Leopold
NKL4LYFE
SN on nutkinland reminded me I needed to tell him what went on and I plum forgot to do a recap. So here it is folks, censored a bit but otherwise ok! All those that played feel free to chime in and correct me where I am a bit hazy.
***
Lord almighty ok you folks want a recount here goes, pleas bear in mind it’s been a few months so my memory might be off on some events:
GC Indy is
ing huge.
I told everyone to meet outside the exhibit hall, pish, it had 5ing exits so there was no way to properly know who and what and where people were gonna show up at! So me being the uber genius i am, break out the FFG Giant lore book (greatest giant resource book evar!) and set it up on the table so that people see it while they are walking in and out of the main doors. People slowly trickle up and go "Hey! Your leopold! we are here for the game!"
So who shows up? Several NKL and ENW folks, direkobold people, some folks from the PCGen list and some old buddies of mine from NH . Total amount of people at the table is 18. Yes that’s right 18 people to DM and play Against the Giants: G2!
I dish out the PC's and everyone starts going "WTF!?!?"
See i use jamis' buck's random NPCGen. I just hit the go button and then go ahead and just keep the good combat folks and toss the non-combat folks. I keep all skills, feats, etc and then randomly roll equipment and make sure it matches, well sorta. In the end you may have a dual wielding barbarian with 2 hand axes or a cleric with no ranks in concentration but them’s the breaks! People bitch but I give them the “People’s eyebrow of death” and they back down.
So after sorting through the list of azer paladins, lizardmen druids that only speak fey, ettin barbarians, and a medusa cleric (yes random generation is funky like that!) as well as the common classes and races we get all set to play, bear in mind people were laughing hysterically while sorting through all 30 some odd PC’s. So I begin the introduction
The PC’s are all prisoners of the council who sent out the last expedition to the hill giant chief, the adventures there reported success to the council and found a map that led to another bastion of giantish trouble, this time in the far northern mountains. They have been selected as new ‘explorers’ and suitably equipped to as such. They are told they are expendable but not forgettable as they need the required information of why and who is behind an alliance between hill giants and frost giants. They remind the ettin barbarian to put down the goblin rogue by pulling on his chains around his neck (he’s got keeprs) and telling the azar paladin to kindly not set on fire the troll druid. They give each and everyone a special red ruby pendant. They explain that if anyone were to fall in battle the ruby pendant will glow red and all the person must do is touch said pendant and a gate will open behind them. They remind them, as they all have the “we got an escape route!” look in their eye that this is one way gate, it goes from here to wherever the person was standing. <DM NOTE: This is so that if someone dies they can immediately rejoin the battle without delay.> It takes one round for the person to come through and be there.
So without further ado the council mage opens a gate and they all are ‘ushered’ through.
It’s cold here, very cold, they all got suitable cloaks and furs and skins to keep them warm. I hand them the map <DM NOTE: with this many people and this late in the night I don’t want to draw a map, these folks are here for blood and death! Why not give it to them?!?!> and they say “We wanna go here!” and off we go!
So the first room they get to is the guard room, they see 2 trollike critters and a frost giant, they shout battle cry and charge in! STOP!
NOTE1: Last year they walked handily through G1, murdering the hall without a casualty and making the giants seem like slaughtering children. This year I said “Oh hell no! They ain’t doing this again this year!” and suitably beefed them up, beefed them up a lil too well I did!
NOTE2: I couldn’t have done initiative without the improvedinitiative.com chart. It saved me time and effort and this thing is a DM’s dream come true! 18 people is allot to keep track of but with this it’s cake! I highly recommend it.
So in the PC’s charge they see the baddies and mount a charge, a flurry of ice surrounds the critters and they lose track of them and wonder where they went (lizard man druid cast her snow spell on them ice fog or something>. So they start walking in and finally get up to the edge and here comes the trolls! “HA! Only trolls!” they shout! And they start maneuvering into place. First in is the barbarian ettin he charges in and at the 15’ marker I yell “STOP!” and get my AoO on him. First attack hits with a 45 and does some obscene damage. The Players all wonder how this is. Another troll comes out of the mist and some more folks dive after it. Next round they beat on the troll and the troll rips into ettin barbarian with both claws and rend taking both heads and splitting them down the spinal cord! One down and it looks hungry for more! They blast at it with spells but it isn’t even phased by it (Spell resistance!) Then out of the mist charges the giant. Well it was a frost giant but somehow it looks like a cross between a giant polar bear and a frost giant, OH NO! (Polar Bear lycanthrope frost giant) and it moves up into rank and file with them. Several rounds later and many, many healing potions and AoO and near deaths they manage to slay the beasts. They look around to see who is alive and see their red amulets flashing and hit the button and in comes an elven wizard loaded to the gills with combat spells.
