Stark wasn’t answering his phone, and San Diego mobster Samuel Stone wanted him for a meeting. The only lead they had was a letter where Stark promised to meet in an LA park at 9 PM that night. Trudy Truman’s journalism skills got a huge workout this session. She contacted the arts desk at the LA Times and got the address of Stark's Gallery. Bingen the Butler was suspicious though; fearing the worst, he circled the block and found out the suburban gallery was under surveillance. It was time to get in the back way. The gang hopped a fence and examined the backyard. TT’s sensitive nose paid off… She found a trail of smelly detritus leading from the unlocked back door of the gallery across the lawn, and down into the sewer. She also smelled blood...and human flesh. Only Yun and Trudy had the fortitude to make their way inside. The smell was a mixture of sewage and the stuff bodies are made of. Trudy opened the windows and the gang explored the remains of an art opening-turned-massacre. Who could’ve done this? A babbling psycho in the downstairs bathroom tried to assault the team with a butcher knife; Xiao disarmed the maniac and smashed him into a brick installation. Back in the grasp of sanity, all he could talk about was his torment and his fear of “the great devourer.” Weird! The investigation continued, with the group splitting off. The professor and the Australian girls headed to Stark’s Apartment. The butler and martial artist made their way to the 9 PM rendezvous. Instead of Christian Stark, they were ambushed by… an ancient Roman soldier?! Meanwhile, the Commonwealth trio arrived at Stark’s downtown digs. The lobby sign said it was on the eighth floor... Rather than walking all the way up, the professor got out his tool kit and fixed the creaky elevator. Good as new! ——— Yun greeted the man in Latin. He asked if they were the artist. Hearing “no”, he decided to take out a Gladius and attack! Yun, a master of both wuxia and acupuncture, gave Aldous a chance to disarm the man, sending his blade into the park lake. The soldier still fought furiously, prompting Aldous to shoot him in the leg. A wonderful idea, except that they were trespassing…and to park security, it looked like they were attacking an unarmed man! Back in the apartment, the players discovered the elusive artist wasn’t there…but he was being stalked by a jealous collector called Howart, who was obsessed with Roman history. Trudy sniffed… something horrific was coming up the stairs. Rounding the fourth floor and moving swiftly was a gelatinous mass of faces and limbs. A cairith, personally sent by whoever was trying to put a kibosh on their investigation. It was the entire width of the stairs, and they weren’t going to escape out an eighth-floor window… Quick, to the elevator! At the park, the ever-prepared Bingen produced his firearms license and retrieved the Gladius. He would be happy to be booked for misdemeanor trespassing… but maybe the assault charge should go to the weirdo who didn’t speak a word of English? Downtown, Callahan Ziegler and Truman crowded into the elevator. Luckily, they could take it full speed to the bottom, moving past the oozing mass. If they hadn’t fixed it, they would’ve had to deal with the creature, which could’ve easily gotten into the elevator cage… A horrifying death, avoided thanks to engineering! Reconvening, Trudy once again used her research skills. Howart was an art collector and a Rome aficionado. He had a secured compound in Beverly Hills… but how were they going to get in without rousing the police? The Hollywood Butler had an idea. They could schmooze with the local fire department, say that his old boss mod was doing a movie, and enter the premises disguised as firemen. Professor Callahan created a smoke grenade cannon and fired it from an adjacent Beverly-Hill. The guards were utterly baffled. So was the group when they found out Howart’s library had a gateway to a much hotter place…Hell. The art collector had gone mad from Sorcery. Drawing from dark forces, he called damned Romans to fight for him. And now, in an ancient Church beyond time, he prepared to sacrifice a mystically gifted artist to the goddess Morta. Howart was to be the new Roman emperor, a Caesar to rule over the living and the dead. That would be bad enough, except the Cairith Monstrosity was bound to his will as well. Several tons of undulating gelatinous corpses, standing between the Ziegler Agency and the man they needed to rescue. The Wuxia master sprinted into action, jumping over rows of soldiers and interposing between the Emperor and Christian. If he wanted to kill the artist, he was going to have to defeat her hand-to-hand… Not likely. Meanwhile, Trudy ignored the thousands of black candles, using her journalistic sensibilities to find something awry…and noticed a small box on a pedestal. It seemed to have a piece of flesh floating above it, and she theorized that it was a reliquary, controlling the abomination. If Florence could just shoot the thing… Surviving the Romans was the hardest part! The party could handle itself in a brawl, but these were crack troopers in formation. Between that and the blob bearing down on them, it wasn’t a matter of if they would lose, but when. To make things worse, the emperor tried to dominate Xiao’s mind! Dozens of horrified voices cascaded into her skull, but the Chinese patriot knew Rome was inferior. She fought back with a series of bone-breaking strikes… Florence finally got clear of the retentii, exploding the reliquary with her pistol. The blob attacked the Romans, who tried to stab it back. With the enemies