# Commentary thread in that “Describe your game in five words” thread.



## darjr (Sep 17, 2021)

Cause I love the beauty of the five word model and dint want to break it by commenting on posts there I’m making this thread!

Thread in question 








						Describe your last rpg session in 5 words
					

Cancelled: GM (me) Depressed...  The depression was due to then-impending now-accomplished medical imaging. So y'all don't worry - I'm not depressed to self-harm. I'm fairly well medicated. I do have bipolar disorder, and it sometimes (despite meds) results in a non-functional day due to one...




					www.enworld.org


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## darjr (Sep 17, 2021)

Several of my posts refer to the same game. But different “looks” based on all that happened. Anyone else do this? Acceptable?


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## darjr (Sep 17, 2021)

woefulhc said:


> Saw two rooms this week



What game? What adventure? Sometimes I’m in the mood for super detailed room crawling.


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## Umbran (Sep 17, 2021)

darjr said:


> Cause I love the beauty of the five word model




Five words is a bit _too_ restricted and condensed, really.

I think it'd be better as a haiku.


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## Marc_C (Sep 18, 2021)

5 words: 'Missing abbot didn't need rescuing'

*[Fantasy AGE] Tropical Island, part II. *After surviving an attack by six giant lizards the dwarven warrior, dwarven mage and human rogue continued following a river in search of the missing abbot they were hired to find. They arrived at a mountain with a stone staircase. After 3 hours of ascension they arrived at a plateau. They found a Machu Picchu like society of peaceful humans. They were greeted and lead to a zigurat near the centre of the town. At the top they found the abbot studying star charts with the local priest. When the abbot saw the PCs he was surprised. He explained he was perfectly happy with these people and didn't need rescuing! (the faces of the players, priceless 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





)

The abbot wrote a letter and named Egil as his successor. He gave a gold ring with a ruby to the PCs for their effort. He also gave a magical cape to the mage (+2 def) claiming he wouldn't need it anymore. 13 days later a sailboat took them back to Freeport. They went to the temple and announced to Egil his promotion, handing him the abbot's letter. Egil was saddened by the news but honored by the promotion. 

As the PCs were preparing to leave Egil told them he had a letter for the Dwarven Warrior. It was a letter from his father, a noble from an important dwarven family. He is recalled to the kingdom for an urgent state mater. As a dutyful son he decides to return home. The dwarven mage and human rogue decide to follow. They also bring three human mercenaries who helped them in their early days in Freeport.

[The campaign will now leave Freeport and concentrate on events in the dwarven kingdom]


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## darjr (Sep 19, 2021)

Marc_C said:


> Missing abbot didn't need rescuing!



What? Like Harley Quinn?


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## Benjamin Olson (Sep 19, 2021)

Umbran said:


> Five words is a bit _too_ restricted and condensed, really.
> 
> I think it'd be better as a haiku.



Awesome. My last session in haiku:

As we slew the beast,
How cursed Strahd taunted us!
Still, we leveled up.


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## Esau Cairn (Sep 19, 2021)

Umbran said:


> Five words is a bit _too_ restricted and condensed, really.
> 
> I think it'd be better as a haiku.



I like this idea
but haiku can be daunting--
"Arrrgh! The syllables!"[*]

•••

[*]
_...and yes, we know that
moras are not syllables
but it's still good fun...

especially if you want
to start a complete renga_


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## billd91 (Sep 19, 2021)

A random encounter? We hide.

The PCs are traveling right now. They’ve had 5 random encounters come up in 2 session - they hid from three of them. They are keeping a LOW profile as much as they can - but for no particular reason. They *really* just wanna be subtle.


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## AverageMojito (Sep 20, 2021)

darjr said:


> Several of my posts refer to the same game. But different “looks” based on all that happened. Anyone else do this? Acceptable?



I did "[5 words], or: [another 5 words]", when I felt a different "look" was needed, all in the same post, though.


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## darjr (Sep 20, 2021)

Sacrosanct said:


> Led Zeppelin, Immigrant Song. Thor.






Umbran said:


> Bandits, chimera, and zombies galore.



You two planned this? Didn’t you?

what’s next? A multi post multi user haiku?


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## billd91 (Sep 20, 2021)

OK, haiku:

Whether it's giants
Or members of the earth cult
Hidden we will be


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## Levistus's_Leviathan (Sep 20, 2021)

I'll do one post with Haikus for my different campaigns

*Eberron Campaign: *

Siberys, Khyber;
Their Hearts as Dragonshards: found.
Unlock worldly lore. 



Spoiler: Explanation



My Eberron campaign's main plot revolves around a concept that I made for Eberron; The Hearts of the Progenitors. Basically everyone that knows the basic concept for Eberron knows the legend of the Progenitor Dragons; Eberron, Siberys, and Kyber, so I'm not going to go into all that. Basically, in my Eberron campaign, the "spirits" of these Progenitor Dragons, every few thousand years, choose an elephant-sized dragonshard that corresponds with their identity to become their "Heart" (so Siberys's spirit chooses a Siberys Dragonshard, Eberron's chooses an Eberron Dragonshard, and Khyber chooses a Kyber Dragonshard). These dragonshards are even more powerful than the typical dragonshard of the same size (which are already very powerful), and have an enhanced ability to channel their will and power to influence the Draconic Prophecy. For example, when House Cannith got their hands on the Heart of Siberys (which fell from the sky at the beginning of the campaign), they were able to automatically enhance their dragonmarks to Greater Siberys Dragonmarks using a powerful Eldritch Machine. They eventually discovered that they could transfer their souls into the bodies of Warforged and were even able to retain their dragonmarks when they did so with this Eldritch Machine, which they named the Fate-Weaver.)

The first two Hearts that the players discovered (without knowing what the Hearts were or their powers) were the Heart of Siberys (which fell from the sky in the Shadow Marches, they claimed for themselves, and then they sold it to House Cannith for 5 million gold pieces) and then the Heart of Khyber (which they just wandered across while adventuring in the Shadow Marches. And, no, the fact that these two Hearts were in the same "country" wasn't a coincidence. I had it explained that they were basically like opposite sides of a magnet, attracted to each other as the Heart of Siberys was knocked from the sky). When the players eventually discovered what the Hearts of the Progenitors were, they set out to find the Heart of Eberron before trying to reclaim the Heart of Siberys and then retrieve the Heart of Khyber (which had the spirit of Rak Tulkesh trapped inside it). 

There was also a major side-plot involving the cause of the Mourning and one of the character's backstory. Long story short, Lady Illmarrow made a deal with the Dark Powers of Ravenloft, who used the Mists of Ravenloft to cause the Mourning (the Mists of the Mourning are actually the Mists of Ravenloft). Lady Illmarrow made this deal because as the Last War stretched on, Rak Tulkesh was getting even more power, and almost had broken out of his prison. So, in order to prevent his escape, Lady Illmarrow killed everyone in Cyre, turned the country into a wasteland, and then kept her involvement in it a secret. (She didn't do this as some act of twisted mercy, either, it was purely self-preservation and for her own purposes. She wanted to become the Goddess of Death, and she couldn't do that if Rak Tulkesh destroyed the world.


*Spelljammer Campaign: *

Aberrant secrets,
Illithid, neogi, more. 
Deadly future's found. 



Spoiler: Explanation



The Illithids are coming back from the future where they destroyed the universe, but the players have a warning of a year. They have to plot to somehow stop this invasion of thousands of Illithid Nautiloids and Squid Ships, and so they resulted to Time Magic to give them more time. They eventually decided to trap them in a Crystal Sphere, using an Epic Level version of Imprisonment, and delay their conquering of the multiverse.


*Icewind Dale Campaign: *

End the endless rime, 
Netherese ruins and magic
Shall release us all.


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## Tun Kai Poh (Sep 21, 2021)

Haiku for the recent developments in Lancer: Battlegroup.

Enemy captains
play blood-soaked musical chairs
Flagships keep popping


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## uzirath (Sep 27, 2021)

@Tun Kai Poh, I'd love to hear an explanation of your latest (fabulous!) 5-word post:



Tun Kai Poh said:


> Grapes of Wrath, Parasocial Strawberries.


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## Hand of Evil (Sep 27, 2021)

NEVER, let that fool lead!


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## darjr (Sep 27, 2021)

uzirath said:


> @Tun Kai Poh, I'd love to hear an explanation of your latest (fabulous!) 5-word post:



Yea please!


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## Rob Kuntz (Sep 28, 2021)

"Rumble, mumble and run!"

Note:  Pretty much, as well, a silent slogan for the original play-testers of D&D.


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## Tun Kai Poh (Sep 28, 2021)

uzirath said:


> @Tun Kai Poh, I'd love to hear an explanation of your latest (fabulous!) 5-word post:



I ran As Good As A Feast, a Cthulhu Dark scenario written by Mo Holkar. It's a Kickstarter exclusive for backers of the Cthulhu Dark "big book" (which I reviewed a while ago).

The players of my online game (Danial and Doug) were members of an Oklahoma farming family fleeing the Dust Bowl drought crisis in 1935, hence the Grapes of Wrath reference. On their way to California, they visited the prosperous farm of their relative Uncle Jack in the foothills of Northern Arizona. But Jack had gone missing, and the sinister source of the bountiful crops lay beneath the nearby ghost town of Plenty. Alfred, the family patriarch, and his daughter Laura-Jane (who wants to become a movie star) set out in search of Uncle Jack.

The scenario is more creepy atmosphere and gradually growing dread than it is jump scares. Although Danial got a surprise jump scare when the thunderstorm fried his power supply just as we were getting to the climactic revelations, and had to log back in by smartphone!

At the very end, with both characters severely affected by hunger and the tempting visions of an eldritch entity named Edom, the investigators entered the abandoned gold mine where Jack had entered. After descending deep into the earth, they found a "stone bubble" that miners had uncovered long ago. Inside, Edom manifested gleaming fruits to tempt the hungry travellers. Doug's character Laura-Jane failed her Insight roll for the last time, reaching the maximum score, which meant that her mind was lost to the horrific knowledge of the Mythos.

But since Laura-Jane was more tempted by stardom than food, we played out the scene with the girl seeing the little strawberry people cheering her on, her adoring fans, asking her to come forward to accept her Academy Award... The player really leaned into it with great gusto, with Laura-Jane bowing and smiling and giving her acceptance speech to the strawberries. It was surreal and hilarious, and just like that, Laura-Jane was absorbed by the bubble and taken for Edom!

(Alfred rescued her later and they escaped, but it was still a great scene)


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## Older Beholder (Sep 30, 2021)

I thought I should give some commentary on the '15 fireball' post I made recently.

Our party chased a cultist through the city, upon capture he pulled out a necklace of fireballs with 15 beads (the DM said he rolled a d20 to see how many there were) and set them all off at once in an attempt to take us with him. 

We were given one action in order to save ourselves from the blast (Even at level 10, no one would have survived) 

I used 'meld into stone', but two other party members would have been toast if the cleric didn't manage to get off a banishment.


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## aramis erak (Sep 30, 2021)

To explain why I dropped sunday TOR for Tunnels and Trolls... TOR 2E broke the balance. When low-experience parties can curbstomp a full on Barrow Wight...

Tunnels and Trolls I can run with trivial levels of prep. Especially given the internet and the number of available free dungeon maps.


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## woefulhc (Oct 2, 2021)

darjr said:


> What game? What adventure? Sometimes I’m in the mood for super detailed room crawling.



Clearly I've been off the site for a while. I was running I Smell A Rat for the DFRPG game I have in a FLGS. It was initially intended as a one shot demo back in mid May. I had enough people ask if I was running the next week that agreed to do so. This Monday will be the second week we don't play since then. (I've got a job interview that starts after I would normally leave to get set up.)


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## Tun Kai Poh (Oct 10, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> Wed T2K: Misused Artillery. Random Encounter rearming.
> 
> Friday: Game cancelled; host's puppy arrived.



I want to know about this one!


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## aramis erak (Oct 15, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> (Wed T2K) Doc loses arm. Trouble found!




T's character, Bernard LaRousse, MD, got jumped by locals... he just barely got critted...  and joked, "it's be ironic if I lost the arm. Mind if I roll?" 
"Sure," says I.  
He rolls the d10 for the crit... 10... location arm, since he'd parried (but not enough)... and a 10 shows up. Which is, in fact, "Arm Severed."
He then runs for the others, while trying to stabilize himself.... and he botched the medical, but was close enough to get tot he team, who stabilized him, and then the intel Capitane Pascal (AdT) manages to clean and close the remaining arm, under his direction. (THe muggers motivation was violence, not his stuff, but they took his stuff for S&Gs anyway...


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## aramis erak (Oct 18, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> (T&T)
> Met a god; got hired.



The Gods in T&T are all simply high level wizards and/or rogues.  This was a sphinx of MR250 and Wizard level 20...
When asked "what kind of worshipers do you want?" his response was "Gullible."


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## TaranTheWanderer (Oct 18, 2021)

Umbran said:


> Five words is a bit _too_ restricted and condensed, really.
> 
> I think it'd be better as a haiku.



I agree...everything I've wanted to write on that thread turned out to be 6 words...so I wrote nothing...

PS, I love the idea behind this thread!


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## aramis erak (Oct 18, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> Wed T2K: Misused Artillery. Random Encounter rearming.
> 
> Friday: Game cancelled; host's puppy arrived.






Tun Kai Poh said:


> I want to know about this one!



Presuming the artillery...
I let them have a 155 after taking it away from those who used it against them. And 2 laser guided munitions.
They applied those to a local jail which has been taken over by the KGB for use as a POW camp. Since the Arty hit but the laser guidance went awry (double 1's), it scattered.... they tried again, dropped one gun tower.

Their next action was to aim for an ammo dump affiliated with the mobile arty from last week's (in character) Operation Reset.
En route, they had a random encounter with a roadside shop. Random roll came up positive for 155mm ammo.... which they traded some AK74 and ammo for. Plus 17 rations worth of veggies.

As for the puppy? Friday dune on hold until hosting player can work out situation with roommate.


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## Tun Kai Poh (Oct 30, 2021)

Tun Kai Poh said:


> (Cthulhu Deep Green one-shot)
> Investigator-on-Investigator cannibalism attempt.






Marc_C said:


> WOW! that needs more details in the other thread!



I was running FOOD OF THE GODS by Justin Ford, the introductory scenario included in CTHULHU DEEP GREEN, a terrific investigative conspiracy horror ttrpg based on Cthulhu Dark. It's kind of a "Delta Green with the serial numbers filed off."



Spoiler: Food of the Gods



The investigators were trying to track down a missing member of their conspiracy who had vanished after looking into a local chef and her unusual recipes. After an encounter with the monstrous chef, our agents failed to apprehend the suspect but recovered a small food tin with the label AMBROSIA: CARCOSA CANNING 1924.

In true player character fashion, Tahani Rho, the auditor, had to taste it.

As per safety protocols, they rented a ghost kitchen and locked all the exits. Eleanor Harper the army medic was on overwatch duty, while Kim Ross the baker with ghost experience was guarding the door.

Tahani turned on the cameraphone, henceforth referred to as "the mukbang camera," and began the recording with narration as she opened the tin. It reeked of honey and fish and just thinking of eating it was mouth-watering.

Ambrosia, you see, is a golden caviar-like substance harvested from Lake Hali, beside distant Carcosa, home of the King in Yellow, and whoever consumes it will find the order of nature overturned. Predator becomes prey. Everything, down to the smallest creatures, will instinctively want to eat the imbiber of the ambrosia.

Tahani lifted a spoon with a single pearl and tasted it. It was overpowering and heavenly. And suddenly everyone in the room had to resist the urge to devour her. For Kim, Tahani was fragrant bread.

Eleanor watched as Kim jumped Tahani and started biting her arm with great gusto. Eleanor applied a police baton to crowbar the two apart and tried to knock Kim back. While she was doing that, half a dozen cockroaches flew onto Tahani and tried to eat her. Her gut twisted. The gut fauna rose up in rebellion against the order of nature and began eating her intestinal lining. Tahani, thinking fast, grabbed an insect spray and blasted her own body to repel the roaches. The moment she was free of them, she threw the ambrosia into the freezer.

Then she gave the roaches one more drenching with the bug spray. Seeing Kim down and Eleanor still in control of her higher faculties, Tahani ran to the emergency shower to drown herself in water and soap, ridding herself of the smell and ending the war in her gut.

Only then, miserable as a soaked cat, her clothes and hijab absolutely ruined, did she stalk over to turn off the cameraphone.

Worst mukbang video ever.



Cthulhu Deep Green can be found here: CTHULHU DEEP GREEN by Dissonance


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## John Dallman (Oct 30, 2021)

John Dallman said:


> Stole and burned cardboard crown.



This is an Unknown Armies campaign, where we're night-shift supermarket workers in a store beset by increasing weirdness, The leader of the night shift in Grocery has suddenly become an important person, for no detectable reason: the owners of the store chain are wanting to be photographed with him, policemen come and ask his advice about cases ... it's quite weird. After a bit of divination magic, we learned a ritual that would find us the "Crown of the King" which proved to be quite literal: a carboard crown in his locker in the staff break-room. We learned the combination by simply carefully watching him dial it in, and removed the crown when nobody was around. 

He came after us, with henchmen. Nobody had any obvious weapons, so when they caught up to me, I was able to face him down, simply because he was most unwilling for his henchbeings to know why they were regarding him as their leader. It's embarrassing, and would probably break his hold over them. After he stormed off, we bought a disposable barbecue, and once the night shift was over, used it to incinerate his crown. We don't know if this has done anything much to him yet.


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## John Dallman (Nov 5, 2021)

John Dallman said:


> Kobalds kill scamming shaman themselves.



It's a Pathfinder scenario, being run under GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. A small tribe of kobalds had a shaman, who had them worshipping a an ivory idol "of a demon," or so he claimed - it seemed rather unconvincing. It had been stolen by a tribe of mites, and the kobalds half-believed that they were all going to die because of that. The PCs recovered the idol (the mites and their various giant vermin were casualties in that process) and took it back to the kobalds, intending to remonstrate with them about demon-worship. We were surprised when the kobald leader smashed the idol and then led his warriors in killing the shaman, but it did mean we didn't wipe them out.


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## uzirath (Nov 6, 2021)

darkbard said:


> GM went missing: fell asleep!!!



I’m curious about this one. Did the GM fail to show up? Or, did they vanish mid-game? Like falling asleep during a virtual session?


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## overgeeked (Nov 6, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> “No rails? We’re totally lost.”



In my West Marches game one group seems to be filled with modern players who simply have not had enough opportunities to actually make meaningful choices in their gaming careers. They are simply at a loss that I’m not force feeding them “content” and making it blinking neon sign obvious where they should go next. Hint: it’s West Marches. You go and do what you want. That’s the point.