They pick up the loot on the bodies and find a black bag on one of them. The monk looks at the bag, sees nothing and tosses it on the ground like nothing happens. They find some coin and move on.
While walking down the hall toward another room they hear a rumbling. “Odd” they all say, “we slaughtered everything behind us!” and turn around and see a bear barreling down toward them! “That’s not supposed to be there!” they cry. I laugh at them mockingly and tell them to roll intiative.
They start off by trying to get in front of the bear and to corner it off. They forget that this thing is mad and is going one way, straight ahead. “Trample time!” I shout and they all cringe and they roll to get away from the thing. Some stand and take AoO but they all hit it and I laugh as I tick off 20pts here and 15pts there. It sallies up to the monk and strikes at it “does a 62 hit?” I ask him. His face goes white and they all start looking like I just on their cornflakes for breakfast. So he’s grapple and then they go. They all hit it and blast it and I giggle as I tick off a hundred pts of damage or so (thing had over 500) and then I swallow whole the monk. Gulp one down more to go! So about this time they get the bright idea to get ontop and see about attacking it this way. They all start tumbling and trying to fly atop this bear and bronco bust it. I let them do it and laugh as they all get bucked off but the very brave stay on! Around this time War Golem from ENW gets this idea in his head. On his turn I ask him what he’s gonna do and he says “I cast enlarge on the monk inside the bear!”
I get a look like I just saw elvis and Michael Jackson playing twister in jello. He finds him alright and the spell goes off. Suddenly the bear doesn’t look so well, it looks like it just ate 50 White Castle burgers and swallowed it down with a gallon of whole milk. Strangely a foot appears outside the bear. No folks, not out the front, out the back.
At this point the table is dying laughing, I’m stunned and then I start crying as I am laughing so hard at this I have to stop the game and give him experience points for this. People start applauding at this tactic as noone has ever seen this happen.
They manage to slay it as it’s stunned as it’s trying to digest something the size of a redwood tree now and they pull out the big monk who wishes to god that this doesn’t EVER happen again.
So they move along and I roll random encounter. I pull the monk over as everyone needed to make spot checks and they all failed but him. He sees this giagantic white mass roll up over some boulders. He goes back and sits down and says “Wow look at them stalactites!” (He’s LE and doesn’t care about the rest of them). I get a surprise attack as they don’t see a Huge White Pudding in time. I’ll go quickly on these few rounds:
Round 1: It hits grabs one of the PC’s and we roll for his items and him to save. He’s engulfed and his items start melting off him, literally. They decide to advance and take off some HP’s but their weapons all fail saves and melt away.
Round 2: It hits and picks up the goblin rogue and begins to tastily suck all the goodies off him but his armor. They use spells on it to no avail.
Round 3: War Golem in his infinite wisdom casts another spell. Inward I groan as lord help me I’ve only killed 2 or 3 of them that nite and the body count must be higher!! What does he do? “I cast Limited Wish and Wish we never encountered this thing!” “Ok, tiger” I think “let’s do this!” I rule that they didn’t encounter it but their items are still gone as limited wish is, well, limited. They breathe a sigh of relief and I make them all roll spot checks again. ½ of them make it this time and they see a white mass coming toward them. They flee down the hallway quickly .
Next room they open the door and see before them a green skinned giant with a large sword sitting down at a table. The combat mage decides to let loose with some spells and blasts it with fireball. The PC’s charge in suitlably buffed and they all swapped out weapons with the fallen comrades to make them more effective. The enlarged fighters all move into flank and the creature gets up to attack them. They guffaw as they think it’s only gonna hit one of them. The creature takes it’s monsterous 2 handed sword and sweeps through 6 PC’s at once wounding all of them. Terror looks appear on their faces again. I repeat this through a few more rounds taunting the mage to come into combat so it can die like the rest of them but he’s too chicken to oblige me. Eventually I stomp another PC into the ground (literally) and they take the last creature down for the evening.
We wrap up there as it was getting late. I tally the body count to about 6 (I think it was about that) and ask everyone if they had fun.
A resounding “YES! MORE!!! WE WANT MORE TOMMORROW!!!” cries from the 3 tables that were shoved together to make room for a battlemat.
