You now speak Whingy Git, add it to your sheet.
Commentary thread for that “Describe your game in five words” thread.
Playing an Adventurer's League dungeoncraft adventure called SJ-DC-VMT-01 Waterdeep: Statue Heist. Very silly adventure, lots of fun. Four of the walking statues were turned into spelljamming ships and stolen, we take a fifth and go chase them down. We run into 3 of the 4 villains from Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, and it turns out the bad guy is an awakened Sylgar(Xanathar's goldfish). We had a fight between 5 statues turned into a giant mech and a goldfish controlling a giant dragon!
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him)
That did not go well.
This little dyad of my posts involves one player feeling excessively picked on and bullied by another and the session blowing up, followed by the next session after the bullying player was disinvited from the game.
The group I'm running this for only has 1 player who speaks undercommon, so he was the only one able to talk with the morlocks on the 2nd level. The group had already dealt with the canker cult of ghouls on the 3rd level prior to encountering the morlocks on the 2nd level so when they told the morlock leader they had cleared them out already, he asked them to go deal with the water drake nearby. They did so and returned to ask for their promised reward, which was the title of "Lackeys of the Ghost Queen". Clearly disappointed with their reward, the one player who spoke undercommon asked the group in common what they wanted to do. After a brief discussion on whether they should just kill them before they had a chance to hurt someone else, they asked the morlocks what they would have done had they not dealt with the water drake. The morlock leader bluntly told them they would become sacrifices to the ghost queen. Without consulting the rest of the group, the undercommon speaking player said the party's bard was more than happy to be the sacrifice they needed. He then said something in common to the bard, who smiled and nodded yes which the morlocks thought meant he was agreeing. They led the bard to a nearby room with a crudely constructed altar they had made and were about to kill him before he finally realized what was going on and attacked one of the morlocks which started a big fight.
The bard player was a good sport about the whole thing and despite clearly knowing what was actually happening, went along with the whole thing. It ended up being a pretty funny situation. Sorry @Snarf Zagyg, we tried but the bard seems quite determined to live.
Snarf Zagyg
Notorious Liquefactionist
They led the bard to a nearby room with a crudely constructed altar they had made and were about to kill him before he finally realized what was going on and attacked one of the morlocks which started a big fight.
The bard player was a good sport about the whole thing and despite clearly knowing what was actually happening, went along with the whole thing. It ended up being a pretty funny situation. Sorry @Snarf Zagyg, we tried but the bard seems quite determined to live.
I gave you a thumbs up, because there is no response for FALSE ADVERTISING.
You had me at "about to kill {the bard} ..." And then ... lived?
You really know how to write sad, sad, sad stories.
Seriously, I can beat "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
"The Bard lived." Real tearjerker, that.
overgeeked
B/X Known World
They really are. I have player in a 5E game who’s legit trying to run the game for me. He started as good enthusiastic, but he’s gone way overboard into overly enthusiastic. Trying to enforce the rules for me without asking. Deciding what house rules I should use. Talking over me while I’m trying to explain rules or rulings to other players. I’ve had to deal with this kind of player before, but never to this extreme. Yet another reason OSR players and games are better. The players sit down already knowing that simply not done. The rules explicitly put the referee in charge.
overgeeked
B/X Known World
The saga continues. Back-seat GM freaked all the way out so I gave him the boot. Entitled player thought he was running the game. Nah. Adiós.
“fire beetles = bad in bed”
We’ve had a couple of sessions since last time. The gist of it is the PCs wiped out the stirge nest. Along the way, they met Malif the ice dragon, and they set a lot of stuff on fire.
Last session, we picked up after that. This was the first session after some revised dice mechanics. As noted elsewhere, I tried opposed rolls, but they felt bad. This session was (back) to 2d6+mods versus 8+factors.
Anyway, we picked up in the morning after the PCs had finished dealing with the stirge nest. The final problem left before the hex where their settlement is located is adisplacer beast warp beast couerl, which they made their group goal at the end of the previous session (to take care of the couerl). The couerl is an intelligent, psionic creature that blends some of the ideas from the inspirational story with some of its other representations like the couerl in the Final Fantasy series. While the plan is to take care of the couerl, the party decided to return back to the main settlement to gather information and level up (even though they could have done the latter at their own, they were worried they could run low on supplies and be put in a risky position).
The trip back went mostly smoothly. On the first night of camping along the way, the party stopped at a camp site they’ve used before. It’s got a convenient source of water and is a pretty decent site. While Deirdre and Tama were grazing their horses, Dingo decided to improve the camp. This proved not to be a very good idea. Before we got to the camp, I had determined the event for the evening (and that there would be one), and it was going to involve fire beetles.
Some time ago, the party found a ring of plant control, which has Dingo kept and occasionally used. The way I handle magical items like this is to treat them as another method for skill checks using the item’s rank as the modifier. I mention all this because Dingo decided to use his ring to improve the camp.