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## Tun Kai Poh (Nov 6, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> In my West Marches game one group seems to be filled with modern players who simply have not had enough opportunities to actually make meaningful choices in their gaming careers. They are simply at a loss that I’m not force feeding them “content” and making it blinking neon sign obvious where they should go next. Hint: it’s West Marches. You go and do what you want. That’s the point.



It takes a while for sandbox play to really register. Some people don't know it's what they like until they're deep into it. And some people don't know it's what they don't want until they get into it, either.


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## overgeeked (Nov 6, 2021)

Tun Kai Poh said:


> It takes a while for sandbox play to really register. Some people don't know it's what they like until they're deep into it. And some people don't know it's what they don't want until they get into it, either.



To be fair, the game setup wasn’t a surprise. They knew it was West Marches when they signed up. I explained to them what it meant and that it was going to be a character-driven game. It’s not that they didn’t know what to expect, it’s that they’ve no experience (or no recent experience) with meaningful choices or choices having consequences in a game before. So they’re flailing kinda hard. It takes awhile for brand new gamers to register that they really can try anything. These are not new gamers. They’ve just played with railroading DMs so long they’ve forgotten how to play without a railroading DM.


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## overgeeked (Nov 7, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> Punji stick pit traps incoming.



I like to have different types of play in the games I run. If you want dungeons, there's dungeons. If you want domain and kingdom and politics, there's that, too. If you want Fantasy !@#$ing Vietnam, it's there. One of my West Marches groups is realizing they've accidentally stumbled into the FFV section of the world. "What's the Mekong Delta?" LOL.


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## aramis erak (Nov 15, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> Two died in character creation.



Sounds like Traveller... and in the old school mode.


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## overgeeked (Nov 22, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> Rage quit over XP awards.



Yep. So that happened. People need to relax and remember it's a game. Seriously. It's a game. Calm down. We're (mostly) adults sitting around a table or at our desks pretending to be elves and dwarfs and wizards. It's play pretend with dice. Take things down a notch or five.


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## aramis erak (Nov 28, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> Yep. So that happened. People need to relax and remember it's a game. Seriously. It's a game. Calm down. We're (mostly) adults sitting around a table or at our desks pretending to be elves and dwarfs and wizards. It's play pretend with dice. Take things down a notch or five.



If the players were expecting by-the-rules, and the GM totally ignored RAW without prior warning, that's worth getting a little annoyed with.


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## overgeeked (Nov 29, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> If the players were expecting by-the-rules, and the GM totally ignored RAW without prior warning, that's worth getting a little annoyed with.



“A little annoyed,” yes. Profanity-laced yelling rage quit mid game, no.

However, in this case, I was explicit up front how XP would be handled. They decided to wait more than two months into the game to freak out about it.


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## aramis erak (Dec 2, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> Wed T2K 4E:
> Heliflopter fixed; escaped Poland. Barely.




They split the party... Part A went north, seeking out wrecs to strip. Part B went south, same goal.
Part C stayed at the helicopter.
A had radioactive fallout from being downwind of a tac-nuc. (Out of LOS due to terrain, but in the fallout.) Eli got radiation sickness...
B had a run in with an ambush... BTR70 + 3 × PCs troops... I used 2× PC's + ½×NPCs... and missed every shot. Both the HMGs broke. They managed to suppress most of the NPCs ... it was a Soviet Army Herofest... Many Soviet Heros that day...
Part C found some walkie talkies and a still sealed cup-of-noodles... (the things you find on the scrounging tables...)

They managed to get the sky King pieced into barely flyable shape... just before a random encounter resulted in a bunch of tanks rolling their way... they got hit, a PC died from an AP round from a 125mm tank cannon... as did severa NPCs... I took mercy upon them and let them roll to hold it together in the autorotation ... and they did... and they autorotated down to a safe not-quite-a-crash, got it fixed enough to fly, barely, and then they flew like demons to Ramstein AFB... and a ticket home on day 14 after last orders...

Campaign end by party agreement.
Net casualties of 6 PCs: 1 dead, 3 missing a limb each. 
The Survivors: 

Lt  Bernard LaRousse MD USN-MC - missing an arm at the shoulder
2Lt Eli Jensen USMC (Infantry), unmaimed.
Capitan Helen Pascal, AdT SigInt. Missing an arm
PFC Diega Diego, USMC. Missing a leg.
CPL Jackie, USAR Inf. 
Cpt Amilé Dupan, USMC Intel. Arm blown off by a 125mm off a T80... while in an in-flight helicopter.
The chopper was in barely flyable shape... 
They also managed to get 20-some NPCs out. A Sea King can carry 26 troops, so they were a bit overloaded space wise, but well under Max Tskr-Off weight limit. They abandoned all their loot, too... save the spares in case of needing repairs. 

4 months of play, covering 14 days... and most of day 14 spent on a cargo plane heading for a badly fractured "Home"...
(Capitan Pascal is presumed to have gotten home via other means)


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## overgeeked (Dec 5, 2021)

“Player caught cheating; rage quit.”

Yep. A player decided to give himself a few hundred extra gold at character creation and when I asked about it he rage quit. At least this one was between sessions.


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## overgeeked (Dec 9, 2021)

"Talk to each other."

"No."

(Sigh.)

There is a group in my West Marches game that has two "leaders", re: people who want to get their way but don't want to put in any effort in getting the rest of the group (much less each other) to do the thing. So I have one player saying "let's go left", another player saying "let's go right", and all of them looking at me to jump in and decide for them. Sorry, no. You all have to work it out. If you want to convince the rest of the group to follow you, then you have to, you know, actually convince the rest of the group to follow you.


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## glass (Dec 13, 2021)

I feel like these two in particular could do with a little further explanation:



ART! said:


> No combat due to pickaxe.






Jack Daniel said:


> 17/19ths of the party survived!


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## Jack Daniel (Dec 13, 2021)

glass said:


> I feel like these two in particular could do with a little further explanation:
> 
> 
> Jack Daniel said:
> ...




Well it's really no mystery. There were nineteen party members exploring the ground floor of a Chaotic Evil temple — dungeon level A1, the Palatial Fortress of the Church of Bitter Doom — and only two of them died. (Given this party's track-record, that's actually pretty stellar.) Poor Tommy Twofinger the halfling burglar and one of the party's 0-level men-at-arms (a cowardly, stuttering youth by the name of Lerm who aspired to someday give up mercenary work and become a chef) got ganked by gnolls in round 1 when the monsters won the initiative.

Well, actually it was rather the fault of Oulek Gro-Grak, a boisterous NPC orc warrior who decided to smash a sealed ceramic urn full of copper coins in a seemingly-deserted goblin-barracks, little knowing that all the goblins and hobgoblins and gnolls lurking in nearby chambers would hear this and come running with weapons drawn.

All's well that ends well, though: despite very nearly being waylaid by over two-dozen territorial berserkers on the way back to the village, the party was able to bring Tommy and Lerm's battered corpses back to the Starshrine of Nereus Oceanus and have them resurrected by the shrine-priest (1,500 silver pieces vanishing into the aether as a sacrifice to the divinities for bringing the two hapless mortals back). But the mysterious Starshrines of Shade Isle (rumor has it that there are seven in total, one for each of the major gods) can only revive a dead soul once per individual per shrine, so Tommy and Lerm don't have any more second chances until the party explores more of the Isle and discovers the shrines dedicated to the other deities…


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## glass (Dec 14, 2021)

Jack Daniel said:


> Well it's really no mystery. There were nineteen party members exploring the ground floor of a Chaotic Evil temple



In that case, the only mystery is how 19 party members is at all manageable at the table! I assume there are not 19+GM actual players? Do the players play multiple characters? Or are you counting followers/hireling/henchpeople as "party members" (which I guess amounts to much the same thing)?

_
glass.


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## Jack Daniel (Dec 14, 2021)

glass said:


> In that case, the only mystery is how 19 party members is at all manageable at the table! I assume there are not 19+GM actual players? Do the players play multiple characters? Or are you counting followers/hireling/henchpeople as "party members" (which I guess amounts to much the same thing)?




Yes, the total count includes NPCs. Unusual for a session, I had five of my regular players cancel shortly before game-time, so there were only two _players_ present that day. Which meant that two player characters (a 2nd level fighter and a 1st level hobbit) were _leading_ the expedition. They had with them five NPC allies (two more 1st level hobbits, a 1st level orc, a 1st level elf, and a 1st level magic-user); five 0-level NPC followers (three men-at-arms, one porter, and one torchbearer); and they were joining forces with a seven-member rival adventuring party (all 1st- or 0-levels: 1 orc, 1 elf, 1 dwarf, 1 hobbit, 1 thief, 2 men-at-arms).


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## AverageMojito (Dec 17, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> Organic skill challenges are awesome.



Can you tell us a bit about the skill challenges?


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## overgeeked (Dec 17, 2021)

AverageMojito said:


> Can you tell us a bit about the skill challenges?



Sure. What do you want to know?


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## AverageMojito (Dec 17, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> Sure. What do you want to know?



I noticed you used the word organic. If you care to give us an example from the session as opposed to another you've seen that felt, well, not organic.

I like the concept and often find myself in trouble when I try to create "skill challenges" for my personal games. So, seeing successful ones is always nice.


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## overgeeked (Dec 17, 2021)

AverageMojito said:


> I noticed you used the word organic. If you care to give us an example from the session as opposed to another you've seen that felt, well, not organic.
> 
> I like the concept and often find myself in trouble when I try to create "skill challenges" for my personal games. So, seeing successful ones is always nice.



Gotcha. The skill challenge in question is from a 5E West Marches game I'm running. One of the groups randomly decided to set an ambush, so I used my incredibly loose skill challenge house rules for that. The more they described doing things (sometimes skill checks sometimes not) to push the outcome in their favor, the better the checks (when made), the more positive the outcome when they finally sprang the ambush. I called it organic because the players just decided to set an ambush and started describing all the stuff they wanted to do, adding all the details they thought were relevant, with barely a word from me. As they went I asked them to make a few rolls. To me, that's organic. As opposed to me writing up a whole thing about this or that skill working or not working for this kind of prolonged, multiple roll event and slapping that framework into the game. Then basically me pushing a skill challenge on the group. I'm not a fan of that.

For the longest time I was stuck on grokking skill challenges and how to use them in games. What finally flipped the switch was to stop thinking about the rules, just think about the narrative. That's all that matters. Fiction first, rules a distant second...if at all. Is it something that's so easy or obvious that it should be automatic? Then there's no roll. Is it something that can be done in one roll? Then it's not a skill challenge. Is it something that would logically require several rolls over a longer time line? Then it's a skill challenge. Is it a one-sided thing, like setting an ambush? Then the rolls are for how well it's set up and how good the outcome will eventually be. Is it a moving, dynamic thing, like a chase through city streets? Then the rolls on both sides move the sides closer to their goals.

You're having a chase through the streets. The PC's goal is to catch someone who's running away and they have a slight head start. The NPC's goal is to get away. Okay...what are you (the PCs) doing? Describe it. They describe their actions and give me details while I describe the NPC's actions and give details like knocking over an apple cart or cutting through an alley. If the check is good, it helps get them closer to their target (reduce the number of successes required to achieve their goal). If the check is bad, it pushes the target further away (increases the number of successes required to achieve their goal).


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## John Dallman (Dec 17, 2021)

John Dallman said:


> Magic made fortress capture easy.



We're playing the Pathfinder Adventure Path "Kingmaker" under GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. The key spells were Missile Shield and Walk on Air, which made attacking the Stag Lord's fort quite practical with only three PCs and a henchman. Brought the Stag Lord back for trial alive, albeit pretty badly injured.


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## AverageMojito (Dec 18, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> I called it organic because the players just decided to set an ambush and started describing all the stuff they wanted to do, adding all the details they thought were relevant, with barely a word from me. As they went I asked them to make a few rolls. To me, that's organic. As opposed to me writing up a whole thing about this or that skill working or not working for this kind of prolonged, multiple roll event and slapping that framework into the game. Then basically me pushing a skill challenge on the group. I'm not a fan of that.



Got it. Organic as in sprouting from the gameplay itself is how I ended up using "skill challenges" in my games, too.

I always fell short when I tried to write pre-planned SC, mostly because, as you said, I ended up pushing the whole thing on the group, which felt, well, not organic (and here I come full circle lol).


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## J.Quondam (Dec 18, 2021)

_"Flying dinosaurs are stealing underpants."_

Really, @ART!, you can't just drop something like that on us, and then leave it unexplained.


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## glass (Dec 19, 2021)

glass said:


> Finished early due to successful diplomacy



My character is a Paladin/Bard, who is pretty good at diplomacy (for his level). Several other party members are also not too shabby. Plus, IIRC I rolled two natural 20s, and nothing below a 17 on diplomacy checks all session.

The AP we were playing had us trying to get a local crime boss to hand over incriminating letters. The DC to do so straight off the bat was very high, otherwise we got dumped into a dungeon below his office (Jabba style) and had to fight our way out. Presumably had we successfully done that, he would have been impressed and given us what we were after, but we hit the ridiculously high DC so we did not need to. Thus a dungeon that would probably have lasted the full session was skipped.

There was an improvised encounter on the way home, which we also talked down with diplomacy.

Then there was a short pause while the GM (with help from the players-mostly me) set up for a chase. Diplmacy was no help here, and thanks to ACP I am pretty bad at the skills that were relevant, but thankfully the other PCs were better.

After that, if was about 9.15 (we normally finish around 10pm). The GM said something like "I know it's early, but you're well past what I prepped for this evening so if you don't mind we will call it there".

_
glass.


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## billd91 (Dec 25, 2021)

Party frustratingly fought off dragon.
It was, ultimately, a win for them. They all survived and the dragon fled. But, with the dragon mostly flying, the melee heavy party had a hard time bringing their big guns to bear. 
The dragon in question is an adult black dragon noted for being formidable with some magic (chapter 6 Age of Worms) but the party is large so I gave her a set of black abishai helpers. Between her greater invisibility and the abishai’s darkness spells and ALL of them flying, I was able to impose a lot of disadvantage on attacks, hit from rapidly changing directions, the rogue was unable to get more than one sneak attack, the paladin couldn’t catch the dragon, the battlemaster got in exactly one round of attacks so he burned all of his dice and his action surge at once and wasn‘t able to use sentinel on her, it was crazy.
And fun…at least for me.

Word to the wise. If you optimize for melee, eventually the DM is going to throw flyers at you. Be prepared.


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## overgeeked (Jan 25, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> Low stat roll, rage quit.



Yep. I had a 5E player roll two stats lower than 10. A 9 and a 7. They said, and I quote, "This character is unplayable."

I was polite enough to wait until after they screamed and yelled and rage quit before I laughed in their face.


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## aramis erak (Jan 25, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> Yep. I had a 5E player roll two stats lower than 10. A 9 and a 7. They said, and I quote, "This character is unplayable."
> 
> I was polite enough to wait until after they screamed and yelled and rage quit before I laughed in their face.



I'm one of those who won't play a D&D campaign where rolled atts (in the sense of rolling for how many points or direct rolling of atts)  are used; atts are too important under the 3.X and 5.X game engines, at least at the levels I'll play/run.
It was an issue recently; one of the guys showed up with a character with two 18's and a 16...
Mind you, I'll use the Redric method - random assignment of points - provided the points are kept limited.

I make exceptions for Traveller and T2K... but I'll note that T2K 4E, rolled atts can be WAY overpowering. Had one who rolled AABB. She was very much more the main character than the much more interesting one who started with CACB ... (A=d12 B=D10, C=d8 D=d6)...
Then again, that latter lose none to aging, and had half a dozen specializations outside concept.

No sunday game this week. I wasn't ready to run anything, nor was SA.


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## overgeeked (Jan 25, 2022)

aramis erak said:


> I'm one of those who won't play a D&D campaign where rolled atts (in the sense of rolling for how many points or direct rolling of atts)  are used; atts are too important under the 3.X and 5.X game engines, at least at the levels I'll play/run.
> It was an issue recently; one of the guys showed up with a character with two 18's and a 16...
> Mind you, I'll use the Redric method - random assignment of points - provided the points are kept limited.
> 
> ...



To each their own. Rolling stats is a great way to avoid power gamers and their builds. So I insist on it. I also have players roll in front of me, so no shenanigans like super high stats. "Of course I rolled it." If they'd have rolled all below 10, sure, that's unplayable. Some characters are just going to be below average. That's what average means. I don't enjoy the superhero style of fantasy where everyone's amazing and super at everything. I prefer old-school play where characters are cheap and easily replaced. You rolled bad? Okay, do the best you can with that. You might surprise yourself. But just quitting out of hand because of two stats lower than 10. That's...special.


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## aramis erak (Jan 25, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> To each their own. Rolling stats is a great way to avoid power gamers and their builds. So I insist on it. I also have players roll in front of me, so no shenanigans like super high stats. "Of course I rolled it." If they'd have rolled all below 10, sure, that's unplayable. Some characters are just going to be below average. That's what average means. I don't enjoy the superhero style of fantasy where everyone's amazing and super at everything. I prefer old-school play where characters are cheap and easily replaced. You rolled bad? Okay, do the best you can with that. You might surprise yourself. But just quitting out of hand because of two stats lower than 10. That's...special.



When I play D&D, I am doing so specifically because it's medieval super heroes... in fact, OE dubs 8th level fighters as "Superhero"...

When I want medieval non-supers, I don't do D&D. I've a dozen other fantasy games with very different feels that I honestly prefer.


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## overgeeked (Jan 25, 2022)

aramis erak said:


> When I play D&D, I am doing so specifically because it's medieval super heroes...



Again, to each their own. I'm more a fan of old school zero-to-hero, challenging encounters, life is cheap, sword-and-sorcery, and the like. If I wanted superheroes I'd play an actual superheroes game. They do superheroes infinitely better than D&D ever could.


aramis erak said:


> in fact, OE dubs 8th level fighters as "Superhero"...



Sure. But what we mean by superhero now is not what they meant by superhero then. Clearly.


aramis erak said:


> When I want medieval non-supers, I don't do D&D. I've a dozen other fantasy games with very different feels that I honestly prefer.



Cool.


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## John Dallman (Jan 25, 2022)

"Ogre magi release many undead"

Some of you may remember the old-time module Tegel Manor. It's been sitting in the DM's world since it was first published; last night some ogre magi let out undead from it, while we were defending the nearby village.


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## Tun Kai Poh (Jan 30, 2022)

Tun Kai Poh said:


> (Blades in the Dark)
> Centuralia Club? Burn it down!



To expand on this, things were going really well. The alarm had not been raised, nobles were being conned, two enemy leaders had been drugged unconscious, and they had gotten their hands on blackmail material, including secret plans to restore the world's shattered sun.