So there you have it, 18 players vs me running G2
20. Next year it will be G320 but on a smaller scale. Next year will be in groups of 6 or so and will be in 4 hr sessions stretched over 2 days, this way more people can play and more can be done. I had a blast and most everyone else did as well. I look forward to slaughtering the PC’s…I mean running a quaint game, again
***
Lord almighty ok you folks want a recount here goes, pleas bear in mind it’s been a few months so my memory might be off on some events:
GC Indy is
ing huge.I told everyone to meet outside the exhibit hall, pish, it had 5
ing exits so there was no way to properly know who and what and where people were gonna show up at! So me being the uber genius i am, break out the FFG Giant lore book (greatest giant resource book evar!) and set it up on the table so that people see it while they are walking in and out of the main doors. People slowly trickle up and go "Hey! Your leopold! we are here for the game!"So who shows up? Several NKL and ENW folks, direkobold people, some folks from the PCGen list and some old buddies of mine from NH . Total amount of people at the table is 18. Yes that’s right 18 people to DM and play Against the Giants: G2!
I dish out the PC's and everyone starts going "WTF!?!?"
See i use jamis' buck's random NPCGen. I just hit the go button and then go ahead and just keep the good combat folks and toss the non-combat folks. I keep all skills, feats, etc and then randomly roll equipment and make sure it matches, well sorta. In the end you may have a dual wielding barbarian with 2 hand axes or a cleric with no ranks in concentration but them’s the breaks! People bitch but I give them the “People’s eyebrow of death” and they back down.
So after sorting through the list of azer paladins, lizardmen druids that only speak fey, ettin barbarians, and a medusa cleric (yes random generation is funky like that!) as well as the common classes and races we get all set to play, bear in mind people were laughing hysterically while sorting through all 30 some odd PC’s. So I begin the introduction
The PC’s are all prisoners of the council who sent out the last expedition to the hill giant chief, the adventures there reported success to the council and found a map that led to another bastion of giantish trouble, this time in the far northern mountains. They have been selected as new ‘explorers’ and suitably equipped to as such. They are told they are expendable but not forgettable as they need the required information of why and who is behind an alliance between hill giants and frost giants. They remind the ettin barbarian to put down the goblin rogue by pulling on his chains around his neck (he’s got keeprs) and telling the azar paladin to kindly not set on fire the troll druid. They give each and everyone a special red ruby pendant. They explain that if anyone were to fall in battle the ruby pendant will glow red and all the person must do is touch said pendant and a gate will open behind them. They remind them, as they all have the “we got an escape route!” look in their eye that this is one way gate, it goes from here to wherever the person was standing. <DM NOTE: This is so that if someone dies they can immediately rejoin the battle without delay.> It takes one round for the person to come through and be there.
So without further ado the council mage opens a gate and they all are ‘ushered’ through.
It’s cold here, very cold, they all got suitable cloaks and furs and skins to keep them warm. I hand them the map <DM NOTE: with this many people and this late in the night I don’t want to draw a map, these folks are here for blood and death! Why not give it to them?!?!> and they say “We wanna go here!” and off we go!
So the first room they get to is the guard room, they see 2 trollike critters and a frost giant, they shout battle cry and charge in! STOP!
NOTE1: Last year they walked handily through G1, murdering the hall without a casualty and making the giants seem like slaughtering children. This year I said “Oh hell no! They ain’t doing this again this year!” and suitably beefed them up, beefed them up a lil too well I did!
NOTE2: I couldn’t have done initiative without the improvedinitiative.com chart. It saved me time and effort and this thing is a DM’s dream come true! 18 people is allot to keep track of but with this it’s cake! I highly recommend it.
So in the PC’s charge they see the baddies and mount a charge, a flurry of ice surrounds the critters and they lose track of them and wonder where they went (lizard man druid cast her snow spell on them ice fog or something>. So they start walking in and finally get up to the edge and here comes the trolls! “HA! Only trolls!” they shout! And they start maneuvering into place. First in is the barbarian ettin he charges in and at the 15’ marker I yell “STOP!” and get my AoO on him. First attack hits with a 45 and does some obscene damage. The Players all wonder how this is. Another troll comes out of the mist and some more folks dive after it. Next round they beat on the troll and the troll rips into ettin barbarian with both claws and rend taking both heads and splitting them down the spinal cord! One down and it looks hungry for more! They blast at it with spells but it isn’t even phased by it (Spell resistance!) Then out of the mist charges the giant. Well it was a frost giant but somehow it looks like a cross between a giant polar bear and a frost giant, OH NO! (Polar Bear lycanthrope frost giant) and it moves up into rank and file with them. Several rounds later and many, many healing potions and AoO and near deaths they manage to slay the beasts. They look around to see who is alive and see their red amulets flashing and hit the button and in comes an elven wizard loaded to the gills with combat spells.