fighting each other, the investigators had a shot at survival. The Emperor decided to take drastic action. If he couldn't sacrifice his captive, he would sacrifice someone more important… Himself! He slit his own throat and fell on the altar, his blood rising towards the ceiling and summoning an angel of death. That got the players panicked. Xiao used some of her healing skill to re-balance Stark’s Chi, allowing him to limp towards the exit. Aldous carried him even further, trying to help him hobble back to the library. The swirling chaos threatened to engulf all the characters, but Florence called upon the emotions that had led her to sell her soul in the first place, confusing the angel long enough for everyone to escape the underworld. Back in Beverly Hills, all the characters had to deal with was a swarm of pissed-off guards and a confused fire captain. Aldous’s stealth and Trudy’s charm let the group weasel out of things; Callahan asked if all the thugs wanted to be held on suspicion of kidnapping and satanism. Uhhhh... Not willing to trust their mob employer, the Ziegler Security Services Team had a quandary. Where could they hide this famous artist where the mob couldn’t get him? Maybe on a remote island in another hemisphere? *Yun had appeared previously, but with that player being out of the campaign for months, we handed the reins to a new player. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Dec 24, 2023 04:15
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CobiWann posted:According to my DM, my Cleric may not roll with Advent-age during the holiday season. So this would be your third Tanicus campaign on this thread? I remember the one with the “lightning lord” and Az getting a spear in the mouth. Then there was another one after that but I don’t recall updates happening for that one. FWIW- I’ve ripped off Az for my current campaign. The name is cool and his chaos-incursion flavor is too fun to not appropriate.
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Dec 25, 2023 07:22
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Agrikk posted:So this would be your third Tanicus campaign on this thread? Everyone rips off everyone, so go nuts! Fourth campaign, actually. COVID hit in the middle of the second campaign and was still going on when the third started. I wasn't in the mental headspace to take notes and write anything up, plus half the fun of the recaps are the terrain and figures/minis, so I fell off it. Re-energized, though, as is my DM. He's been itching to switch to Pathfinder since the OGL mess.
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Dec 28, 2023 16:35
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CobiWann posted:Everyone rips off everyone, so go nuts! Pathfinder 2e is a fun system, and they just did a soft reboot of the core rulebook/GM book in order to get away from anything that's too close to WotC. I really like how they do crit success/fails on skill checks and saving throws and the like.
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Dec 28, 2023 22:46
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the_steve posted:Pathfinder 2e is a fun system, and they just did a soft reboot of the core rulebook/GM book in order to get away from anything that's too close to WotC. I loathe the way crits work on attack rolls though, because in theory wow neat you can crit on lower than a 20 but in practice nah you still need a 20 to crit but the boss only needs 16 or better to turn you into a steaming bowl of blood soup.
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Dec 28, 2023 23:33
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Reclaimer posted:I loathe the way crits work on attack rolls though, because in theory wow neat you can crit on lower than a 20 but in practice nah you still need a 20 to crit but the boss only needs 16 or better to turn you into a steaming bowl of blood soup. This is extremely not my experience. I mean yeah bosses crit a lot but so do the martial classes. Fighters in particular are real good at it, but nobody's horrible at it outside a mage with a knife, assuming you use teamwork to get bonuses to hit (flanking, tripping, spells, whatever).
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Dec 29, 2023 01:35
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gunslinger crits do 1 billion damage so they rule imho
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Dec 29, 2023 02:05
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Golden Bee posted:Gallery of Souls! by Magnus Seter and Petter Nallo Kisses are a form of chemistry... This week’s thrilling adventure is the 52nd of the year! I’ve never successfully run an annual campaign, so shout out to my players and everyone reading this for keeping the momentum. As usual, we had a Last-minute new player, who brought to life Zahir Al-Adwani! A janitor at the American University in Cairo, he had fooled many people into believing that he was a mathematical prodigy, and not someone who emptied the dustbins. An overwhelmed every-man, he was a great contrast to the arrogant heroes he joined this week, Australian songstress Florence Zee, and inventor-professor-pilot, Winston Callahan. The characters were in the most southern city in the world, Ushuaia Chile, for an academic conference. It was a social minefield, as egotistical intellectuals try to get the better of erudite gossip columnists. Also on the scene was mustachioed midget "Diego", who looked suspiciously like a certain 13-year-old millionaire who didn’t want people bothering her for money. Completely different person