Then the crew's Whisper met the ghost of a murdered servant girl. She had been caught stealing leftover food to feed her family, and was sacrificed to feed the murderous urges of one of the leaders of the Circle of Flame.

Enraged, the Whisper and the Leech set a controlled fire in one of the Club's guest suites, climbing curtains and wallpaper to eventually set the entire wing ablaze.

So much for a quiet heist...


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## glass (Feb 6, 2022)

glass said:


> Fought Baku, Vulnudeamons, each other.



The vulnudaemons were a fairly straight forward fight, with the (dead) baku who was a former ally animating and joining the fight.

Prior to that, the party got hit with a _song of discord_ effect, and one of the two PCs* failed his will save. The PC in question then failed the first five percentile rolls to act normally in a row (and six out of eight in total), so threw a considerable amount of magical firepower at his colleague (who for his part was trying to take him down without doing any permanent damage, with limited success - he may not have been able to make a percentile roll, but his saves were red hot).

The discordant PC was a sorcerer//summoner, so when he finally did regain his senses for a round he instructed his eidolon to ignore his commands to attack the other PC. And then contradicted himself when he fluffed the roll the following round. Which gave me an interesting decision to make regarding how the eidolon interpretted the conflicting instructions. In the end, I decided to give him a fairly easy Wis check, which luckily he passed.

_
glass.

(* To account for the fact that there are only two PCs, they are gestalt and have slightly better stats and a few other bennies compared with normal PCs.)


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## aramis erak (Feb 21, 2022)

Thunderfoot said:


> The end of my marriage.



Character's marriage or player's marriage? And if character, how?


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## Thunderfoot (Feb 21, 2022)

aramis erak said:


> Character's marriage or player's marriage? And if character, how?



my marriage...IRL  it was...messy


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## aramis erak (Feb 22, 2022)

Thunderfoot said:


> my marriage...IRL  it was...messy



Condolences.


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## Thunderfoot (Feb 22, 2022)

aramis erak said:


> Condolences.



Thanks man, it means a lot.  Especially from you (she was also on my playtest team).


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## uzirath (Mar 11, 2022)

John Dallman said:


> Vicious turtle killed by staring.




I definitely want to hear more about this one! Petrifying gaze? Something more subtle?


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## John Dallman (Mar 11, 2022)

uzirath said:


> I definitely want to hear more about this one! Petrifying gaze? Something more subtle?



This is the Pathfinder Adventure Path "Kingmaker", being run under *GURPS Dungeon Fantasy*. There's a very vicious and heavily armoured turtle, apparently known as "Old Crackjaw" who we found in a large pool beside a lake. After he'd crippled our best fighter, we pulled back from the pool edge, and the turtle stayed on the surface watching us. Our magician went invisible and used _Lightning Stare_ to kill it. 

It sank to the bottom of the pool and we left it there for half an hour to make sure it was dead before we hauled it out and searched for loot.


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## glass (Mar 14, 2022)

glass said:


> _Thursday:_ Will o' wisps are pain.



Continuing our _Shattered Star_ PF1 campaign, we spent almost the entire session fighting six varient will o' wisps.

My character ended up unconcious (and one hp from actual death when I was stabilised), and a couple of other ended up on single-digit hp, but we just about made it through. If I had died, that would have been all kinds of interesting, as we are kinda in the middle of nowhere and my character is the only one who can cast _heal_, _raise dead_, _restoration_, and _teleport_ (we have some scrolls that a couple of the other could potentially UMD, but scrolls are tricky and in any case we do not have _raise dead_).



glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Sail down river, approach dam.



The Sunday sessions are a it of a side-gig; a one- or two-player game were we tend to play one-offs or short sequences of adventures, and often use them to playtest homebrew stuff - starting with a set of boosts (that I think I have mentioned before) to allow one or two PCs to take on normal adventures. Previously, these had been for PF1, but last night was our first attempt at a PF2 adaptation. So far it seem to be working OK.

_ETA:_


glass said:


> _I remembered:_ "Megaton Strike is hyperbole, right?"



Megaton Strike is an Inventor class feat; an attack which does a little extra damage but does not level entire cities (which is handy, as my character was stading considerably closer than minimum safe distance for a MT blast).

_
glass.


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## aramis erak (Mar 18, 2022)

aramis erak said:


> Wed
> Recon imperiallly reconned. Cybertroopers called.



Black clad, Cyber enhanced, formerly Clonetrooper, Stormtrooper commandos. 
Gida (PC Twilek Survivalist) was doing a recon for Dartz (Trandoshan Skip Tracer)... but due to Cas' (Corellian Smuggler) Obligation, an impie is looking for Cas, but notes GIda's also wanted in connection with the same breakout... so follows Gida. Gida  successfully hides, then sneaks up upon the Imperial Agent... and fails to pickpocket them... resulting in getting shot and stunned. (And, while out, force-fed a tracker).

the two wookies, taking npc IG-100-A1 with, set out to find Gida, and roll a despair... they arrive back to find Cas Stunned, the bridge locked from the inside, and the ship powering for takeoff... they take out the bridge controls after they triggered a failed slicing protocol that locks out the computer network. They try to force the doors. It takes them a while - the agent calls for backup - black clad cyberneticized storm troopers.... big fight,... PC's win, and the agent fled.


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## glass (Mar 18, 2022)

This one probably warrants a little more explanation:


glass said:


> _Thursday:_ Uncancelled due to illness. Mummies.



"Uncancelled" was hyperbole - I would have the only one missing and with the Thursday groups we go ahead with just one person missing. Anyway, the reason I was supposed to be absent was that I had a dance exam coming up, and there was an extra practice session on Thursday night. Due to my being ill* on and off for the last couple of weeks, I was unable to make either of the last two regular classes or the extra practice, and therefore had to withdraw from the exam (thankfully my partner will be able to dance with one of the teachers' husbands, so I am not letting her down to badly. On the bright side, it did mean I could show up (on Discord) for our regular  Pathfinder game.

We fought a dozen ordinary mummies, who were a bit of a speedbump. And one souped up mummy cleric, who was a bit scarier but not too much to handle. This was in our PF1 _Shattered Star_ campaign.

_
glass.

* Nothing too serious, but thoroughly unpleasant.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 20, 2022)

hawkeyefan said:


> Spire:
> The knight’s lost his mind.




Wanted to elaborate on this one. It’s kind of been a long time in the making.

Our first 8 or so sessions culminated in the PCs executing an assault on The Sisters, one of the three major crime factions in the district of Red Row. They killed two of the three eponymous sisters, effectively crippling their operation. In the process, the PC Knight (think more like a member of a biker gang rather than an honorable paladin type) had his optimistic and altruistic squire help out. Unfortunately, as a result of play, the squire was critically injured, and the knight incurred secere fallout to his Shadow resistance (this is his anonymity). I gave the player the choice: he could be arrested and the squire would get the medical attention he needed to live OR the knight could escape and would be wanted by the law but the squire would die. The player opted for the latter, so the poor optimistic squire died.

Being wanted means it’s difficult for the knight to even make his way about the city. So he has to make Stealth rolls to avoid being noticed. As a result, he’s incurred a good deal of Mind Stress. This led to a Mind Fallout of “Permanently Weird”. We determined that his dead squire appears to him and talks to him, and he responds. He can suppress this but it costs more Mind Stress to do so for a scene.

In our most recent session, the Knight again took Mind Fallout. This time we went with “Memory Holes” which means that the character now has significant blank stretches of which he has no recollection. It seems that the squire may actually be sliding into the driver’s seat from time to time. Or at least, the player thinks that may be the case.

So interesting to watch all of this happen to the character, and to have it all be the result of the play process. None of us expected this at the start of play. The player is absolutely loving it and is leaning into it with gusto, and the other players are, as well.


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## glass (Mar 21, 2022)

glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Finished first PF2 Exemplars playtest.



I have mentioned _Examplars_ before in this thread, although possibly not by name. It is the set of rules we use for single- and two-player games (plus a GM). Originally written for PF1, and recently adapted for PF2. The idea is for groups with two or only one PC to take on adventures written for a full-sized group; a lesser examplar is roughly equivalent of two PCs, whereas a true exemplar is roughly equivalent of four.

We have been using the PF1 one version for a while, and (after a bit of evolution) it works pretty well. The PF2 version has only been used for one short adventure, and still needs a bit of tweaking, but so far things look OK....

_
glass.


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## John Dallman (Mar 24, 2022)

John Dallman said:


> This is the Pathfinder Adventure Path "Kingmaker", being run under *GURPS Dungeon Fantasy*.





John Dallman said:


> Gnomes, Hermit, Puma, defective Dragon.



I have the impression we aren't doing the AP in the expected order. We met a cartographic expedition of nine gnomes, and helped them get a wagon out of a stream. They were looking for a troll lair we'd heard of, so we joined forces, on the grounds that a family of trolls would likely just eat them. The hermit was homicidal, until we subdued and exorcised him; his puma was put down as a man-eater. We'd had directions to the trolls from a fairly stupid giant, so it was no great surprise that they weren't there; instead we found something vaguely like a green dragon, but with no magic apart from its breath weapon. which we killed.

"Bringing vague plausibility to fantasyland!"


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## Dr Magister (Mar 27, 2022)

Dr Magister said:


> Scavenging wire to buy promethium.




I'm running a Necromunda game using Everywhen. It's a sandbox game where the PCs are the founding members of a new gang (they chose to be House Escher). They've just taken over a homestead out in the wastes as their hideout, and they spent a chunk of last game scavenging through the area looking for stuff they can sell back in town to buy fuel for their generator. This included stripping the copper wire and pipes out of some ruined habs, and having a face-off with some Van Saar gangers doing much the same thing.


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## glass (Mar 28, 2022)

glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Started running first adventure path.



As in the one published at the start of 3.0, that did not have an official name (although it is commonly known as the _Sunless Citadel_ AP or the _Path of Ashardalon_. There are arguably earlier publications that could be considered Adventure Paths (_The Enemy Within_ springs to mind), but this was the first one called such at the time.

I am adapting it on the fly to PF1. So far, the party have Wild Empathied a bunch of dire rats,  avoided falling in a pit trap, and negatiated with a kobold queen.

_
glass.


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## overgeeked (Mar 30, 2022)

“One damage. Time to sleep.”

The daring and brave fighter took one damage in a fight and is now insisting on a long rest. He has hit dice to spend and can short rest, but nah. It’s long rest or nothing. This is 5E D&D.


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## overgeeked (Apr 7, 2022)

"Noble isn't peasant mind control."

One of my West Marches players really seems to think that having the noble background is peasant mind control. In making it explicit that this isn't the case, the player got quite upset. I'm not sure this will result in a rage quit. But it might. He was so pissed. Even proper magical mind control will not allow suicide orders and the like. No king is going to be convinced to give you their crown and kingdom no matter how many natural 20s you roll on social skills. No one of lower status than your noble is going to just hand you their entire life. Come on.


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## kenada (Apr 10, 2022)

“today’s session was mixed success”

The actual adventure stuff went really well. The barbarian was delighted to find a jewel-encrusted axe that she can use (even though hit anything with it will halve its value, it looks awesome, and that’s what matters). The part that was a mixed success is I tested out some mechanics for my homebrew system. They worked, but they worked a little too well. I wanted to explore whether I could leverage clocks and degrees of success in conflicts without drifting the system towards Story Now. No, not really. I suspected as much but wanted to see.

I still have a method I can use for skill checks (2d6+mods versus standard difficulty 8), but I’m going to need to work out another method to handle conflicts. I’m also willing to fall back on my reaction table, but I’d really like something to structure things a bit more that works as well for negotiations as it does for evasion and pursuit (since the core is based on B/X, and I want to keep is exploration and encounter play pretty similar).


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## John Dallman (Apr 10, 2022)

John Dallman said:


> True trolls just won't die!





John Dallman said:


> Teamwork Triumphs by Thumping Trolls.



These are actually separate campaigns. It's mere coincidence that both regular fantasy games I'm in had significant troll encounters last week. The AD&D1e party were tracking some ogres, who appear to have been eaten by True Trolls, but said trolls regenerate fire damage. That problem isn't solved yet. The GURPS Dungeon Fantasy party met Pathfinder 1e trolls who do die of fire damage.


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## glass (Apr 11, 2022)

glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Online map different from key map.



This was actually towards the end of the session (prior to that, they had mostly just been fighting some more goblins). I am running _The Sunless Citadel_ (the 3.0 version, although I am convering it on the fly to PF1). The PCs had more or less cleared the top level, and had found a set of stairs heading down to the lower level. The map I was showing the PCs (and gradually uncovering as they explored) was one I found online - until this point it had been identical to the one in the adventure (albeit prettier). But the stairs are not on the key map.

I do not know if the stairs were added in the official 5e version, or by the person who stuck the map up online, but now I need to figure out where it comes out. Fortunately, as I said it was towards the end of the session so I have a week to figure it out....

_EDIT: I looked into it. The stair were added by the person who tweaked the map, and they go _up_. So a bit of a celestial rewind will be needed._

_
glass.


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## John Dallman (Apr 12, 2022)

South by Southwest said:


> Do tell! How'd it happen?



We were fighting at front and rear of the party. At the front, our cavalier, paladin, and ranger were taking turns fighting three True Trolls. Only two of them could get at us at a time, because we weren't coming out of the 10' tunnel into a large cave. At the rear, outdoors, another True Troll had appeared, the Paladin's talking horse had warned us, and our magic-user, the ranger/cleric and the cavalier's squire were working on that. They had the advantage of range to work with. All this is AD&D1e; the players and GM have all been playing for a _long_ time. 

True Trolls are weird: If you hit them with cutting or impaling weapons, bits of them come off. Those bits fight independently, but want to join back onto the biggest part, which retains troll shape. 

Up at the front, the two trolls we were currently fighting were in a total of nine pieces. They take damage from area effects individually. So a _Flame Strike_ wiped out one of them except for a small bit ("Wee Jimmy Krankie Troll") and trimmed the other one back a lot. That second one then succumbed to _Dust of Paralysis_ from the cleric's sling shot, and stayed that way as its remaining parts joined onto it. 

That meant the cavalier, paladin, and ranger could then gang up on the third troll at that end, which went down quite quickly. Then it was a matter of fetching torches from the fire the squire had lit before the rear troll had shown up, dicing the two mobile trolls very fine and burning the pieces. The paralysed troll got slow-roasted over the fire.


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## kenada (Apr 17, 2022)

"thief has a death wish"

There were two times during the session where I thought the thief was going to get everyone killed. The first time, he kept wanting to sneak down into the statue garden to get a better look at the “iron bull” (a D&D gorgon). Even after a robed figure came out (which was a classical gorgon), he still seemed keen on getting closer. The barbarian talked him down from his crazy plan, and they eventually withdrew after the figure went back inside.

The second time was when they were breaking camp. The morning after camping, the party found evidence that tigers had been snooping around their camp during the night. The thief decided he wanted to kill* the tigers for his goal that session (to fell a fell beast), so he threw a ration to them to lure them out and intended to shoot them with his bow. On their turn, the barbarian lead the horses and wagon (where the thief was sitting) away while the tigers were distracted.


* I’m running a B/X-based homebrew system. The thief has 15 hp. The tigers have 6 HD. The party also had a barbarian and a cleric. Everyone was 4th level, and the system makes characters more capable than their B/X counterparts, but it still would have been ugly. The first scenario would have almost certainly ended with a thief statue added to the garden.


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## glass (Apr 18, 2022)

glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Fight bugbear. Talk down others.



Following on from the previous session, the PCs climbed down to the lower level of The Sunless Citadel, and fought a bugbear hunter (plus a pair of skeletons and a pair of twig blights). They then intimidated their way past some goblins, and used diplomacy to get past some bugbear "gardeners".

At the end of the session, they fought four goblins, and there was a hilarious note that they would call for help, but it would only come if the fight lasts _six rounds_. Needless to say, four goblins do not last six rounds against even level-2 PCs.

_
glass.


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## John Dallman (Apr 19, 2022)

John Dallman said:


> Found village of civilized Medusas.



Having dealt with the truetrolls, we carried on looking for inhabitants of the area that Landcentre (the country we're working for) is going to annex. It's 130km by 150km, so this is the fairly quick scan, finding large monsters and settlements. In dense woodlands, we spotted a cockatrice, and a little later, noticed that it was chained to the tree it was sitting in. We decided to err on the side of friendliness, and called out hellos, and fairly soon a couple of human-sized creatures in robes came along. 

They introduced themselves as gorgons (this is correct as per Greek mythology, "Medusa" was the personal name of one of the gorgon sisters), and admitted that they knew of Landcentre and visited its cities to trade on occasion. They're clearly capable of decent disguise, since they do have snakes for hair. 

We explained that Landcentre was willing to take civilised people as citizens, and the requirements are fairly simple: pay the taxes, which aren't huge, and send your young people for military training. They asked for time to think about it, and invited us to their village. They can indeed turn people to stone, which they do voluntarily, by looking at you and willing it; they're immune to their own (and each other's) gaze. They can do this permanently, or temporarily: if it's going to be temporary, there's a saving throw penalty. There are ten adult gorgons, and about twenty daughters. We did not ask how they are fertilised; by this time we were being _extremely_ polite and wanting to get away. We think Landcentre will be happy to have them as citizens, but being in the company of so many of them is hard on the nerves.


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## BookTenTiger (Apr 20, 2022)

Umbran said:


> Session Zero and character generation.



How'd Session Zero go? I love the start of a new campaign! Are you using 5e? Were there any surprises in what the players or DM wanted or decided on?


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## Umbran (Apr 21, 2022)

BookTenTiger said:


> How'd Session Zero go? I love the start of a new campaign! Are you using 5e? Were there any surprises in what the players or DM wanted or decided on?




This is with my regular group that's been mostly on hiatus since the start of the pandemic.  I'm the GM, and I've not been running much in all this time, so I am trying to pull out some of the stops.

We're playing 5e, _The Wilds Beyond the Witchlight_ (player's request), using the Beadle & Grimm's Silver Edition.  I'm hoping to enhance with additional material from DM's Guild, and some dedicated background music on Syrinscape.   

Since this is the same group I've played with for over a decade, many things in a usual Session Zero about preferences and style didn't require much discussion.  We established some ground rules on Charm magics, and so on.

None of the choices were what I'd call surprising, knowing the players - they aren't playing too far out of their wheelhouses.  I have...

One Warforged Artificer, intending to go Battlesmith.
One Fairy warlock, with a _Djinni_ patron, who is not sure how he ended up in that position.
One Fighter, likely to go Battlemaster, likely halfling - think a small Fallstaff with a pair of swords.
One Warforged Bard, expecting College of Lore - the character was built to be the repository of a culture's lore, but now that culture seems to be... gone.