They pick up the loot on the bodies and find a black bag on one of them. The monk looks at the bag, sees nothing and tosses it on the ground like nothing happens. They find some coin and move on.
While walking down the hall toward another room they hear a rumbling. “Odd” they all say, “we slaughtered everything behind us!” and turn around and see a bear barreling down toward them! “That’s not supposed to be there!” they cry. I laugh at them mockingly and tell them to roll intiative.
They start off by trying to get in front of the bear and to corner it off. They forget that this thing is mad and is going one way, straight ahead. “Trample time!” I shout and they all cringe and they roll to get away from the thing. Some stand and take AoO but they all hit it and I laugh as I tick off 20pts here and 15pts there. It sallies up to the monk and strikes at it “does a 62 hit?” I ask him. His face goes white and they all start looking like I just
on their cornflakes for breakfast. So he’s grapple and then they go. They all hit it and blast it and I giggle as I tick off a hundred pts of damage or so (thing had over 500) and then I swallow whole the monk. Gulp one down more to go! So about this time they get the bright idea to get ontop and see about attacking it this way. They all start tumbling and trying to fly atop this bear and bronco bust it. I let them do it and laugh as they all get bucked off but the very brave stay on! Around this time War Golem from ENW gets this idea in his head. On his turn I ask him what he’s gonna do and he says “I cast enlarge on the monk inside the bear!”I get a look like I just saw elvis and Michael Jackson playing twister in jello. He finds him alright and the spell goes off. Suddenly the bear doesn’t look so well, it looks like it just ate 50 White Castle burgers and swallowed it down with a gallon of whole milk. Strangely a foot appears outside the bear. No folks, not out the front, out the back.
At this point the table is dying laughing, I’m stunned and then I start crying as I am laughing so hard at this I have to stop the game and give him experience points for this. People start applauding at this tactic as noone has ever seen this happen.
They manage to slay it as it’s stunned as it’s trying to digest something the size of a redwood tree now and they pull out the big monk who wishes to god that this doesn’t EVER happen again.
So they move along and I roll random encounter. I pull the monk over as everyone needed to make spot checks and they all failed but him. He sees this giagantic white mass roll up over some boulders. He goes back and sits down and says “Wow look at them stalactites!” (He’s LE and doesn’t care about the rest of them). I get a surprise attack as they don’t see a Huge White Pudding in time. I’ll go quickly on these few rounds:
Round 1: It hits grabs one of the PC’s and we roll for his items and him to save. He’s engulfed and his items start melting off him, literally. They decide to advance and take off some HP’s but their weapons all fail saves and melt away.
Round 2: It hits and picks up the goblin rogue and begins to tastily suck all the goodies off him but his armor. They use spells on it to no avail.
Round 3: War Golem in his infinite wisdom casts another spell. Inward I groan as lord help me I’ve only killed 2 or 3 of them that nite and the body count must be higher!! What does he do? “I cast Limited Wish and Wish we never encountered this thing!” “Ok, tiger” I think “let’s do this!” I rule that they didn’t encounter it but their items are still gone as limited wish is, well, limited. They breathe a sigh of relief and I make them all roll spot checks again. ½ of them make it this time and they see a white mass coming toward them. They flee down the hallway quickly .
Next room they open the door and see before them a green skinned giant with a large sword sitting down at a table. The combat mage decides to let loose with some spells and blasts it with fireball. The PC’s charge in suitlably buffed and they all swapped out weapons with the fallen comrades to make them more effective. The enlarged fighters all move into flank and the creature gets up to attack them. They guffaw as they think it’s only gonna hit one of them. The creature takes it’s monsterous 2 handed sword and sweeps through 6 PC’s at once wounding all of them. Terror looks appear on their faces again. I repeat this through a few more rounds taunting the mage to come into combat so it can die like the rest of them but he’s too chicken
to oblige me. Eventually I stomp another PC into the ground (literally) and they take the last creature down for the evening.We wrap up there as it was getting late. I tally the body count to about 6 (I think it was about that) and ask everyone if they had fun.
A resounding “YES! MORE!!! WE WANT MORE TOMMORROW!!!” cries from the 3 tables that were shoved together to make room for a battlemat.
So there you have it, 18 players vs me running G2
20. Next year it will be G320 but on a smaller scale. Next year will be in groups of 6 or so and will be in 4 hr sessions stretched over 2 days, this way more people can play and more can be done. I had a blast and most everyone else did as well. I look forward to slaughtering the PC’s…I mean running a quaint game, again 
