Describe your last RPG session in more than 5 words.

[Wofano Wotanto]

Gork is not a deity...

Try telling the Warhammer fans that.

 

[MarkB]

"Recurring" villain dies first round.

In Rime of the Frostmaiden there's a section where a gnoll vampire is supposed to be the recurring villain, hunting the 8th-9th level party then fading away in mist form the moment he takes significant damage, only to return later and trouble them again.

But the first time I ran the campaign he was barely an irritant, and this time was no different. He rolled low-ish initiative, three party members beat him, and with high damage output he was taken down before he even got to act. The scenario doesn't give him a coffin to return to, but even if he had one, he was pinned in a moonbeam and wouldn't have been able to take mist form.

 

[Reynard]

We played our second full session of Fallout2d20 last night. I am running the intro scenario Once Upon a Time in the Commonwealth, but am forced to modify it more than a little. it is both too linear and quite a slog. For example, in the section where the PCs make their way to Diamond City, instead of forcing them to go through a gauntlet of 3 unavoidable encounters, I set it up so they could choose which one to tackle. There is a lot I like about the system, but the adventure is not very good.

 

[Reynard]

Last night I got behind the (digital) 5E screen for the first time in a while (I have been running PF2ER and Fallout2d20). This is our "local" game (which we still play online for some reason) with rotating GMs. It started off as a Rappan Athuk dungeon crawl but has evolved over time.

The PCs are 8th level and I am running a Githyanki adventure. One PC is a githyanki wizard, the scion of a noble house who abdicated and moved to the Prime in order to study magic. Well, mom has waited long enough for the black sheep to return and has run out of patience. She send a whole squadron of soldiers, including 3 dragons, to retrieve the PC. The knight in charge of making first contact wanted to "get the measure" of the PCs so attacked with his dragon as the PCs made their way home. Of course the dragon pulled its punches and did not breathe. In the end, the knight stopped the attack, explained the situation and accompanied the PCs back to their fortress (an abandoned castle they had liberated from goblins relatively early in the campaign, mainly as a gold sink). There the rest of the githyanki were waiting.

We ended the session with the githyanki opening a portal into the Astral Sea where an astral galleon awaited them. Next time they will travel toward home, deal with some illithid marauders and begin to understand why the PC's mother picked now. Hint: there is a succession crisis.

 

[Reynard]

The party has entered the Astral plane with the githyanki who came to bring one PC home. The main githyanki fleet was under attack by demons, so the knight dropped the PCs off on a small astral runner that was outside the fighting. Just then the illithid arcanist that had been tracking them attacked! The mindflayer had with it 3 intellect devourers and was riding an enthralled copper dragon.

It was a fun little fight that lasted an hour or so (running on FG). I cut the session short after because I didn't really have a solid handle on what happens next.

It was seeing the players weigh the choice to try and free the dragon since there was no guarantee it wasn't still going to attack them. It did because 1 PC chose preemptive violence, but another PC was able to calm it down after the fight was over.

 

[Meech17]

D&D 5e.

Party is infatuated with Meepo.

Running the party through the Sunless Citadel, in our first session we made it to the point where the party has a parlay with the Kobold Queen. They immediately loved Meepo, which I expected. Every game play report I've read, or the tons of stories I've read all include Meepo and how iconic he is. His name is even listed in common Kobold names in Volo's Guide.

After they encountered the dried up fountain that spits out a dragon breath potion, they all realized they couldn't read it. They asked Meepo if he could. So I said Meepo squats down and stares long and hard at the Draconic letters, slowly moving his lips, as if trying to sound out the word. He then stands back up and replies. "Meepo uhhhhh... Meepo can't read." One of my players replied "Oh my god.. I love Meepo so much... It's a shame he's probably going to die in here."

Sounds about right.

 

[John Dallman]

AD&D1e, Avalon Campaign:

Deity reconnected, dead robot appears.

This is complicated, even by Avalon standards.

46 years ago, game time, in Avalon's year 1998, the person who embodied Evil at the time was killed. The person† who did that had been sent to steal something from her, but went beyond his instructions. Among other problems*, this unbalanced the psychology of everyone in world. People were much nicer to each other, but they didn’t want to do anything which they thought might result in harm to others. This caused a huge drop in productivity and activity, which was threatening to collapse most of the world's societies.

That problem was solved, to excess, by some Lunar** priests in the city of Petersport, who were attempting to summon the Crimson Bat** to frighten some people who were causing them trouble. That was dumb, and didn't work. They got something that was huge and glowing red, but it wasn't a bat. It sucked all the life force out of the inhabitants of the city, turning them into undead, and then travelled around, wreaking lesser havoc on the material plane, the elemental planes, and the lower planes. Demons were coming to the material plane to escape it. After a while, things calmed down.

Over time, it was realised that the thing was a Berserker***, but attempts to do anything about it got nowhere. Some very strong wards were erected on the nexus point in the city through which it had entered the world. Two years ago, game time, those mysteriously failed†† and the Berserker re-appeared above Petersport and left the world through the same nexus point.

That's all background. A few years after the Berserker arrived, a new religion started. This is unique in the history of Avalon: there are a great many religions, but they all seem to have existed forever. It worshipped "The Knowing God", which acted as an information interchange: the worshippers could communicate with the deity via some crystals. They had no clerics at first, only monks in abbeys. Yes, lots of people were suspicious that this was a fake religion who purpose was to tell the Berserker about the world it was in. It was never possible to substantiate that idea, and the people who followed it were always Good and inoffensive. The First Abbott who had founded the religion died, and the large crystal he had shattered. The information connection to the deity was lost. After a while, the religion began to develop clerics and paladins, although none of them are high enough level to do Commune yet.

After the Berserker departed, a different large crystal appeared in Petersport. It proved to contain the life force that had been drained from the city's inhabitants, which has allowed them to be returned to life from being undead. The Church of the Knowing God was very interested in this crystal, hoping that it would let them reconnect to their deity. Naturally, quite a few people were very sceptical of that idea, but the objections have gradually been overcome, and in last night's session, the ceremony was done and worked. The information connection to the god works again!

At the moment the ceremony was completed, a large metal creature appeared through the nexus point. It was too large for the building around the nexus, which collapsed. The creature didn't do anything, and seems to be dead. Since advanced technology does not work in Avalon, except in a couple of specific places, the current hypothesis is that it's a machine which is not working.

* Lots of other problems.
** Gloranthan mythology, from RuneQuest.
*** From Fred Saberhagen's SF novels.
† A PC - try to look surprised?
†† A different PC did that.