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## overgeeked (Apr 23, 2022)

“Tell me and you move.”

One of my West Marches groups bogged down and got stuck in a loop. Planning and talking and second guessing instead of doing anything. They started getting frustrated with the situation and each other. I thought it was RP but it was spilling over. Had to remind them it’s a game and to actually do anything in the game they need to tell me they’re doing it, not just talk about it or plan on it or discuss it. “We should go over there” is not the same as “we go over there.” That distinction may not mean much to some, but I’m running an old-school game, so characters die and the world is hostile. If I move characters at the suggestion of or planning to stage, I get a lot of dead PCs and players who argue they didn’t actually say they did the thing. So, tell me and you move.


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## aramis erak (Apr 26, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> Ah. Good luck.



Thurs: ER
Fri: surgery
Sat endoscopy
Sun & Mon 



Spoiler: TMI



The Quest for Poo


 Tues why still in pain?


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## overgeeked (Apr 26, 2022)

aramis erak said:


> Thurs: ER
> Fri: surgery
> Sat endoscopy
> Sun & Mon
> ...



My wife had her gallbladder removed. It was the suck.


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## glass (Apr 28, 2022)

glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Climactic fight left on knife-edge.



The final fight overran, but finally ended with both PCs unconscious but alive and stable. The enemies did not finish them off, because they wanted to forcibly convert them to the worship of an evil tree (as they themselves had been forcibly converted). Fortunately for the PCs, the cultists underestimated how quickly one of the PCs would come around. He was able to heal himself a little, attempt to heal his colleague, and retreive his weapon before being discovered.



glass said:


> _Wednesday:_ One player won final fight.



We do not normally have a session on Wednesdays, but all three of us happened to be online at the same time so we had a slightly impromptu text-chat-only session (well, I updated the map as people moved, but I am not sure anyone else was looking at it. Unfortunately, despite feedin the other PC a potion of CLW, it was insufficient to get her back on her feet so Jonah was had to fight the two remaining villains solo. Fortunately, neither of them had many hp (1st level NPCs) so one good hit took them down. In exchange, the PC took one hit, which he was just about able to tank.

The other PC's player was present through out, and actually rolled initiative, but since the first attempt to revive him failed and there was no time for a second attempt until the fight was over, he was only able to shout type encouragement.

Anyway, with a bit of wrap-up via email and Discord, winning that fight marked the end of _The Sunless Citadel_. Next sunday we start on the _Savage Tide_ adventure path (with the same group, but I am a player this time). The plan is to alternate the two APs on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

_
glass.


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## aramis erak (Apr 28, 2022)

aramis erak said:


> Wed Boardgames: low energy reserves



Wed SW group met in part; played TTR:E, TTR:L, and TTR:NY...
I won NY, was third in London and Europe.


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## glass (May 2, 2022)

glass said:


> Sunday: Started _Savage Tide_, as player.



Fairly self-explanatory. This temporarily replaces the _Path of Ashardalon/Sunless Citadel_ AP that I had been running, and which had just wrapped up chapter 1 - the plan is to alternate on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

Both are being played in PF1. There are two players and two characters; the characters are gestalt, with a couple of other extra benefits to make up for the fact their are only two of us.

_
glass.


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## overgeeked (May 2, 2022)

“Looks dangerous. Let’s go home.”

For the love of…

If you’re playing an adventure game, make an adventurer. Otherwise you’re just wasting everyone’s time.


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## John Dallman (May 4, 2022)

John Dallman said:


> Troll's Necklace of Missiles exploded.



Still playing the Pathfinder AP Kingmaker, under *GURPS Dungeon Fantasy*, working through the troll base in the forest. We'd got as far as the last two trolls: one with lots of rock crystals growing through its skin that was in their larder, and the leader, who had magical armour, weapon, and a Necklace of Missiles. We found that out when he threw one at us; our wizard promptly got ingenious about setting the rest of it off while he was still wearing it. 

As the wizard said, "I'd like to point out that when I started this plan, I was further from you!" The troll survived , although pretty scorched. We did likewise, although we were less scorched, since we were further away. The problem was the ceiling, since we weren't in the nice solid dwarf-built part of the base, but the rather under-engineered spaces the trolls had dug for themselves. Nobody died of the collapse, since it was earth, not rocks, although the necromancer had to be dug out, and it was easier to make a shaft to the surface to get the loot out than re-make the tunnels.


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## glass (May 7, 2022)

glass said:


> _Thursday:_ Only one returning previous character.



We started a CoC adventure that the GM wrote themselves, as a short "palate cleanser" between chapters of Shattered Star. It was a sequel of sorts to a previous adventure run on the same basis. Unfortunately, my character died in the previous installment, as did one of the others'. Another guy could not find his previous character sheet and decided to go with a pregen, and another had an unexpected visit from the inlaws and could not make the session - since we had not started the current adventure, it was simpler to just have him join us next week.

All of which meant only one character from the previous adventure was actually present for the continuing exploits of Flint's Detective Agency. We should have two next week.

(The original version of the quoted post was slightly hyperbolic, until I remembered "Micky the Nose" did in fact turn up.)

_
glass.


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## glass (May 9, 2022)

glass said:


> _Sunday:_ No session. GM at cinema.



This occured as predicted, although not without the other player posting "I assume we are on for 7pm as normal" a couple of hours before....

_
glass.


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## TaranTheWanderer (May 9, 2022)

TaranTheWanderer said:


> Vehicle Deploys Smoking Wizard Kite



This one seemed worth explaining.  We are doing The Fall of Elturel and were riding demonic, soul-powered, Mad Max-themed vehicles through a mountainous hellscape.

Suddenly, we were beset upon by fiendish Arokakra who were dropping rocks on us.

Not sure what to do, we came up with a plan to levitate our newly acquired '_smoking bottle_' above the vehicles by a rope while we drove, making it more difficult for the Arokokra to hit us with the rocks.   It never occurred to us to cast the spell on the actual bottle so the wizard, instead, cast it on himself while holding the bottle in his hand.

We drove at break-neck speeds through a mountain pass with our wizard being pulled along behind us like a smoking kite.  The Arokokra, unable to mark our vehicle through the smoke,  were forced fly down and land on our vehicle.  They tried to cut the rope but the wizard blindly cast _Grease_ on the car, sending fiends flying everywhere.

We barely made it out alive.


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## Dr Magister (May 9, 2022)

Dr Magister said:


> Eschers nearly eaten by ripperjacks.




In my on-going sandbox Necromunda game, the PCs' House Escher gangers went exploring the domes around their holestead. They encountered outlaws and a Delaque hermit (although all they saw of him was his booby traps and the red dot of his laser sight), before almost getting eaten alive by a ripperjack swarm.


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## Piratecat (May 10, 2022)

"My cantrip killed two demons."

Okay, this was my favorite moment of D&D in AGES. I'm playing a 13th lvl sorcerer; I recently got the warcaster feat but it hadn't come up yet. We were in the underdark and getting harassed by a glabrezu lord, a vrock, and a greater vrock. My damage rolls had been sucking but we'd hammered on the demons enough that they were low on hp but hanging in there. The barbarian gets power word stunned (bye, rage!) and we're all struggling with status effects.

But on my turn I twinned a firebolt cantrip against the glabrezu and vrock, rolled well, and actually managed to kill both demons in one shot. As we cheer, the greater vrock takes its turn and flies past me to target the squishy bard. Warcaster kicks in, I can use a spell for an Opportunity Attack, and I successfully slap him on the back of the head with a _Disintegrate_. Result? Greasy smear.

One round. Three dead demons. Yasssssssss.


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## John Dallman (May 10, 2022)

Sacrosanct said:


> John Dallman said:
> 
> 
> > Priests being murdered; war looms.
> ...



No, but a game in a rational fantasy world where things have consequences:

Dave Waring's Avalon is a very long-running setting. I think he first ran it in 1976. Religions work in an unusual way, because the power that a god can grant to priests is entirely determined by the number of worshippers. There's a table for this, and it is understood within the setting. 

One religion dominates, Mammon, a god of fair trade, money, and the like. Something like 80% of the sapient population follow it, and I doubt any other religion has 2%. The Mammonites have so many worshippers that they can rent out power to other churches: clerics who have achieved levels beyond what their church's worshippers can support can purchase support for their higher level spells. Obviously, Mammon being a god of money and trade is necessary for this to work. The main condition of renting  power is that renters must not preach against Mammon. 

The most-populated country, Greensward, is a collection of quarrelling petty-kingdoms, where local lords have a lot of control over local priests. The lords have managed to keep the development of magic under their control, so there are few magicians, and those are loyal to the system. The other human-populated country, Landcentre, was started by people who were fed up with Greensward and is rather freer. It encourages people to become adventurers, and bases its defence on the "Breston Army" which has over a thousand 10th+ level adventurers. 

There has been a civil war going on in Greensward for a couple of years. The PCs in the campaign strand I'm  playing in have just discovered that one of the sides, led by the Church of Set, has been killing all the local priests they can get their hands on. This is unacceptable on many grounds, but the unusual one is that it threatens the power of the Church of Mammon. The population of Greensward are likely to drift away from the church with no priests around, especially if priests of Set are trying to move in. If Mammon's worshippers are significantly thinned out, Mammon will lose the ability to rent out so much power, and other religions will suffer. 

War looms.


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## Yoh-01 (May 12, 2022)

_Swords of the Serpentine:_

"Megalomaniac ambitions, apocalyptically destructive means."


I've finally managed to start another game of Serpentine, with a group of 3 players this time. After a loooooong discussion, they've settled with a Bookhounds of Eversink theme for their adventure. So, we've got an old sentinel-warrior who fights with a cane who's only in search of new freinds. We've also got a monster hunter with a real talent at sorcery (one of the most powerful in the city actually) involving blades, curses, transformation and necromancy, and who wants to be obscenely rich. Then we've got an apprentice theologian, actually another sorcerer who has discovered the sphere of worship, and who dreams of becoming the highest priest of Denari who has ever lived.


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## overgeeked (May 13, 2022)

"More enemies? But we nova'ed!"

LOL. Yep. The PCs on the pirate ship nova'ed at the first group they encountered...and were completely shocked at the idea that they couldn't get an eight-hour rest...or even a one-hour rest...while still on a ship literally filled with enemies.


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## aramis erak (May 13, 2022)

Wed Night... only 3 of the players showed, but we got a LOT done... 9  scenes. Including Dartz kicking Boba Fett in the head to prevent him from "fixing" the Boonta Classic, and Gida rallying the (largely culturally Mandalorian) audience against Boba..


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## Voidmoji (May 14, 2022)

"Marvel has made a mistake."


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## kenada (May 15, 2022)

“thief climbs building, then falls”

The party is back in town after finding out last session that there are nasty things in the hex they want to clear. They came back to deposit their treasure, hire some people to help them out, and talk to their sage friend. While they were at the market, the barbarian decides to ask around about rumors. She rolls *Connect (CHA)* and gets a partial success. I roll on my complications table and get “it attracts trouble”. She hears a rumor that there are raiders in the north, then someone accosts her suggesting she forgets she hears that. The thief manages to deescalate the situation, but in the confusion, the guy gets away. This prompts the thief to see if he can spot the guy from a high vantage.

The thief looks around for something tall (because he wants to climb shear surfaces this session), then scales it. He rolls *Exert (STR)* and gets a partial success. I roll on my table again and get “it subverts your intent” this time. He makes it to the top, but everyone sees the weird guy climbing up the building and starts pointing. They also get a priest to try to talk him out of jumping. The thief could still look for his guy, but he’s too embarrassed. The thief goes to climb back down and fails his check this time. His class is a member of the expert group, so he has an ability called Expertise that lets him add another 1d6 to a skill check once per turn (every 10-minutes, effectively), but he chooses not to use it and falls instead. The barbarian catches him, but they both end up splitting the falling damage.

So the thief climbed the building, then fell off it. I guess he should have listened to the priest after all.


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## John Dallman (May 15, 2022)

Only four of six players could make it for the first session of _Neutral Currents_, a new strand of our occult WWII GURPS campaign. In England, early March 1940, a female pilot/race driver in the ATA, an Imperial Airways planning manager, an engineer at Short Brothers and an RAF reserve officer were recruited by an intelligence organisation (not sure which one yet) and told to set up the capability to visit neutral countries under Imperial Airways cover, to find and block German "unconventional" operations. 

We got ourselves an Empire-class flying boat, learned to operate it, and did a shakedown flight to Foynes, Ireland to deliver mail. We encountered a senior Irish Army Intelligence officer, Dan Bryan, who gave us a parcel for "C. Liddell" in Whitehall. We did some magic to check if it was dangerous, but it didn't seem to be, so we flew back to Poole, and went to London to report and deliver the package. The addressee turned out to be Cecil Liddell, who ran the Irish desk at MI5, and split the contents (a large ham, and a bottle of Irish whiskey) with Guy Liddell, his brother who was head of counter-intelligence. They were amused to learn we were working for Dr Jones (R, V.), since he's with their organisational rival, MI6. 

Reporting to Jones, he was likewise amused, and told us to plan for trips to Norway, and to the Eastern Mediterranean, since that will become much less accessible if Italy joins the war.


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## glass (May 16, 2022)

glass said:


> _Thursday:_ It was the whisky and lights.



We were investigating what had caused both a posh boy and a "mob" (or possibly "swarm" or "horde") of homeless people (turn our a "mob" was one) to go temporarily nuts and start attacking people. We learned the previous week that dodgy whisky was probably involved. But the posh boy's attack had coincided with a stage show involving flashing red lights. I had speculated that they might also have been involved, but I ccould not see how the homeless guys had seen them.

We interviewed the homeless person, and it turned out that the last thing he remembers seeing was red break lights on cars, which when viewed through a metal fence gave a flashing effect. It was nice to be right for once...



glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Upgrades were not enough. TPK.



I think I have mentioned before, our Sunday game is just two players and a GM (I am one of the players for _Savage Tide_ and the GM for _The Sunless Citadel_/PoA, and we are alternating chapter-by-chapter). We are playing the adventures essentially unaltered (apart from making the minor amendments necessary to use them in PF1), and making the adaptations on the PC side to account for there only being two of them.

The adaptations seem to have worked pretty well at higher levels. But first and second level PCs are really fragile, and our adaptations do not appear to enough to combat that: As well as last night's debacle, we had a near TPK at the end of _The Sunless Citadel_.

Ironically, this is our second go at starting _Savage Tide_. The first was over a decade ago; I do not really remember much about it other than we did not get super far*. But one thing I did remember was that there was an underground room or tunnel somewhere full of ravenous zombies, which are more or less like normal zombies except that they have a bite attack which does tripple damage on a crit). The reason I remember that is that they they inflicted such a crit on my first character and took him straight from full hp to dead - although that time the rest of the party survives. Guess which creatures inflicted last night's TPK!

_
glass.

* I _think_ we did most but not quite all of the first chapter before we stalled out due to real-life pressures.


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## glass (May 19, 2022)

glass said:


> _Thursday:_ Ran away from nasty undead.



Back to our PF2 game: The party ran into a nasty undead creature. Partly because it was two levels above the party, but mostly because they decided to press on into the wilderness when they were running on fumes.

_
glass.


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## glass (May 23, 2022)

glass said:


> _Sunday:_ New character beat undead easily.



After last weekend's TPK, the GM offered us divine intervention to get back on our feet. The other player/character accepted. But since the divinity in question was Olidammara and my first PC was a Paladin of Aventurnus (and because I had already started coming up with replacement character ideas), I declined.

So my new character and the other guy's old character fought the same four ravenous zombies, then two more, and then two more and a heucuva. My character did not take a single point of damage this time around. What a difference a week makes! _EDIT: The other character took some, but never went down._

_
glass.


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## J.Quondam (May 23, 2022)

Hey @Fenris-77 , you can't just casually toss out the phrase "combat parsnip" and leave that unexplained.


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## Fenris-77 (May 23, 2022)

J.Quondam said:


> Hey @Fenris-77 , you can't just casually toss out the phrase "combat parsnip" and leave that unexplained.



There's only so much I can do with a five word limit. We were fetching a disgraced Alchemist, specializing in agrarian applications, from his hidey-hole in a backwater village. He was holed up in his own private orchard filled with enormous vegetables and guarded by animated scarecrows. In an effort to not ruffle his feathers my knight went mano-e-mano with the scarecrows armed with a 5-foot parsnip, aiming for disarming and subdual, whilst sneakier members of the party snuck up to his hut to reason with him. Parsnip combat was managed in fine form and with the élan one would expect of a Knight. I kept the parsnip.


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## overgeeked (Jun 5, 2022)

"How'd they hear us scream?"

Sigh. Another group in my West Marches game seems to be completely unaware that sound travels. Yes, Virginia, monsters 50-60 feet away from you can absolutely hear when you start screaming and shouting.


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## John Dallman (Jun 5, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> Sigh. Another group in my West Marches game seems to be completely unaware that sound travels.



"But none of us have phones!"


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## glass (Jun 5, 2022)

glass said:


> _Saturday:_ Birthday session. Homebrew class works!



I am now officially slightly older. In celebration of that, I spent pretty much all day yesterday playing. I wanted to custom write something, but having failed to do that in any sort of reaonable timeframe, I instead ran an adventure from an old Dungeon Magazine (_Muster for Morach Tor_ from #144).

Much beer was consumed, Indian takeaway was eaten, and a good time was had by all. But the bast thing about it from my point of view was that one of the players elected to play one of my homebrew classes - and it seemed to workout pretty well.



glass said:


> _Sunday:_ No session for various reasons.



Partly due to playing all day Saturday with one of the guys. Partly due to the other guy not being at home for some reason.

_
glass.


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## South by Southwest (Jun 5, 2022)

Fenris-77 said:


> Defeated the Green Parsnip Knight.



The, um...the _*what,*_ now?? I would love to take some time to unpack the origins and meaning of this one.


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## Fenris-77 (Jun 5, 2022)

South by Southwest said:


> The, um...the _*what,*_ now?? I would love to take some time to unpack the origins and meaning of this one.



Well, it started off with a very standard Arthurian moment. My knight had just won a small tournament when a mysterious Green Knight showed up and offered battle, which I naturally accepted. The Green Knight handily put me on my back, but I managed to knock off his helmet, revealing him to be some sort of vegetable-man, a parsnip in this case. He then fled and we pursued. Eventually I slew him in glorious hand to hand combat


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## South by Southwest (Jun 6, 2022)

Fenris-77 said:


> Well, it started off with a very standard Arthurian moment. My knight had just won a small tournament when a mysterious Green Knight showed up and offered battle, which I naturally accepted. The Green Knight handily put me on my back, but I managed to knock off his helmet, revealing him to be some sort of vegetable-man, a parsnip in this case. He then fled and we pursued. Eventually I slew him in glorious hand to hand combat



Fabulous.