though; Diego was a hard-working cabby who didn’t want to speak Spanish because it "felt like a showoff thing to do". The players’ troubles started at the cantina.Outlaw academic Callahan responded some gentle razzing with screamed expletives, getting formally banned from an event he wasn’t even invited to. Zahir tried to show off, and was so impressive he was booked to give a 20-minute lecture on the subject he had only sort of heard about. Meanwhile, Florence tried to play interfere to keep Beatrice the gossip columnist from interrogating Maude Brown’s father, the radio genius. He was terrible at lying, and new details about his daughter's exploits that could bring scandal to the party. (Abandoning her radio show to become a princess in an ancient Roman city in Tunisia and being mind controlled, then throwing her butler down the stairs were among the top no-no’s.) Also an issue was Jennings Petrie, an agitated scientist who was fighting expulsion. Surely Florence could persuade everyone he was a good guy and that all the rumors were false? The rumors weren’t false. The Gold Coast chanteuse worked the venue, discovering Dr. Petrie repeatedly ignored ethical standards and had experimented with something called "cold fire". The question was, how to let a psycho down gently? Meanwhile, Zahir and Winston put their heads together. Winston would write the speech, Zahir would perform it. While Callahan wrote, janitor Zahir snuck around and secured a custodial disguise for the pigheaded professor. The speech was a huge hit! For all his flaws, Winston Callahan was an excellent and clearheaded writer, and Al-Adwani a skilled deceiver. It went so well, that Zahir was able to get Callahan readmitted to the conference. After failing to prep Professor Brown with technically correct deceptions, Florence headed to the bar. Beatrice cut her down with a series of cruel and accurate barbs, yet Florence rose above it. The gossip columnist knew she and Trudy were a certain way… Florence asked, was 'Trice at all curious to see how it worked? In the main hall, everyone wanted to kick out Petrie. He was dangerous and uncouth, as well as unsociable! Unfortunately, the doctor had predicted this outcome, storming into the room prepared to threaten them all. Zahir, used to professorial tantrums, backed his rolling chair into Petrie’s path. A small silver canister slid across the floor, landing at Callahan‘s feet… Now, Callahan has a trouble that hasn’t come up before. In fact, I forgot he had it until just this moment. It’s "I look with my hands." So while the villain was ignominiously defeated, Callahan opened the canister… UNLEASHING COLD FIRE! Thermophilic ice spread across the ceiling, causing the chandelier to buckle and crack. Wallpaper separated from wall, and architecture started to buckle under the suddenly increased weight. Nearby, Trudy Florence and Beatrice were lazily sorting through their clothes. The mood turned to panic when one of Trudy’s stockings froze solid! Once again, Florence found herself fleeing a rendezvous through a hotel window. Down below, Callahan and Zahir told everyone to stay back. They had science to do! They could use electrical wiring and the synthetic fabric of the hotel furniture to reverse the effect, creating a chemical thaw. Everyone assembled cheered as the freezing agent reversed, and the hotel was merely wet instead of collapsing. Wait, did anyone have eyes on Professor Petrie? Zahir used one of his stunts, allowing him to make a notice check as if he was anywhere he had been that adventure. This allowed him to remember where Jennings had parked. TAXI! "Diego" was straightening her mustache on the curb. Callahan jumped behind the wheel, speeding off into traffic. They were behind, and the mad Doctor was on a motorcycle, But the trio had something better. Something to prove! Zahir unfolded the road atlas in the backseat. If they took a shortcut, they could… Petrie had jumped over a rising bridge. But of course Winston Callahan could follow. He was a pilot. Nothing could stop the Outlaw academic. His taxi was a missile, ignoring spilled instant-ice, careening through narrow alleys...They almost caught up as Petrie prepared to ramp his bike onto a getaway boat. Stomping the gas, Callahan brought the car right alongside, and ZAHIR OPENED THE DOOR! Instead of an easy escape, the Madman crotched himself on a pylon. And people think academics are boring. --- In the second part of the adventure, the players were shot down over a mysterious island, escaped*, and reached Rura Tonga. François made a brief cameo; the Canadian outdoorsman never knew how much he would learn to love sunscreen! Everything was relatively hunky-dory, until Devika revealed that there were three spies on the island, and she didn’t know The identity of any of them. Anyone up for some volleyball? *The second part of the adventure is not particularly noticeable. Here’s a warning that’ll save us both a lot of time: it’s super hard to run zombie adventures, especially in Fate, especially in open areas (for example, a cursed island in the South Seas). Players are just too smart and flexible to really make Zeds scary. It can get gory in places… But not thrilling, because it’s so hard to set up social and ethical stakes. Two people got bitten in half by a zombie shark and this sentence is the only mention of it. Thanks for reading! Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Dec 31, 2023 01:25
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Golden Bee posted:Pros and CONFERENCE! Well, dang. Congratulations on an entire year of pickups. Well done.