See, this is one of the things I truly love about D&D: we take all sorts of ancient, august, beloved myths and legends and then mix them in with wild stuff like Parsnip People and then >boom!< we've got adventure moments we'll remember for years.


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## overgeeked (Jun 7, 2022)

"No wangrod defense for you."

Legit had one of my players lay into another player and when called on it she busted out the wangrod defense (aka "it's what my character would do!"). No, sorry. That don't fly. Apologize or leave. Okay, bye.

Either I have the worst luck possible or my standards are way too high.


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## niklinna (Jun 8, 2022)

Fenris-77 said:


> Well, it started off with a very standard Arthurian moment. My knight had just won a small tournament when a mysterious Green Knight showed up and offered battle, which I naturally accepted. The Green Knight handily put me on my back, but I managed to knock off his helmet, revealing him to be some sort of vegetable-man, a parsnip in this case. He then fled and we pursued. Eventually I slew him in glorious hand to hand combat


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## overgeeked (Jun 11, 2022)

"They bravely ran away, away..."

First time I've ever had a D&D group run from a fight. Telegraphed that there were two groups of enemies. The players knew how many in at least one group. Decided to charge the group. The enemies screamed and call for backup. The PCs tore through half the first batch before the second batch showed up. So the PCs ran. This is mostly because they went nova and blew all their spells taking down the first group. Then when the second showed up they bolted. There might be hope for these players yet.


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## Yoh-01 (Jun 11, 2022)

_Swords of the Serpentine: _Undead, ghosts, and a seagull.

Session 2 and conclusion of our Bookhounds of Eversink's first adventure. They get into that old noble's manor, who is sick too. Our priest/scholar/sorcerer sways the guard with his worship sphere.
They manage to find a secret passage to the labyrinthine vaults and to find their way thanks to Spirit sight, led by where the veil with the Underworld is thinner.
On their way, they meet a zombie (with a seagull in his belly), who gets to scare the hell out of the priest. However our sorceress uses her Necromancy sphere to control the creature and uses a corruption point to turn him into her lackey (and she fails and internalized corruption roll, resulting in serpent-slit eyes).
Finally, they get to that empty chamber (full of ghosts chanting actually), and they book they were looking for at the center.
An hollowed in the form of a gondolier for the undead. Our priest sways the ghosts around to bring them back to the cult of Denari (and turns half a dozen of them into his fan-ghosts), but is badly swayed in return by the Hollowed. So our duellist jumps into the action and maims the creature badly, sending it back to nothingness.
They get the book and give it back to the University library. They're paid and they request access to another heretical book, Demis Gallenus's _An Anatomy of Gangrene_, a book giving some theoretical insights on how to cure corruption. They also keep feeding the seagull and keep the zombie hidden somewhere.

To conclude, this adventure was meant to be a one-off, but we had so much fun that this group really wants to keep playing. That won't be before September though, time for my third group to start and my one-2-one adventure to resume.


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## Mezuka (Jun 11, 2022)

The *Dune* campaign was a success. Our goal to become a Major House in control of a planet was achieved last night. At first we thought we would be able to take control of the planet our minor house is located on. Long story short we ended up in control of a different planet after the last two sessions, of intrigue at the Emperor's court. We covered a lot of ground in just 8 sessions of play. Kudos to our GM. Well played.


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## overgeeked (Jun 11, 2022)

Mezuka said:


> The *Dune* campaign was a success. Our goal to become a Major House in control of a planet was achieved last night. At first we thought we would be able to take control of the planet our minor house is located on. Long story short we ended up in control of a different planet after the last two sessions, of intrigue at the Emperor's court. We covered a lot of ground in just 8 sessions of play. Kudos to our GM. Well played.



Any chance you can give some details about the game? I haven’t gotten to play this one yet but am very intrigued. All the subsystems seem a bit complex but the agent vs architect play sounds really interesting.


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## Mezuka (Jun 11, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> Any chance you can give some details about the game? I haven’t gotten to play this one yet but am very intrigued. All the subsystems seem a bit complex but the agent vs architect play sounds really interesting.




What I liked the most is that as a noble of the house you don't need to participate in all the action. Instead, you send people to do the work for you, they become your character for the duration of that mission.


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## glass (Jun 12, 2022)

glass said:


> _Thursday:_ Tentacle monsters in the dark.



Continuing our CoC adventure, we traced the dodgy whiskey to an illegal distillery hidden in an old mine. Unfortunately, we got locked in and had to take a long route through the darkness to get out. We set upon by tentacle-faced gribblies which shut down our electric lights (although luckily one PC had a lighter). We managed to kill them, but at a non trivial cost in both sanity and health.



glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Curse your sudden inevitable betrayal.



Our current regular GM is still away, so the two of us remaining in the Sunday group decided to have a one-shot solo game. For brevity, we decided to do a PFS scenario (we diced off for player and GM and I ended up the former), and picked _Rivalry's End_. It feature a notorious former member of the Pathfinder Society who shows up in quite a few scenarios; this turned out to be the adventure wherein he becomes "former", so his turning on us was not terribly surprising....

_
glass.


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## aramis erak (Jun 13, 2022)

aramis erak said:


> Talisman Adventures
> Princess Petunia's quest begins... FIGHT!






aramis erak said:


> Sun Talisman Adventures:
> Princess Reposed. Thieves stupid; terminated.




The Quest.... The late princess Petunia asks them to put her coronet back upon her head... this entails travel to Sepulchre, defeating the guards, and then not stealing the crown once the trapped thieves are relieved of it.

As for the stupid? They tried to steal from the vampire necromancer on the way out of the crypt.... this resulted in their unscheduled termination.



Mezuka said:


> It is a fun system.



Yep. A bit silly, too.
Sprites in the 1m range...
My current party:

Stonecutter, Minotaur Prophet
Krazimir, Vampire Necromancer
Welic, Sprite Warrior with 2-hand specialty.
I've one "complaint" - advancement is too quick. They just hit second, and the Skeleton follower is going to get boosted. THis is two sessions in. And XP only for fights that got one or more down below half LP.

In Re Tales of the Dungeon: It would be nice if the new ancestries included the expanded CGen materials, either in or as a web enhancement (like was done with Core), and the new classes had starting equipment listed...


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## aramis erak (Jun 13, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> Any chance you can give some details about the game? I haven’t gotten to play this one yet but am very intrigued. All the subsystems seem a bit complex but the agent vs architect play sounds really interesting.



The subsystems are mostly just variations on the core extended task system. It's just variations on what counts as weapons, terrain, and proximity. Agent/Architect isn't called out in the rulebook, but is still very present.
The basics of 2d20 for Dune:
All tasks are rolled on 2 to 6 d20's...
2 are free; 3 more can be purchased with momentum or threat, and one by help.
You use a Drive and a skill  summed to set the target number. If you have an applicable focus for the skill, your focus number is the same as the skill; if not, the focus number is 1.
Your helper's provided die uses THEIR drive and skill, not yours.
Each die is compared to the TN and the focus number. If roll <= FN, 2 successes on that die; if FN < Roll <= TN, one succeess. If roll = 20, complication. All bought dice checked. 
Total successes reduced by difficulty; if still in the positive, success, and the result is also how much momentum is there.
Momentum has other uses, too, such as extra answers on info tasks, extra effect on extended tasks...

If you want to be eased into the mechanics, the adventure in Heirs to Dune is really quite good. It's really a mini-campaign...


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## overgeeked (Jun 13, 2022)

aramis erak said:


> The subsystems are mostly just variations on the core extended task system. It's just variations on what counts as weapons, terrain, and proximity. Agent/Architect isn't called out in the rulebook, but is still very present.
> The basics of 2d20 for Dune:
> All tasks are rolled on 2 to 6 d20's...
> 2 are free; 3 more can be purchased with momentum or threat, and one by help.
> ...



Thanks. I have read the book. I just haven't gotten to play it. I was hoping from some actual play insights.


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## aramis erak (Jun 14, 2022)

overgeeked said:


> Thanks. I have read the book. I just haven't gotten to play it. I was hoping from some actual play insights.



Should have made that more clear. 
I have to be careful, because a lot of my play of Dune has been under an NDA... and the tested materials are not yet out.

As a GM, remember that most things in game are just traits. Even your guards are just traits. Traits that you can use either as modifiers to a character's abilities, or be expanded into game stats. 
Remember the 7 uses for traits (4 are explicit, two are buried in the equipment mechanics, and one is in the complication specific):

D+1 per rank
D-1 per rank
Usually allowed task prohibited
Usually prohibited task allowed
+1 effect per rank
-1 effect per rank
Complication range expands by 1.
Remember that Complications and Advantages are nothing more than traits with only half the outcomes disallowed... but if they make sense in the story state, you CAN use them for positives - do this sparingly.

As with Fate or Cortex Plus/Prime, a good bit of system mastery is knowing when a character needs to make a trait (F= temporary aspect; CP = asset or complication). Remember that a temporary trait can be used in the same way as a Fate Compel - but without the payoff.

The other vital warning: make certain your players' drive statements are broad enough to be useful and narrow enough to limit them a bit. I've seen a lot of players shoot for too narrow; a few (mostly those prone to rules lawyering) go WAY too broad. This is really the key thematic enforcement element in the rules.

You can use players' drive statements for "defining what I want to see dramatically" if your players are good at putting that in, but you're better off asking explicitly.. 

Nearly every conflict can be reduced to a single roll if desired, or expanded to, at the least, a race to finish on extended tasks. It's a matter of taste and story state.

Be generous with regaining Determination. Generous, not pushover.  Same for applicability of traits, especially scene and story specific traits.

Don't hoard your threat-pile. SOme players will feel like you went too easy on them if you end with a huge pile.
Don't feed the snowball - when you notice they're running on zero momentum carried, don't add to the complication range, and find excuses to not apply any increases of it you've used.
Keep complication traits short lived for the most part. If not short lived, fairly narrow. (Sucking Chest Wound is neither short lived nor narrow. But I did have a player suggest that as a triple during a defense roll botch...) If players suggest ones that fit, all the better - trim them back to suitable.

The book's lack of mention of architect mode will become a major issue in some later materials. Be aware of it, and remember that the warfare and espionage both work really well in architect mode. 

(for others: In Architect mode, traits are used as pieces in a conflict; the rolls are made by the creating/owning/controlling character. In agent mode, you turn a trait into one or more minor NPCs, using their stats. Both are supported by the rules, but the semi-open playtest had a much clearer direct explication)

One thing that worked really well for me was apparently irrelevant to current conflict scene PC's being allowed to trait build by use of information and/or remote traits. The fremen handing a supply of bats to the warmaster, for example, in a straightup hunt for harkonnen saboteurs. The BG using the voice at start to create the trait "Focused on task" for the house troops for that mission.
The Doc having "previously" given the men exertion supplements so that they don't suffer electrolyte losses while on the search. Yes, flashbacks for generated traits... Or even for a unit of goons in mufti hidden at the starport.


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## Yoh-01 (Jun 15, 2022)

_Swords of the Serpentine: _Prepping up a cookbook heist

Session 1 for our Bookhounds for Hire, from the same clan. Our heroes, a teenage sorceress, a young ex-mercenary-turned sentinel,  a non-binary thief and a drug-addict sentinel own a herbalist's shop called The Spry Linden with a secret library inside.
It's Fall, with the festival of the Running Leaves about to start, with its many competitions and races, like the gondola race.

They receive the visit of a servant from the House Farina, an influent Mercanti family who rose to power by importing from the shores of the Serpentine dry food made from wheat with my funny forms (basically, pasta). They are given the mission to recover a cookbook: _Aunt Farina's Tasty Pots_ which would contain a recipe that could secure the Farina's victory on the "Eel in the pot", a famous culinary contest for the best eel bisque with its rouille.

To cut a long story short, Donatella Farina, head of the family, suspects an old lover of hers, Romero Ferrati, an influent noble, to be in possession of this book that actually belongs to her family. Our heroes negotiate their fees, then go and see a contact at the Land Registry to get the Ferrati's manor's plans. They bribe the clerk with a painted winged seahorse miniature.

Finally, they discuss how to infiltrate the house during the week-long reception held at the old manor. The thief even spends a Scurrilous Luck point to find and steal some Architect Guild's clothes in at a laundry opposite the Land registry office.

And that's the end of the session.

In this group, there's a player who is brand new to tabletop RPGs, and she told us that the simplicity of the system and of the open-ended aspect of the setting was really helping her to get into the game and that she had a great time. The three others did as well by the way (and so did I, but that is quite obvious actually).

Next session in one week.


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## thullgrim (Jun 16, 2022)

Wednesday WHFRP 4e
A Pink Horror manifests and…


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## glass (Jun 16, 2022)

glass said:


> _Thursday:_ Session cancelled due to two holidays.



Quite simple this one. Our standard practice for our Thursday groups is to go ahead if one player is missing (with someone else controlling their character), but cancel for two. And we had two players on holiday (since we are all online these days anyway, one was going to join us but then his family organised a bit meal out for tonight).

_
glass.


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## Gradine (Jun 16, 2022)

Gradine said:


> What's in the box? Law



Specifically, the base of Rod of Seven Parts


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## John Dallman (Jun 20, 2022)

John Dallman said:


> Elegant Harpy becoming opera singer.



It's taken a bit of work to set that up. Decades of real time ago, a bard character of mine staged opera productions, including creating a cycle of four operas based on the story of Beren and Lúthien, which is part of Tolkien's _The Silmarillion_. He founded a bardic university in the world of Aelos, and since then has mostly been in retirement. 

Last year the Monday night party, exploring "The Caverns of Adamant" in the world of Avalon, met a most unusual harpy, Elise. She's highly intelligent, well-mannered and generally a rather nice person. She is regarded as a monster by most people she meets, so she's pretty shy. She enjoyed perching on the roofs of opera houses and listening to the music, but when the orbital strikes destroyed most of the cities of Avalon, she could not do that any more. She asked us if there were any opera houses in accessible other worlds. The character I'm playing in that campaign has no connection with the bardic university, but was willing to do some investigating. During 2022, the party have been up and down the road that passes closest to the Caverns at least five times, but have always been in too much of a hurry to take a day off to climb the hills to get there and tell Elise. Tonight we actually got to do that. She decided to go to the university, rather than either of the commercial opera houses, and I'm rather pleased this has happened by fair means.


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## overgeeked (Jun 21, 2022)

"No one's free from consequences."

This seems to be a reoccurring theme with my players. Somehow they think they can do whatever they want and that any kind of logical consequences are me being a jerk as the referee. No, sorry. If you get caught stealing in town, the guards will have a word with you. If you light a building on fire there is a good chance the fire spreads.


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## thullgrim (Jun 22, 2022)

My Friday game: New Game! New Setting! Excited. 

So for my Friday game I’ll be running a savage pathfinder hack for Symbaroum.  I’m super excited for the setting and I’m pretty happy with Savage Pathfinder so we gonna give that a shot.  I committed to running the Copper Crown so basically three adventures. We’ll see how it goes.


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## glass (Jun 22, 2022)

glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Whole session played in rounds.



The end of the previous session (which was two weeks previously due to the GM going on holiday), we accidentally sounded the alarm in the dungeon/thieves' guild we were infiltrating - we tried to knock out some sleeping guards so they stayed asleep (well, my character was knocking them out - the other PC was stabbing them). Anyway, the stabbing failed, one of them woke up, and woke his remaining friends. A couple of them made a break for it while the remainder - we won that fight (for small values of "won") but the warning guys escaped an basically warned the whole base.

Fast forward to this week, and all the remaining bad guys were either attacking us or maneuvering off-screen. So the entire session was about 3 minutes of in-game time!

_
glass.


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## Yoh-01 (Jun 22, 2022)

_Swords of the Serpentine:_

Session 2 for our Bookhounds for Hire, from the Réamon clan. They manage to infiltrate Romero Ferrati's mansion through the kitchen, observe and set their heist in motion. One of the sentinels, Néhanda, with a mercenary allegiance, manages two get two of her contacts to start a fight outside the manor to create a diversion. When the bookhounds get to the vault, they try to sway the guards but fail with tartlets, so they fight their way in, and when they open the door, they see somebody getting into a vent with the book they want, smiling and waving at the group. The other sentinel, Drinn, climbs to the roof and chases the thief while the others are actually looting the vault, stealing jewels and a little magic book. Drinn catches them and notices that they don't have the book anymore, and that he knows them, an old rival / ex-lover at times, from a rival clan. The sentinel learns that they're not alone, that other members of the Cassini clan are here, with the book, running away to the gondolas. After delivering the thief to the guards, the bookhounds gather in the gardens, ready to run after their rivals to get the cookbook, wondering if their client, Lady Farina, hasn't hired the Cassinis to double-cross the Réamons.

End of the adventure next week.


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## glass (Jun 24, 2022)

glass said:


> _Thursday:_ Death of a thousand shocks.



Well, about ten anyway. It was the last session of part 2 of my homebrew PF2 mini-campaign, and they were fighting the boss - a stygira. It was always going to be a tough fight (a level 7 creature vs a level 3 party), but it did not help that the big bad's rolling was mostly on fire, and the party's was mixed at best. On the one hand, the sorcerer hit with four attack spells in a row against his decent AC. On the other hand, the alchemist never hit him once in the entire fight. And the martials hit him about twice each before being Slowed 2 and then Petrified - they got decent damage but only a small amount of it got through his physical resistance.

The non-statue party members gave him one more round of attacks (with only the storm druid inflicting any damage), and then decided that discretion was the better part of valour and started to withdraw. What they did not know was at that point the stygira had 3 hitpoints left, and still had 2 persistent electricity damage that had been inflicted on him in the first round. He failed two more checks to remove it, and keeled over in pursuit of the surviving PCs.

_
glass.


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## glass (Jul 1, 2022)

glass said:


> _Thursday:_ Did our job. Called feds.



The final session of the CoC adventure that our _Shattered Star_ GM wrote to give us a break/palette cleanser between AP chapters. We wandered around in the dark for a bit, and the (with a few luck rolls) escaped from the creepy mine and then the creepy small town that serviced it. Then, being PIs who had done what we had been hired to do, we sent a report to our client and also called the Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Prohibition (it was the 1920s). This slightly flummoxed her GM, who had expected us to go after the big bad ourselves. But as I said, we had done what we were being paid to do. Plus one of us had already nearly got killed by nasty tentacle monsters in the dark.

Anyway, a Bureau agent turned up at our office in Chicago and asked us if we wanted to go on the raid with them - against our better judgement, we all said yes except the septuagenarian priest. We rescued a bunch of prisoners, and found another entrance to the mines beneath the mayor's house. We chased him into it, and although we never caught up with him, we did find an alien artifact in a cave which was leaking weird liquid into a stream (which in turn was poisoning both the whiskey and the townsfolk). We blew it (and the whole cave it was in) up with dynamite.

_
glass.


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## kenada (Jul 3, 2022)

Barbarian hired a hype man

Last session was an abbreviated session because we needed to do a rebuild of characters due to changes I had made in my homebrew system. However, we did get to play a little bit. The barbarian really wanted someone to talk about and spread her adventuring exploits in town while she was away adventuring, so she posted a notice and hired a bard as her hype man.

There were a few candidates. She went with one who was more experienced but had a quest over one who was less experience but was willing to take a standard offer. The quest is something the PCs had heard about before and are (supposedly) interested in investigating anyway. The retainer is cool with it as long as the PCs check it out before the end of autumn.

The party also wanted to hire a bunch of help for their next expedition (blazing a trail and mapping it, so they have a faster route back to their manor), so I have to figure out how that all is going to work now. The rules in OSE/BX are not very helpful when it comes to hirelings and specialists. I have some ideas though. I just need to flesh them out before next session this month.


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## glass (Jul 8, 2022)

glass said:


> _Thursday:_ Giants deserved it. Poor mammoths.



Following on from last week's wrapping up of CoC, we were back to _Shattered Star_. We teleported to outside a giant stockade, and the giants guarding it immediately moved to attack us before we could even say anything. This proved to be a mistake (could they not see we were PCs?) which is on them. But two of them were riding mammoths, and the poor mammoths were obviously caught in the crossfire.

We called the session immediately after the last giant went down, so I might have time to CLW the downed mammoths at the start of the next session....

_
glass.


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## Yoh-01 (Jul 9, 2022)

_Swords of the Serpentine:_

Session 3 for our improv game for our Bookhounds for Hire, from the Réamon clan. We started right when and where we finished last time. The rival clan has just escaped on a gondola with the cookbook, so our heroes decide to go after them by running on the banks, bridges and by climbing up buildings. 

This chase took the whole session with loads of twists and turns, old rivalries set aflame between Clan Réamon and Clan Cassini, thanks to the use of "What's Best in Life" but also with the justification of the investigative skills used to pump up the Athletics rolls. Prophecy was used several times to see that the crank over there was the goal to stop that gondola. Then our teenage sorceress managed to deprive that young Cassini at the helm of his memories for a time in order to stall them a bit. 

This chase was heavily suspenseful, our thief failed many rolls before resorting to their Stealth talent and popping up right next to that crank at the last minute, and the sorceress managed to snatch the cookbook away when the sentinel and the fighter had done all the chasing and the running. 

The adventure finished with even more rivalry, a job well-rewarded, with our heroes copying the "eel bisque with its rouille" recipe in order to participate to that cooking championship but also to the gondola race against the Cassini Clan, who had just challenged them at the very end of our session. 

But that will be a story for our next adventure.


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## heks (Jul 10, 2022)

'they ate a district attorney.'
a game of 'vampire' 5e in which all the players are thinbloods and have no idea what they're doing and they wanted to turn a district attorney to help them with a harebrained scheme and they simply drained him, instead, by accident.


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## glass (Jul 11, 2022)

glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Undiplomatic PC's player did talking.



The sunday-night game is only two players (with suitably upgraded PCs): One had a +2 bonus to diplomacy and the other had +8, so of course the one with the +2 did all the talking.

Which is fair enough, these things happen from time to time - but with a small party like that I would never make a PC that was bad at Diplomacy in the first place. OK, the character is heavily Wisdom based (Druid//Monk), and also needs physical stats for melee (small party!) so has little incentive to invest in Cha, but they could at least have max ranks.

_
glass.


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## Geekrampage (Jul 11, 2022)

My game last Friday:

Pluto. Space zombies, electric millipedes.

or, if you prefer haiju:

Rocket to Pluto
Rescue mission. Space Zombies.
Robot Millipedes.


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## Bill Zebub (Jul 13, 2022)

"Against all odds we won."

With low turnout we started a new (side) D&D campaign and rolled three new 1st level characters.  It was a Strahd-themed campaign the DM was excited for, and our first objective was to help a town with werewolf attacks.  I assumed it would be something scaled for 1st level characters, and was a little surprised to find ourselves in a fight against 3 un-nerfed werewolves.  I assumed the DM meant to kill us...and I trusted her that this was all in the name of fun...but we put up the best fight we could.  And, incredibly, we won.  The barbarian went down pretty quickly, but a _healing word_ got him back up.  The tabaxi death cleric (!?!?!) had started the fight in a tree, and after the werewolves saved against all my 1st level slots I _misty stepped_ (vhuman, fey-touched) into another tree, and the fight settled into the barbarian dodging every single round while we spammed cantrips from 30' up.  One werewolf did manage to climb the tree with the tabaxi...despite my raven familiar's repeated but rather feeble and quixotic attempts to Shove him out...but then rolled horribly, and even with two attacks per turn the two werewolves on the ground managed to miss the dodging barbarian (who had 1 HP this whole time) with literally every single attack.  My _mind sliver_ cantrips reduced saving throws against the tabaxi's _toll the dead_, and eventually we dropped one werewolf, then another.  The third one fled.

Afterward the DM said she had meant to kill us (and had a great plan for what was going to happen next) but the dice do what the dice do.

It was epic.  Deep into 2nd level after 1 fight.

Both the barbarian and the cleric now have _lycanthropy_, though.


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## John Dallman (Jul 13, 2022)

Bill Zebub said:


> . . . our first objective was to help a town with werewolf attacks.
> 
> Both the barbarian and the cleric now have _lycanthropy_, though.



On the bright side, you can provide plenty of additional werewolf attacks.


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## glass (Jul 14, 2022)

glass said:


> _Thursday:_ Seventh different campaign in row.



My gaming schedule has got a little complex recently. Sundays are relatively simple; two campaigns (one as player, one as GM) alternating chapter by chapter. Thursdays are a little more complicated. We are doing both _Shattered Star_ and _Curse of the Crimson Thrones_ with groups that are mostly the same, but each has a a player or two that the other does not. The two groups alternate fortnightly, and in addition to the two main campaigns we traditionally do something short between chapters (most recently, adventures for PF2 and CoC).

It just so happened that the chapter breaks all fell at roughly the same time (and we also had a solo one-shot on a Sunday when one of the players was on holiday). As a result, over the last few weeks we have played the last session of _Savage Tide_ chapter 1, the PF2 adventure, and the CoC adventure, and the first session of _Curse of the Crimson Throne_ chapter 2, _Shattered Star_ chapter 5, and _The Forge of Fury_. Plus the PFS scenario (_Severing Ties_ I think) as a one-shot. Hence the quoted text.

_
glass.


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## Mezuka (Jul 14, 2022)

*Absentees. Pushed back two weeks:* This may sound like bad news for me, the GM, but actually I didn't have time to properly prepare the next adventure. I'm glad to get an extra two weeks to read the aventure again and make it fully my own.


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## South by Southwest (Jul 14, 2022)

Mezuka said:


> *Absentees. Pushed back two weeks:* This may sound like bad news for me, the GM, but actually I didn't have time to properly prepare the next adventure. I'm glad to get an extra two weeks to read the aventure again and make it fully my own.



Right there with ya. When this week's rowdiness was canceled, I breathed a sigh of relief and got to work on the thinking and writing.


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## thullgrim (Jul 16, 2022)

> Wednesday Warhammer:
> Cancelled. Prep is killing me.



I'm currently trying to run Death on the Reik via VTT.  It is not going well.  The set pieces are going fine but the connective tissue between them just isn't there.  At least in my opinion.  It doesn't help that my players really want a railroad, or at least a trail of fat breadcrumbs to follow.  I'm going to have to change a bunch of things to make it work for the group and I'm not looking forward to the work.  This was supposed to be a pallet cleanser kind of game maybe run 6-8 sessions but we're at more than double that now I think, through Enemy in Shadows and getting ready to leave Weissbruck for Altdorf in DotR.



> Friday Savage Pathfinder:
> Roleplaying? Check! Glassworks next week.



This game has been a couple of things in the last 6 weeks but I finally settled on running at the least the first book of Rise of the Runelords for Savage Pathfinder.  I've run the original before and that helps with the prep.  It's my live game and I find the transition between the online game and live game difficult.  I prefer the live game but I'm way, way out of practice.  The finished the small scenes between the goblin raid and the kidnapping of Ameiko this last week so next session will be entering the Glassworks to get her back.


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## kenada (Jul 16, 2022)

“Barbarian encountered the safe problem”

For today’s session, the party wanted to blaze a trail from town back to their manor. They put together an expedition with supplies and guards and all that good stuff. The thief along with their wilderness guide worked together to chart a course back. On one of the Survive (WIS) rolls, the thief got a partial success. He was able to make progress on their trip, but there was going to be a cost to camping. I decided there would be an animal graveyard nearby. I figured it might weird them out a bit, and it would be a poor place to camp, so it would increase the danger on the events check. The barbarian found this very interesting. She doesn’t like magic and was concerned it was cursed.

The safe problem is an example Vincent Baker uses in describing task resolution versus conflict resolution. In particular, when deciding the stakes. In a task resolution game, the stakes are: did you succeed at cracking the safe? In a conflict resolution game, did you succeed at getting the dirt?

The barbarian class in my homebrew system takes inspiration from the AD&D barbarian. One of the specializations available is Detect Magic, which the barbarian in my game has. So she set the stakes: is this area cursed? Or rather, is it _safe_? So the barbarian rolled, and failed. The area wasn’t safe. As she walked into the graveyard, some of the skulls started turning to follow her. The cleric got out her holy symbol, and they proceeded to drive away the evil.

The rest of the session went pretty well after that. The party made it back to their manor and successfully created a map, so they can use that to navigate between town and their manor without having to roll.


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## aramis erak (Jul 17, 2022)

aramis erak said:


> Wed Star Wars.
> Elite Stormtoopers Die. Not easily.



Red suited elite minions in the transport of captured jedi.
They're raiding a prison-ship bound for Mustafar.


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## glass (Jul 18, 2022)

glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Fight stirges while on fire.



The PCs set off a trap which dumped a large quantity of alchemists fire on them, with a nastily-high DC to put it out. The noise attracted a bunch of stirges. Unfortunately, the high DC meant that the PCs (and the druid's animal companion) spent almost the whole fight on fire - only the spiritualist's phantom escaped that fate, because he was incorporeal at the time the trap went off. Fortunately, the adventure specifically says that the stirges fear fire and would not attack anyone who was burning, which for most of the fight was everyone except the phantom (who has not blood, so was immune to the stirges attacks even after he manifested physically). _EDIT: On reflection, I should have probably used the standard alchemist's fire DC for putting it out, rather than the (much higher) DC in the adventure. OTOH, they did win._

Three of the four stirges were already down when one of the PCs finally managed to put herself out - since the stirges were very hungry and not very bright, I decided the the last one would risk AoOs to get to the potential meal. It did not survive.

Before that fight, there was some dungeon exploration and a couple of fairly easy fights against orcs. AFter it, the PCs holed up for the night to get some rest and contemplate their next move....

_
glass.


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## uzirath (Jul 19, 2022)

pemerton said:


> Labyrinth, siren, minotaur defeat heroes.




I'd love to hear more about this session.


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## pemerton (Jul 19, 2022)

uzirath said:


> I'd love to hear more about this session.



The system was Agon. The players were my kids, who are not experienced RPGers.

The basic structure of Agon is quite similar to DitV, only rather than religious enforcers travelling from town to town resolving troubles, the PCs are Greek heroes who get blown from island to island where they confront strife.

Agon's designer is John Harper, probably best know for BitD - the system is distinct from both BitD and AW, but similar to those systems likes asking questions and building on answers. When the heroes arrive at an island, they receive Signs of the Gods, and the heroes have to interpret those signs to determine what the gods want on the island; this then provides a "benchmark" against which to determine, when they leave the island, whether or not they pleased or angered the gods. (Unlike, say, the Green Knight RPG, or a classic D&D paladin, there are no "right" or "wrong" answers here - the players aren't trying to guess what the GM has in mind, but rather are invited to impose their own interpretation on the situation. In a similar vein, when a player wants to spend divine favour or call on a bond with a deity to buff a roll, the player has the final say on whether the help of that god makes sense in the particular fictional situation.)

_SPOILERS BELOW_

The Agon rulebook includes 6 "starter" islands and 6 "advanced" islands. Before the session started I'd already decided I wanted to use Tymisos, which involves a labyrinth of canals walled by sheer obsidian. At its centre is a siren, and her beloved hero the Bull of Tymisos, who holds the adamantine chains that in turn hold up the obsidian walls. On the walls are names of former heroes who have travelled and been lost in the labyrinth, but the siren has erased/effaced them.

The two heroes that were created were Nimble-footed Dionyxae, Scion of Artemis - a wolf-y human who, it was conjectured (given Artemis is a maiden), was found and reared by the goddess - and Shadow-wise Eris, Scion of Hermes - a more conventional demigod wearing silver armour and armed with a dagger.

They grasped the system pretty easily (the GM rolls an appropriate dice pool (d6s to d12s), keeps the highest roll, adds the strife level, which by default is 5, and thus sets the target number; the players roll their pool (same sorts of dice, plus a possible d4 for divine favour), keep the highest two, _plus_ the d4 result if they had one, and tries to equal or beat). It's all one-roll conflict resolution. They had some successes: Dionyxae scaled the walls to see the siren at the centre, and the chains; Eris used charcoal rubbing to identify the names of the forgotten heroes; and when they confronted the Bull and siren they were able to get the initial advantage. But they had more losses: their attempt to properly mourn the forgotten heroes petered out as they were distracted by the siren; they were further entranced by her song in the final confrontation; and the Bull ended up besting them and sinking their ships with their sailors.

So in the next session (if there is one), the heroes will be washed up on an island and need to find a new vessel and new crew, together with whatever other strife is waiting for them there.

In the post-island discussion (the Exodus and Voyage phase), it was agreed that the heroes had pleased Demeter (by remembering the forgotten heroes), Artemis (through Dionyxae's dancing and distraction of the Bull initially), Apollo (by correctly interpreting his warning about the light cast by the siren) and Hephaistos (through demonstrations of ingenuity). But they had angered Athena, whose sign had warned them to know when to accept losses, which they hadn't done (in particular, Eris's player's narration of her repeated failures against the Bull revealed an unwillingness to accept losses; and an earlier failure by her had also suggested such unwillingness).

PC progression in Agon is along multiple tracks: victory in contests brings Glory (and you get more if you're the best - ie highest-rolling - hero), and enough Glory allows you to step up your Name die (which starts at d6). Dianyxae got a bit over 40 Glory, Eris a bit over 20.

Pleasing the gods earns Boons, and so does progressing on the Fate track, which mostly happens if things are going badly for a hero (reaching the end of the Fate track is one way a Hero's tale ends; the other is by way of Homecoming, if you please enough gods to complete the required number of constellations on the Vault of Heaven). Eris earned two Boons (one from the gods, one from Fate) and so increased one of her non-specialised domains (roughly, skill competencies - there are four of these) from d6 to d8, and also took on a second epithet, Silver-Tongued. Dionyxae earned one Boon (from the gods) and also stepped up a domain from d6 to d8.

One of my kids, who has played a little bit of 5e D&D with her friends, commented that whereas it was never really clear to her what you would use CON for in D&D, in Agon it was clear why you would want to be capable in Resolve & Spirit: your hero will be tested by the elements and by strife. The only times contests took place in the domain of Blood & Valour (which means just what it says on the tin) was when Dionyxae scaled the obsidian walls, and when - in the final contest - the Bull had seized control and hence was able to attack the heroes directly. Which as I said above did not end up well for them!

The other two domains are Arts & Oration, and Craft & Reason, and there were contests in both of these (eg Arts & Oration for mourning, and for dancing; Craft & Reason for charcoal rubbings, and for sneaking up on the Bull while he's distracted by dancing). I think it makes for a good balance of heroic endeavours.

For me, this is the third session of Agon I've played (I've GMed two sessions for two players from my long-time group). I think it's a good system.


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## aramis erak (Jul 20, 2022)

aramis erak said:


> Sunday Talisman:
> Enter Dungeon. Bats! Evil Temple!



That hardly does the session justice.
5 per encounter:
Five wolves become one follower
Break the machine to use it
Talking: toad king. Touching: nothing
Warrior charges bats, needed saving.
Premonition revealed prophet forfeits fate
Evil Temple converts one; cliffhanger.


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## Yoh-01 (Jul 23, 2022)

_Swords of the Serpentine:_

Finally, my duet game player and I managed to resume the adventures of Brother Giuseppe, the non-violent Inquisitor, who isn't an Inquisitor yet at the time this adventure takes place (8 years before Adventure 01).

Carrying on his self-appointed mission to discover the reason some statues are disappearing, he spends some time at the Priory of the Illuminated Swamps to do some research on Eversink's funerary rites* (more about that below). Some eerie whispers echo in the scriptarium, which worry him. Brother Giuseppe still doesn't know he's gifted with Denari's Eye.

He then goes on a stroll to count statues, and two are missing, the ones he nicknamed Irmina and Zelinda, which can be found between the orphanage and the hospital. So he goes to the hospital to administer some last rites and check into the archives, as the statues, and the last rites (check notes at the end), are contracts, meaning there are records of them here. Using Laws and Traditions, he discovers that the missing statues do represent two sisters actually named Irmina and Zelinda (Brother Giuseppe is creeping out, but is excited at the same time). he can also understand that although the statues aren't richly carved, the craft used parallels the importance they two ladies might have had in the neighbourhood.

_Whispers:_ "LOOK AT US!!!". This is being repeated a few times. Brother Giuseppe is lost. "Rip the veil!", but there's no veil in the record room! So, Brother Giuseppe convinces himself there's somebody here, spends 1 point of Spirit Sight, and in the far corner of each eye, a glimpse of each sister. They say he's imbued with Denari's Eye, this is why he can see them, and that they're disappearing because their statues have disappeared. The issue is that they haven't fulfilled their soul's mission yet, so they're scared and keep forgetting important things, such as said mission.

While questioning is own beliefs in death and a bit wary that it's not some kind of test or evil kind of corrupted temptation, he goes to the wharf where the statues of Giorgio and Sandrina had disappeared two days ago, and where he almost drowned trying to drag them up. He asks a fisherman how to fish a statue, and is replied that the canals need to be dredged in order to do that.