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Dec 31, 2023 03:05
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Golden Bee posted:Pros and CONFERENCE! The thing about being a goddess: there’s no retirement plan. Our session had tons of players (six, then a seventh briefly who had to go), so it wasn’t rife with incident. instead, we had some laughs and some intense emotional scenes. The group traveled to India to put a stop to the Red Jasmine Cult. On board a train, Devika decided to prank the Westerners by making their meals extra spicy. She didn’t know at the time that the food was already spiked with mystic peppers! — — — The players got to the villain’s lair. Mr. Bingham and Lord Simon were on sneak-around duty. They found a few cult prayer books, but the GM grinned wickedly when he said that the villain’s diary was written in Hindi. Bingen reminded the GM that he possessed a common butler item once per session, and he brought a translation dictionary. The last moment was the heartfelt one. it turned out one of the major players in the cult was Devika’s uncle Goga! He had sold her to the group after her parent’s death, since he was an itinerant alcoholic. Now he seems to have cleaned up his act and attained great mystical power. Everyone was raring mad, eager to kill him, especially Lala Santinella, Devika’s adopted mother. Everyone except Devika, who got him alone and poured her heart out about how she missed him. She had observed plenty of broken homes. Love wouldn’t have bridged the gap. The cult may have left her tremendously bored and stifled her education, but there was food, shelter and respect, more than most kids got in 1934. Goga’s mystical powers were ineffective. His evil plan to turn her into a living goddess, conquering Asia and then the world, couldn’t stand up to a breathtaking guilt trip. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Jan 8, 2024 03:22
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Golden Bee posted:Translation TERROR! ...her parents' death, right? Otherwise this is possibly the greatest act-clean-up of all time.
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Jan 8, 2024 14:48
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Got a continuation to the Avatar: the Last Airbender Everway game. For those that missed it, the set up is right here, but to recap: My daughter has provided some of the key NPCs, a setting within the Avatar universe, and a problem facing the heroes: that being a sentient platypus bear commanding an army of turtle geese. (I changed the ducks to geese to make them suitably aggressive.) I'll put the results of her help in setting up the game in bold. I decided to run a prison break for this short-run game. We only had a few sessions from character creation to completion before our 7th Sea GM got back from Holiday Season Purgatory, so this called for a contained adventure. So how did my daughter's handiwork find its way into the story? Well... The heroes start in a Fire Nation town, all for their own reasons. Three out of four of them have different reasons to want to hit a nearby Fire Nation POW camp, so that's the order of the day. I established that a POW camp is out on an island just offshore of this little fishing town. The fourth PC, a Spirit Bender from the Water Nation, is in the same town at the request of a local bookseller who wants to pick his brain. Rumors around town say that this group of aggressive turtle geese keeps showing up and ransacking the town. They're causing injuries and damage, but they're inexplicably carrying off supplies too. Worse yet, the town has recently felt the pinch of the Fire Nation garrison on the island coming ashore and requisitioning food and supplies from them too. Until recently, the Fire Navy had been supplying the POW camp on the island itself, but that stopped suddenly and without discernable cause. This PCs learn all of this over tea at the local tea house from a local rapscallion, Bai Bai, who might be a thief. Otherwise, the tea house is full of regular villagers who are armed with kitchen implements like spatulas and colanders as makeshift weapons and armor. Everyone and their mom is seemingly ready for...something to attack the town. Then, the The other PCs meet up with the Spirit Bender and they all share what they have learned. They decide to follow the surviving turtle geese back to where they are retreating. This turns out to be a cave just outside of the town. There is a sentry of turtle geese outside, which the PCs foil and sneak inside. There are signs that the cave is a platypus bear den but there is no platypus bear present so the PCs venture further inside. There, deep in the cave's tunnels, is a makeshift office with a desk and a lamp and a map on the desk and a gatdang platypus bear standing upright, back to the group. The platypus bear immediately hears and smells the PCs and turns around to say: "Who are you, and what are you doing here?" (This is not normal, BTW. Animals cannot normally speak in this setting.) The PCs admit that they are there following an army of turtle geese. They ask who he is, and he bellows his reply: "My name is Admiral Yamamoto, Commander of His Majesty's First Fleet. I know one of you did this to me!" None of them has done this to him, but a couple of them have ideas about it. The sharper minds in the group recognize his name. Yamamoto is indeed the Admiral of the First Fleet, probably one of about a dozen men in the room with the Fire Lord planning the invasion of the Earth Nation. And now he is a platypus bear, and he attacks the group. Next time: a retreat, a negotiation, and the prison break itself.
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Jan 9, 2024 12:48
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Two rounds of COVID and last night's flooding have delayed the start of our Pathfinder campaign, but that hasn't stopped me from torturing my DM. According to my DM, my Artificer may not be named "Karl Hungus."
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Jan 10, 2024 16:11
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CobiWann posted:Two rounds of COVID and last night's flooding have delayed the start of our Pathfinder campaign, but that hasn't stopped me from torturing my DM. I'm just picturing The Humongous from Mad Max 2 tbh
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Jan 10, 2024 23:58
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