So, he goes to the Guild of Architects and Canal Watchers and meets a clerk, Nunzio, a pious man who is also highly committed to his job. He says that files need to be submitted, that all the workers are busy with the upcoming festival, and Sway battle ensues. This is tough, and even though Brother Giuseppe's Morale is badly Hurt, he manages to get what he wants when clerk Nunzio eventually agrees to dispatch a team to help with this highly sacrilegious case. Brother Giuseppe also writes in his Book of Debts that he's indebted to this clerk who will have, 8 years later, become a friend.

In the afternoon, the statues are hauled out from the waters, covered with writhing eels. The workers are happy as they'll keep them for their eel bisque, and the Eel Bisque cooking championship next week. However, the statues have changed: their faces are contorted with pain and next to our pious hero, the ghosts of Giorgio and Sandrina -which are also their real names, are crying.

To be continued...

* In the book _Exemption of the Body and Trickling Down of the Soul_, it is explained that for the last rites, the dying must hold its most valuable possession. The priest in charge becomes Denari's broker for a moment then drafts down the dying's final contract. There's a transaction occurring between this object against its owner's soul, as payment for their passing. Then both are to be burnt together. However, if that object doesn't burn along with the body, it's considered a bad omen, meaning the soul is too heavy for the Otherworld. It's even said that such a soul turns into a crawling wraith roaming Eversink's sunken ruins.

In this book, there's also a chapter on statues. During its carving, some of the ashes are mixed with the statue, and the rest is religiously cast in the water. The part remaining with the statue represents all the worldly sins of the dead that must remain grounded in this world, while the rest flowing away represents the part deemed pure enough to enter the Otherworld.


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## glass (Jul 24, 2022)

glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Troglodytes, yellow mould, and gricks.



The PCs continued to explore the Forge of Fury, in the adventure of the same name. There was also a captive bear that the PCs let go free after beating up its troglodyte captors.

_
glass.


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## kenada (Jul 31, 2022)

“Medusa — it’s what’s for dinner”

But not the PCs’ dinner!

We started last session with the PCs’ having arrived back at their manor. They checked in on construction and learned about the last of the three threats in the hex they have to take care of if they want to clear it. Those threats: a pair of gorgons (both in the D&D and in the classical sense, a warp beast, and a stirge nest). It was late, so they retired for the evening. In the morning, they awoke to news that an elven man had arrived overnight.

The man was a merchant who had been traveling to the south when he saw a fin slicing through the dirt. Not wanting to be dinner* himself, he abandoned his camp and headed for the PCs’ manor. While it’s not really a functional settlement yet, it’s been used as a meeting place for years, and it’s known that people are occupying it more permanently now. I’m not exactly sure what he expected them to do though because bulettes are _nasty_†.

While the PCs are being apprised of the situation, they heart shouts coming from their guards. The fin had been sighted! It was about a hundred yards off from the settlement to the south. The cleric and the captain of the guard started mustering their small guard force (they only have twelve guards so far). In the meantime, the barbarian had a crazy idea. She was going to get on a horse with a ton of meat on it, and try to lead the bulette away from the settlement.

While it aims for compatibility with B/X for monsters and adventures, I use 3d6 and conflict resolution in almost all other situations. You can also sacrifice things to add more dice to the roll. In this case, the barbarian was sacrificing a bunch of their supplies, so she got +2d6 on top of the +3d6 she got to ride out.

The barbarian rolled *Convince (INT)* to see if the land shark would take the bait. Convince is used for influencing others to do what you want, particularly if you have something they want (food in this case). We went with INT because the approach was in how she executed the plan. The barbarian rolled quite well (20+ with a target of 15+ for a complete success), so her plan succeeded. The bulette was following her after she took off and cut the meat loose.

After that, she got the idea to lead the bulette to the statue garden where the gorgons resided. It’s about an hour west of their manor on foot, which is not very far on horseback. The bulette is faster on land, but it prefers to stay burrowed until it attacks. Due to her prior success, it was following her. The barbarian just needed to find where she wanted to go without using a map, which is *Survive (WIS)*.

The barbarian got a 12, which is a partial success (10–14). She was going to get what she wanted (she’d make it to the statue garden), but I needed to add a complication. I decided the “robed figure” (the medusa) would be out in the garden along with the gorgon. I asked the barbarian how she was approaching the garden, and the player indicated she was staying focus on riding — meaning there wasn’t a risk she might accidentally look at the medusa.

The barbarian blew through the garden, and all she heard behind her was swearing in a language she didn’t understand as the bulette succeeded at its *Fortitude (CON)* saving throw to avoid petrification and then lept on the poor medusa. It hit with all its attacks, and four times 3d6 does way more damage than 18hp. Even if I had rolled the medusa’s hit points, she stood no chance because I got 36 damage from the bulette.

So the barbarian took care of one of the threats in their hex with a clever tactic, and the medusa is what was for dinner (well, breakfast, but I don’t think land sharks care all that much about when it’s meal time).


* Homebrew setting, so my elven aren’t quite the same as traditional elves, and land sharks aren’t quite as picky about what they eat.
† My homebrew system uses B/X for its bestiary with a fair degree of compatibility. The bulette is actually from OSE Advanced, so I can’t link it, but it’s nasty. 9 HD and four attacks that deal 3d6 each if it leaps on you.


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## John Dallman (Aug 2, 2022)

The Monday evenings AD&D 1e party have been going for about a year and a half, game time. They've reached an average of 8th level, and while they have not stopped any major threats to their home country themselves, they have discovered important information that has enabled other people to quash threats. Last session, they attended the Overload's summer garden party, and received his thanks, plus personal awards. 

500 km north, the volcanoes on the Orcish Plateau are erupting enthusiastically, and the winds are blowing the ash-cloud over the Elven woods. It's not clear who's responsible for the eruptions and winds, but it does not seem to be the orcs, who are quite unhappy about the situation.


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## glass (Aug 4, 2022)

glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Cancelled due to player holiday.
> 
> _Thursday:_ Cancelled due to GM holiday.



The Sunday game only has two players, so we cancel if anyone is missing. The Thursday game is a more normal sized group, so we go ahead with one player missing and cancel with two....unless the missing player is the GM.

(Actually the GM's brother is one of the players and is on the same holiday, so we would have cancelled today even if it weren't his week to GM.)

_
glass.


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## John Dallman (Aug 8, 2022)

We seem to have messed up the occult Nazi plot in pre-invasion Oslo, although we don't know all its details. 

We swiped a magical artefact they seemed interested in from the museum where it was being studied on the Saturday evening, expecting its absence to be noticed on Monday morning. Since several of us had been visible at the museum, that meant we needed to leave town early on Monday, but we had Sunday to find out more. 

By the end of the day, the magical navigation beacons they had planted around the royal palace in Oslo had been removed and were around a lake just north of the town, in the hope that they'd be used by paratroopers. The two Nazis who'd been planting them in the bushes in the park that surrounds the palace had been arrested by the local police under suspicion of indecency (two men coming out of a bush with one of them very out of breath from doing rituals has a plausible mundane explanation), although they were released later. Careful use of face-changing magic, small doses of paralytic and hallucinogenic poisons and a bit of brainwashing had caused the magician to do a ritual that drove the leader insane enough to murder one of his men, and still be obviously psychotic next morning. The ritual magician is now missing, and nobody knows where he is. The Norwegian police and foreign office are putting parts of the story together, and we've left town. 

The ritual was quite clever: he summoned what seemed to be the spirit of Munch's The Scream, and set it on his boss.


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## glass (Aug 8, 2022)

Mezuka said:


> Couldn't participate, they played anyway. (which is fine by me)



We do that with out main games if one player is missing, and cancel for two (unless the one player is the GM of course). We just found we were getting too many calculations before we instituted that.

Our Sunday game only has three players (including the GM), so that one gets cancelled if anyone is missing. Speaking of which....



glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Grick, duergar, and a roper.



The previous session (which was two weeks ago) had a fight with a pair of gricks, with one being downed and the other having run away due to a fear spell. They encountered the remaining grick again last night - they wanted to get past it but were not necessarily keen to kill it, so I asked for an intimidate check. Predictably the party royally fluffed it, even with a sizable circumstance bonus I had in mind for them. So the grick attacked. If I had realised that grick only 2 hp left, I might have given them a bigger circumstance bonus....

Apart from that, they tried to negotiate passage with a band of duergar. Negotiations broke down quite quickly, due to terrible diplomacy (they are not the best party for social skills, and failed to roll above a 5 on any social skill all session) and the fact they did not really offer the duergar anything. So they backed away and went to explore other parts of the dungeon.

They explored a bit more, fought a grey ooze (and one player lost a boot* kicking it), and then finished the session about to attack a roper. Since they are level 3** and the roper is CR 12,  next session is going to be very interesting....

_
glass.

* The grey ooze's acid ability is somewhat oddly worded as to what it affects and how, but I decided that boots (and claws) striking it would be damaged on a failed save. Luckily, the PCs have pretty good saves. Actually, I forgot about that bit when I wrote the post in the other thread.

** The PCs are tougher than the average level 3 PC because there are only two of them, but OTOH _there are only two of them_.


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## Mezuka (Aug 11, 2022)

glass said:


> We do that with out main games if one player is missing, and cancel for two (unless the one players is the GM of course). We just found we were getting too many calculations before we instituted that.
> 
> Our Sunday game only has three players (including the GM), so that one gets cancelled if anyone is missing. Speaking of which....



Discovered today they didn't play after all. They decided to push back the game. The GM wants everyone because there are only 2 games left to the mini-campaign.


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## Lazvon (Aug 14, 2022)

Bill Zebub said:


> Phandelver with five kids.  Amazing.




Same with me, but four kids. Has been a blast.

We are just mopping up the Wave Echo Cave for the XP to start Mad Mage at level 5. When they came to the Flameskull today (from my 5 words), I really couldn’t NOT have it cast fireball. 8d6 is very dangerous against 5 fourth levels (wife also playing)… only two out of five saved… 25 damage to the rest, glad it was a little below 28 average… the halfling rogue would have been at 0. The dwarven cleric was crying in worry… I felt bad, but he (and all of them) needed to see they could pull it off, which they did… thanks to the elven mage blasting away at the Flameskull.

It was a lot of fun.


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## John Dallman (Aug 16, 2022)

John Dallman said:


> Didn't fight Beholder; reported it.



We're hexcrawling territory that our home country ("Landcentre") is going to annex, looking for settlements that need to be offered the choice of joining or moving. We found a bunch of gnolls, led by a flind, who were spending their days hunting, and had a crane on top of a seacoast cliff that they were using to lower much of the food they generated to a cave in the cliff-face. This seemed odd, so we captured the flind and started asking questions. 

There's a beholder living in the cave. It's been visited by some dwarves, who built the crane, and by an elf who had a basilisk and two cockatrices with him. We knew there was someone around the area with cockatrices, although we'd never met them. We contacted "Room 37", a front organisation for Landcentre's intelligence service, and they were quite interested. They started scrying the cave, and advised us to make ourselves scarce. We had not been sure we were up to fighting a beholder, as an 8th level party (AD&D1e), so we were happy to comply. We headed to the nearest military base and left the flind with them, to be taken back to the capital and have his mind read in detail, them returned to hexcrawling well away from the beholder.


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## glass (Aug 21, 2022)

glass said:


> They explored a bit more, fought a grey ooze (and one player lost a boot* kicking it), and then finished the session about to attack a roper. Since they are level 3** and the roper is CR 12, next session is going to be very interesting....






glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Roper TPK in two installment.



As I feared, the party did not survive fighting the roper.

We called the session early due to one PC being killed outright by the roper's first attack (it critted and then rolled above average for damage), and the other was rendered unconscious trying to retrieve his body. So we had a bit of a chat about replacement characters then called the session. And then one of the players realised that his character was not quite unconscious. So after an exchange of messages on Discord we went back into voice chat to conclude fight. It took the roper two more rounds to finish of the remaining PC.

Also, Discord has messed with the permissions for bots, so Dice Maiden has had to change the way it works. It took us about ten minutes at the start of the session to figure how to reactivate die rolls....


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## John Dallman (Aug 21, 2022)

John Dallman said:


> Vampires vs werewolves, party intervene.



This is "BCU Black," a *GURPS Action* campaign set in the present-day UK, where the Civil Nuclear Constabulary has ended up with responsibility for occult matters. We were sent to look for the estranged son of a well-connected magician who is dying of cancer, and found that the son is a werewolf, caught up in a vampires vs werewolves conflict. We have the son, the artifact he was trying to get hold of so that he could summon Viking-age werewolf ghosts, and a young werewolf whose life my medic character was able to save and whom he hopes to recruit. All the vampires we've seen are dead bar their leader, who fled in smoke form. I have a plan involving radioactive gas for future vampire leaders, since radioactivity suppresses magic.


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## J.Quondam (Aug 24, 2022)

South by Southwest said:


> Contract signed with the efreet.



My immediate first thought: _"Why didn't they just sign it with their hands?"_


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## South by Southwest (Aug 24, 2022)

J.Quondam said:


> My immediate first thought: _"Why didn't they just sign it with their hands?"_



The party bit off a bigger piece of narrative pie than I think they realize: they've just agreed to go hunt down Tzunk himself.


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## aramis erak (Aug 25, 2022)

(Wed Star Wars EotE)
inquisitor found jedi via compassion... 
(Oops - wrong thread!)

So the explanation... while the rest of the party were off watching/winning a big fight card's main event (starring a PC), the padawan survivor and the cap-ship astromech held down the fort... 
an inquisitor was suspicious, and finds the ship's spukami... and mind controls it to drak in a force-using apex predator's tortured by the inquisitor kit as a test for compassion...  and, finding it, comes to capture or kill the kiddo...

He fails, but largely because they take out his weapons, and the dark side failed him at key points... he flees...


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## Yoh-01 (Aug 26, 2022)

_Swords of the Serpentine:_

Yesterday, Group #4 and I had our first session. 

It's early Serpentibile 998, early Autumn, and the Famiglia Di Marcelli (our PCs) have their weekly lunch in a tavern where they book a private room for their secret gatherings. They're delivered the Serpentine Gazette, as usual, and they learn that the Famiglia Cassini, a Mercanti family, will host an exhibition in two days where many inventions will be displayed. 

Many high-profile guests are to attend, such as the Losanga, a branch of the Triskadele, but also the Church of Denari, just to make sure that everything goes well and that no sorcery is involved. The Gazette also assumes that it's a way for the Mercanti to carve their way through the new millennium in a positive way, as many bad omens and portents are certainly about to flood Eversink in a few months. 

So, our PCs all decide to crash that expo by using their allegiances to secure their ticket in. The sorcerer in the group also learns that one of the inventions, the Prophetic Automaton, will certainly be the highlight of the show, and they way his fellow sorcerers describe it, it seems that it's not a genuine invention, but knowledge stolen from the Di Marcelli family a century ago during  its demise (what the family calls "the Great Purge"). 

However, when they gather in another place in the evening, they realise that they have no real plans and no common objective, an issue this very dysfunctional family will need to fix if they really want their self-appointed mission to succeed.


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## John Dallman (Aug 26, 2022)

John Dallman said:


> Killed quickling, looted the fort.



This is *GURPS Dungeon Fantasy*, playing through the *Pathfinder* 1e adventure path _Kingmaker_. We've just finished part 2, "Rivers Run Red." The characters are probably more capable than the 4th-5th level Pathfinder characters the scenario is designed for, but the party is very small. 

We have a knight, operating with broadsword and shield, an air magician, although his player has been absent from the last two sessions, a necromancer and his clerical henchman. 

The necromancer is . . . eccentric.  He calls himself a psychopomp, and has a sense of duty to the recently dead. So we find ourselves doing funerals for people killed by monsters, and the necromancer goes round in chain and shield, hitting things with a battle-axe. He's considered learning _Turn Zombie_, but GURPS requires you to know how to make zombies before you can turn them, and learning that would be very much against his principles. I'm not sure just why he's become an adventurer, but his clerical henchman is here to try to reform him.


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## glass (Aug 27, 2022)

glass said:


> _Thursday:_ More giants. Drakes. Eldritch blast!



The first three words were pretty straight-forward - things we fought. _Eldritch blast_ was because I, with the GM's permission, had reworked my character to include some Warlock levels, so I had something better to do than resort to _acid splash_ when I was running low on spells (or was worried about running low on spells) - which considering _Shattered Star_ includes a lot of fairly-large dungeons is basically all the time. This was the first time I got to use it!


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## kenada (Aug 28, 2022)

“thief tips with an axe”

This session started with a rebuild due to homebrew system changes, but we got some time in playing. The party had made it out of town and through the swamp to a camp site. Wanting to reduce the danger modifier to the event roll, they decided to take steps to hide their camp.

So the barbarian turns to the thief and says, “I’m going to find some branches we can use to find the camp. Use my axe to cut them down.” The thief then asks, “Is your axe a two-handed weapon?” You see, the thief is a vuple (a small, anthro, fox-like ancestry). Small creatures can’t use 2-handed weapons. He’s about two feet tall.

So he’s like, “I grab your axe and tip over backwards.” The whole group started laughing at the ridiculous situation, but it gets better. The barbarian (being of the sort that doesn’t like magic) then tells the thief to use his magical dagger to cut the branches. That really got people going! 

Fortunately, they ended up figuring out another way to work together to get what they needed.


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## kenada (Sep 4, 2022)

“thief makes barbarian punch cleric”

The party entered the dungeon this week, which is _The Incandescent Grottoes._ It’s a trippy dungeon with a nice helping of traps. Inside, they found the ooze cult’s template and started exploring it. There’s one part with a stuck door that reveals a room with some shelving, strange eyes on the ceiling, and a mysterious switch. Naturally, having no sense of self-preservation, the party wants to flip the switch. The cleric and the retainers‡ retreat far back while the barbarian pokes it with her spear and the thief peaks around next to her to watch. The switch activates the eyes, which requires them to make a saving throw or go berserk. Naturally, they both fail.

The cleric hears the commotion and goes to help with the problem: the barbarian and thief are wresting and biting and punching each other. I run with mostly table-facing information, so they know it will be over soon, but the cleric wants to help anyway. She casts _cleanse*_ on the thief, which removes the berserk effect (her _cleanse_ is at +3 and can remove paralysis, fear, poison, and curses; so I figured it was probably something like a curse). With the thief back to normal, he yells at the barbarian, who was still beating him up, “Look, there’s a magic user†!” Which is true. Clerics are in the mage group in my system, so they are magic users. So the barbarian goes over and punches the cleric. 


* I’m working on a modification to magic for my system that converts traditional D&D spells into a system that uses magic points and treats spells as a form of magical speciality you can acquire like other specialties. I’ve combined similar spells together in places and made their rank determine what effects you get.
† The barbarian class in my homebrew system takes cues from classic AD&D barbarians in not liking magic, but it doesn’t require they smash magic items or restrict who they can have as a companion. Instead, they have 0 mp no matter what (making them incapable of using magic) and gain extra stress from most beneficial effects.
‡ It is ironic that the group who disliked retainers in Old-School Essentials now has three retainers in a system designed with the expectation they wouldn’t be necessary.


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## John Dallman (Sep 4, 2022)

John Dallman said:


> Nuclear police lay ECW ghosts.



This is "BCU Black," a GURPS Action campaign about a branch of the UK's Civil Nuclear Constabulary whose job is to deal with occult matters. They got the job because radioactivity interferes with magic. This was a comparatively straightforward scenario: retrieve a book about geomantic hauntings from a recently-deceased magician's library (the poltergeist guarding it let us take the book once we read it our letter from the magician) and then use the ritual in it to lay some ghosts, fending off other magicians who wanted to take the tainted magical energy in the haunting for themselves. Sadly, one of us took that magic for himself, although the rest of us don't know that yet.


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## glass (Sep 5, 2022)

glass said:


> _Thursday:_ Still giants (fight and talk).



_Shattered Star_ is a sequel of sorts to _Rise of the Runelords_, and like its predecessor it has a chapter which features a lot of giants (so far at least - I am a player for this one so I am not sure how long this will continue). We had a big fight against hill and fire giants, and then found some maimed giants in pits that appeared to be prisoners. The one that spoke common was happy to talk to us, and gave us some info (although not much). We said we'd come back to help them out of the pits when we had dealt with those who had imprisoned them, and sure enough through the very next door was a whole bunch more giants including the (apparently mad) boss.



glass said:


> _Sunday:_ New characters had less trouble.



After a TPK in the last session we had, and then missing a couple of Sundays due to holidays, the new characters had a brief encounter with one of the previous PC's animal companions and then did a bit of (re)exploring and fought some duergar and an allip. No major difficulties, but then they have yet to re-encounter the roper!


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## John Dallman (Sep 5, 2022)

John Dallman said:


> Escape magic killed the spy.



This spy had been given an escape method: a potion of teleport, and a scroll with a description of a safe place to teleport to. He'd also been given a good description of our party and told that we were working for the local government, but since we weren't in the habit of arresting people without evidence, he should keep a low profile and stay calm. He didn't do any of these things. 

He fled the village and when he got to the good road, used a potion of polymorph that he'd stolen from someone years ago to turn himself into a horse so that he could travel faster, We knew he was heading for the road and had a start on us, so we sent our semi-druid ahead to look for him in falcon form. She spotted a horse proceeding purposefully with no rider, which was definitely interesting. She followed him, and he turned back into a human and then collapsed. The polymorph potion had not been of the finest, and required a system shock roll, which he failed. The DM's plan had been that we'd find him by the side of the road, exhausted by the gallop, but he'd gone and died before we got to him. 

So we delivered him to the intelligence agency we sometimes work for, because they're undoubtedly better at _Speak with Dead_ than us, along with his satchel containing clothes, all his notes (including messages that told him to destroy them), the scroll and the potion. We'd opened the scroll, at which point it had stopped being magical. 

They reckoned the magical seal on the scroll had sent a message of some kind when it was broken, and identified the "teleport" potion as a fast-acting poison. Speak with Dead had yielded his superior in his organisation, an innkeeper in the town he was heading for, and confirmed that he was working for the main enemy organisation of the campaign. Not a bad day's work.


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## glass (Sep 12, 2022)

glass said:


> _Thursday:_ Found ally eaten by spiders.



Early in the session we took a prisoner; a wererat who had been planning to lead a wererat uprising, after one of his people had been lynched by some townsfolk who blamed him for the plague going on in the city. Said wererat had a legitimate point, but all the uprising would have done would be get a bunch more wererats killed (along with a bunch of other townsfolk). It was his one of his own people who asked us to intervene.

Anyway, like said his anger was justified so we did not want to just kill him; just take him off the board for a bit. We talked about handing him over to the authorities, but we came to the conclusion we would either execute him or let him go, neither of which suited us. So we decided to go an talk to an acquaintance from the previous chapter - a slightly shady character who ran an entertainment establishment down at the docks - to see if he could help.

Unfortunately, when we got there we discovered that the place was deserted and covered with webbing. We headed straight for the boss's office, and found him dead and covered in apparent spider bites, and then fought a couple of spider swarms. Looks like more spiders next week....



glass said:


> _Sunday:_ Lots of consecutive animated things.



The PCs are exploring a largish dungeon, and they entered four rooms in a row which something animated and attacked them. In order: Two large skeletons and a wight, six medium skeletons, an animated rug, and an animated arming dummy. After that, they re-explored the top level that the previous PCs had already cleared, ran into some stirges, and eventually encountered some troglodytes (although it was late, so actually dealing with the trolglodytes will have to wait for next week).


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## John Dallman (Sep 13, 2022)

John Dallman said:


> Goblins respect orbital kinetic strikes.



The world of Avalon has been run by the same DM for about 45 years. Many campaigns have been run, our AD&D1e game is only the latest. In the Blackmoor tradition, there have been aliens from space, including a colonisation ship with about two billion kobolds on board. Sorting that out was a bit complicated. 

A couple of years ago, somebody in orbit dropped "Rods from God" kinetic strikes on quite a few cities. The reasons for this are complicated, but a PC with far more ego than sense was tricked into playing a part that the bad guys couldn't do themselves. 

Our current campaign has been partly about assisting with the recovery from the orbital strikes. The government we work for has decided to annex some land that was not previously organised, so we've been hexcrawling it, to find communities and offering them the choice of (a) join the country, get protection, pay taxes, obey laws (b) leave unmolested, with several months notice or (c) if they insist, we'll drive them out by force. We also try to deal with monsters that are aggressive enough to attack us while we're doing the hexcrawl. So far we've managed to back off and call for help on things that are too tough for us (one beholder, and some ropers, thus far). 

We knew that there were goblins in a part of the area, because we've spotted them gathering food from the farmed area round one of the flattened cities. We had no real objection to this, and had tried to talk to them, but they ran away. Yesterday we found the goblin tribe from the other side of their territory. Since we were at one of their sentry posts, looked far too tough for them, and wanted to talk, they were willing to talk. They were also willing to join, because they were under the impression that the flattened city they'd seen had been _flattened by the government for rebellion, or otherwise not staying in line_. We managed not to disabuse them of this idea; they clearly had not heard that many cities had been struck. There were about a thousand goblins in total, including women and children. I'm not sure we could have fought all of them successfully, but we'd have torn a big hole in their warrior supply, and they didn't want to try it. 

The government will send a negotiator and guards to sort out the details, and hopefully someone to deal with the ropers in the marsh near the goblin cave. We weren't going to try it: we might manage one roper, but not several.


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## kenada (Oct 16, 2022)

kenada said:


> Poor thief almost got goo’d




Tonight’s session had a lot of zany moments (including one where the poor thief got mind-controlled and set on fire), but this one happened at the end is a good example of what I’ve been doing with my homebrew system.

After the party made camp, they went into the dungeon. I’m running The Incandescent Grottoes, so it’s a good test of my system’s compatibility. This session, they had pushed deeper into the ooze cult’s area. At the very end is a strange place with several tanks of gel. There’s a yellow one with a corpse in it, an orange one, and a red one with a skull.

They’d figured out the red one was dangerous, but they weren’t sure about the orange one. The barbarian decided she would throw the corpse into the orange one to see if it would bring the corpse back to life. It didn’t. The tank’s frame had been damaged, which I noted as consequence since the intent was to put the body in the tank. Naturally, she rolled only a regular success. That means she gets her intent, but there’s a consequence.

I described how the tank was going to come apart and go everywhere. If she lept out of the way, she could get away safely, but the thief behind her was going to take the goo (and be disfigured). Alternately, if she took the goo, it’d block the thief. Of course, I also suggested that there are other possibilities if she had a good idea. Which she did.

She has the High Jump speciality from her ancestry, which lets her leap up several meters. She wanted to grab the thief before the gel hit and jump onto the tank with the yellow gel. Okay, that’s going to be a standard target (10). It’s Exert (DEX) this time because she needs to be quick. Her DEX is not great (I think it’s just +0), so we looked for help.

The thief said when all this was happening, he wanted to try to climb on the barbarian. That would let him roll Exert (STR) to help. If he rolled well, he would give her a (success) +1 or (complete success) +2. The barbarian’s bard retainer also started singing a helpful song. She rolled poorly on her roll, and the thief did too, but his Expertise feature lets him reroll one of this dice (skill checks are 2d6). He did that and got enough to succeed, which gave him a +1. Otherwise, help can add consequences, which no one wanted.

The barbarian’s player liked the help, but he really wanted to make sure his character would completely succeed. I have a mechanic where you can sacrifice something, so he said his barbarian would sacrifice her spear. That would give her 3d6+3 versus a target of 10. The player rolled 17, so she more than made it.

The way this played out in the fiction is as the tank came crashing down, she used her spear to help boost her and the thief up as the thief grabbed on and she jumped up onto the gel.

If she had rolled poorly, they would have overshot into the gel. It wasn’t dangerous, but you have two people trapped in a tank of stuff they can’t breath. That definitely would not have been a good situation.


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## aramis erak (Oct 19, 2022)

aramis erak said:


> Wed SW:
> Starkiller's trap. One Character dies.



Yeah, I used Jason Starkiller as the big-bad.
One of the Jedi in Training faced him... I got a really good roll, and the crit was "another attack on the same pool" which resulted in +60 on the crit roll, and I rolled a 98... Player isn't upset. He's got a new character in mind.

Another PC dropped starkiller with an Ion Gun... from a fighter.


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## Geekrampage (Oct 23, 2022)

Dungeon of the Mad Mage:
Death Slaad _CAN_ be charmed

Level 8 - Slitherswamp
Player character produced "Rod of Rulership" which they obtained from the Spirit Nagas and used it on the horde of bullywugs coming to join the fight.

One of the other player characters said, "What about the Death Slaad?"

Acting player character said, "Is that possible?"

I said, "Well, _all creatures you can see_, so sure, its possible."

Acting player character said, "C'mon. He's a Death Slaad with powerful spells. Of course he's immune to charm."

I scan the stats, confident that, surely, a Death Slaad is immune to charm. "Uh. Nope. He gets advantage on his saving throw though."

I roll two 4s.

"He holds up his hands and takes a knee."

Other player characters, "Holy naughty word!"

Me, "Okay, Erica, it's your turn. You have Spirit Guardians active and the Death Slaad is in its area effect. The decision is yours. Do you drop the spell to maintain the cham - or do you keep it up, thus causing him damage at the start of his turn and ending the charm? The decision to stop the fight or keep it going is entirely yours."

Moment pause as Erica considers, "I keep it up."

Other players, "Yeah! naughty word that guy!"


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## Voadam (Oct 29, 2022)

Voadam said:


> Creative Ettin Mechanics Worked Well.



5e conversion of a Pathfinder Iron Gods game I am running. 6th level PCs hunker down after two of them are drained 24 max hp by a spectral guardian, including a normally 37 hp 8 Con kobold bard and a front line plate mail life cleric. The bard can't make it so I plan on him hiding if any combat occurs while they are resting (it does). A Lord of Rust, the ettin executioner known as the Draigs shows up with some orcs and breaks into their hidey hole before they can long rest to recover the lost max hp.

There is a group of six Lords of Rust individualized villain figures the party has to deal with in their Mad Max bartertown type of area. One is the ettin. In 5e ettins are only CR 4, with an easy to hit AC 12. Even with the party being down to 3 PCs, one being down max hp to start, and the ettin having a pair of orc supporters, that would not be much of a challenge and the ettin would not seem that big a deal.

So I turned the 5e ettin into a 4e elite monster, twice the hp, twice the normal attacks. In Fantasy Grounds I put in two ettins in the combat tracker, Ferra Draigs and Morta Draigs (collectively, the Draigs) with only one body on the combat map, with the corresponding combat tracker stat block having twice the normal hp.

This gave two initiatives (one for each head) and came out to roughly the equivalent of the Draigs being the action equivalent of two CR 4 ettins.

This worked out for the combat dynamics I was going for in the fight. Two-Headed monster going multiattack twice a round at different points in the initiative worked really well, and mental effects like disadvantage on next attack having to be placed on specific heads added to the ettin effect.


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## aramis erak (Nov 12, 2022)

aramis erak said:


> They saved Padme and kids...



So, campaign conceit: Ben panics when Padme gives up... carbon freezes her.
Party brought in on a job - carry a frozen Padme away from Tatooine. Of course they checked the cargo...
That was a few months ago for players, and twice as long for the characters. They've since built up cred with both Ben and Bail Organa.  They've been starting the Rebellion in year 3. Ben's still moping about misjudging Anakin...

Fast forward... they finally convince ben there is a hope - a new hope - Luke & Leia.  By use of a sith holocron of the prophesy ... They also convince Bail. So, they finally, 3 years after the fact, thaw Padme and birth Luke and Leia. And, using heal, keep all three alive. 

I inform the players that that's the endpoint, the victory.


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## aramis erak (Nov 21, 2022)

aramis erak said:


> Wed:
> 5 Rokunganjin characters mostly generated



one more was generated prior.

Shiba Kazeyuki, Asako Inquisitor (done prior)
Shiba Ume, Shiba Guardian
Utaku Gin, Utaku Battle Maiden
Mirumoto Gorō, Mirumoto Ni-Ten duelist
Isawa Hikaru, Kaito Spirit Seeker
Toritaka Kohaku, Toritaka Phantom Hunter
Kazeyuki and Kohaku are both haunted.


aramis erak said:


> Sat Transformers (Essence20 system)
> finished intro adventure. Not impressed.



Not bad enough to drop it, nor good enough to recommend it.


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## John Dallman (Nov 22, 2022)

John Dallman said:


> Mystery with giant mining worms.



The AD&D1e party have been exploring "The Caverns of Adamant," which was once an adamant mine, but became disused. Various creatures and people moved into it over time. Since the party have become very wealthy by finding a gold mine, they're somewhat interested in finding more mines. 

Over the past few sessions, we've discovered a flooded system of shafts below the level of the mine. which appear to have been eaten into the mountain, rather than dug with tools as the mine was. The flood water is seawater, which is interesting as the mine is about 3000' above sea level, and many miles from the nearest coast. We had an encounter with sahuagin within the mine, and as far as we know (which is not much), they only live in the sea. The world of Avalon has only one continent and is mostly ocean. 

In the last session, our report reached the intelligence agency we sometimes work for, who called us in and asked lots of questions. The really _giant_ worm that ate the largest shaft, which is about 70' in diameter, matches worms that have been found mining adamantite in [CLASSIFIED AND REDACTED], which is a worry for the agency because of [THING WE DON'T KNOW, WHICH THE AGENCY MANAGED TO AVOID EVEN HINTING AT]. They sent some much higher-level people to look at the place, and we went along as guides. 

The worm business was confirmed, as was the way that the sahuagin are getting in, and the tunnel where the seawater is coming in was found, although not how it gets there or where it goes. It became clear that there were questions to be asked of the wizard who used to be based here. He was a monster-maker, who seems to have been eaten by his own chimeras about 30 years ago. We knew where his bones were, but there was no response on Speak with Dead by a cleric who certainly should be able to reach back far enough. There are several imaginable reasons for that, but the session ended there.


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## Cadence (Nov 22, 2022)

aramis erak said:


> Not bad enough to drop it, nor good enough to recommend it.



What was the bad?  (Don't have the Transformers, but my son has the Power Rangers one [I think same system?]).


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## aramis erak (Nov 23, 2022)

Cadence said:


> What was the bad?  (Don't have the Transformers, but my son has the Power Rangers one [I think same system?]).



Yeah, same system.
THe bad parts:

starting characters feel incompetent. Not horribly incompetent, but still not competent.
dice mechanics left players confused as to where they were _unless using a table and counter on said table_. 
Skill & Specialization issues
Higher skill without specialization results in higher chance of success but lower chance of critical success.
Higher skill with specialization results in not only vastly more success, but also much higher chance of crit.

awkward equipment requistion system
multiple cases where rules are poorly worded, and required using the examples to guess the correct interpretation
the process for crits and extremely high rolls mention they stack, but are unclear how. It's possible to get rolls up to 38; TNs can be as low as 10. If you roll double the TN, it is double effect. If you roll triple the TN (and yes, we did have this happen) it's triple effect. Criticals do double effect. It's explicit both happen, but not clear weather double TN and Crit is ×3 or ×4, and triple TN is ×4 or ×6. (I lean towards the latter interpretation)

classes rigid frameworks, more rigid than D&D 5E (despite being clearly riffing off D&D 5E).
it uses d2

So, and example for #3
Joe has d8 skill. Joe is rolling vs a fairly typical 13. Joe is rolling 1d20 & 1d8, summing them. If the d8 maxes, it's a crit, so long as it succeeds numerically.  so about 1 in 32 chance of crit (5-20 on d20, 8 on d8)
Now, fred has d6 skill, but is specialized... he rolls 1d20 & 1d6, & 1d4 and 1d2, and crits if the number hits 13+ on the d20 and the best other die, and either the d4 is 4 or the d6 is 6... but the success uses the highest non-d20 plus the d20. (It's explicitly called out in the rules.) d2 do not generate crits, but this means more than 1/4 of successful hits by a specialist will be crits for double effect.
This gets worse for higher rolls.

Improvement is in attributes and Perks (= Features & feats)
You have a class; it dictates what attribute is raised each level, excepting those levels set aside for subclass features (3, 6, 10, 17, 20). Each class also determines which perks one gets at that level, again, excepting the subclass levels, but also setting aside a handful of general perks: 4th, 8th, 11th, 15th, 19th.

Skills exist in 4 groups - one group per attribute.
Total levels plus specialties in an attribute's skills equal the level of the attribute. So... you might need to raise your Strenth so you can take Might (and thus fight better), but your class doesn't have Strength improvement until 2 or 3 levels on, you're stuck unskilled for those intermediate levels.

No Experience Points, per se... but advice to level up as direct fractions of a level...


			
				Transformers (Essence20) p266 said:
			
		

> The sample Troubled Waters, rewards players with a whole level for their characters. Generally, a Mission of its size would reward ¼ of a level. Longer or more challenging missions can reward ½ a level or rarely a whole level, but never more than 1 level.



So, milestone. But not entirely so.


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## John Dallman (Dec 1, 2022)

John Dallman said:


> Our Paladin couldn't with humans!



The AD&D1e party is actually 50% female, two half-elves and a human. The human paladin's player failed to take in that the characters were female for 5-6 sessions, until it was pointed out in character.


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