Dingo decided that he was going to help conceal the camp by using his ring of planet control. It’s only rank +1, and he used Intellect, so he was rolling 2d6+1 vs. difficulty 8. That’s not great odds. Consequence-wise, the fire bettles were in play as was the camp. Naturally, he rolled like crap and failed outright. I brought both consequences into play (as described here): he did a bad enough job that the camp was going to be ruined after this (meaning they would need to establish a new one the next time and improve it all over again), and it was now infested with fire beetles. Dingo could resist one of these but not both.
Dingo chose to save the camp, he rolled Resilience + Strength to prevent some of the trees from crushing things and took some stress. Unfortunately, having a bunch of glowing bugs about a meter long does not make for a good sleep experience. No one got a restful night sleep that night because the camp was infested with fire beetles and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. (Why the PCs didn’t just kill all the fire beetles, I don’t know. They could have done that, but they chose to put up with them. It wouldn’t have even been a contest.)
After that, the party continued back to town. The event on the second day of travel was further evidence that the raiders the party has been antagonizing were in the area and monitoring traffic along the road they established. The party talks about going to see the raiders and wipe them out. That would be … interesting. The raiders at this point are mostly interested in parlay (after the PCs wiped them out), but they want some of the PCs’ people as leverage in the parlay. The PCs are aware of the raiders’ designs on them, but I don’t know what exactly they plan to do about it. When it comes time to roll faction clocks, I guess we’ll find out more (from reports from scouts most likely).
The party made it back to Finland (the other settlement) towards the end of the third day. Their travel is slower than normal due to having a wagon full of rations — which Tama gave away once they were situated in town. Deirdre met up with Ilsa (her bard retainer) to find out more about the situation in the area since they’ve been in the area. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I think it was more information on the raiders.
The party had booked private rooms Sugar’s Place as usual, which gave them two downtime activities plus food and water plus standard quality place to sleep. For their first, everyone advanced to 6th level. Surprisingly, no one invested in Manipulation in spites of its coming up several times over the last several sessions. After they finished leveling up, Dingo went to track down Kitty to find out more about vampire hunters while Tama and Deirdre went looking for information on dragons and the couerl. The way these would be handled is a 4-tick research project for the couerl information (because the party wanted a lot of detail) with single rolls for the other things.
First up was Dingo, who went looking for Kitty at the main bazaar. He managed to locate her, so he wanted to see what she’d heard about vampire hunters. Dingo’s check was Rapport + Wisdom (for his experience with underworld stuff). He got a 0-degree success, which means a consequence and success. I’d foregrounded useless information and some kind of extra cost, but since he got success, I couldn’t use the first one. Kitty wants Dingo to help her with a heist at some point in the future. I expect it’ll be run as a fairly standard adventure with just the two of them. The information Dingo got was pretty good.
As was known already, Diane (an alias of Deirdre’s) is one of the known vampire hunters. However, there is another. The rumor coming ahead of his arrival is that Léon, a former parliamentarian and occult research, had taken an interest in the rumors of fitting the description of a vampire and was on his way to Finland. His arrival is expected in a few weeks. I’m not sure exactly where this is going to go, but the Warin-Graf Occult Society is now on my faction radar. They’re almost certainly going to be interested in Natalia, the party’s vampire friend/ally.
Deirdre and Ilsa went canvasing dives to find out more practical information. A 2-degree group Rapport + Intellect check lead them to the Smelly Elf, a dive down an alley with an appropriately crude sign. The inside also smelled pretty awful, but there was a familiar face inside: Helmfried, a merchant they rescued from a bulette. Deirdre and Ilsa spent their time talking to him. They learned that there was an area southwest of Cal Maestros (their settlement) that merchants were avoiding. There was something black and panther-like lurking there. Something important he’d heard was that apparently someone had successfully negotiated with it, but it was capricious, so it’s hard to say what the PCs could use to successfully do that themselves (they’ll have to try and see how it goes).
Tama met with Severin, a sage friend of theirs, but the meeting was only modestly fruitful. Her Rapport + Intellect check was a 0-degree success. Severin was just too busy with administrative work to really speak with Tama, but said she was welcome to use their library. During the next week’s downtime activities, Tama spent her time there researching both dragons and the couerl further. The dragon check was successful. She learned that dragon attitudes tended to be similar to their elemental (so a fire dragon is going to be feisty and an ice dragon cool and measured). They know Firlax, the fire dragon, is interested in their settlement, so knowing whether they can trust the dragon to keep his word (which appears to be the case even for fire dragons), opens options other than trying to fight the dragon.
Tama also made some progress on the couerl with her Research + Intellect check. That advanced the clock one more tick (putting it at 3 out of 4). They’ve learned most of the information I have in the stat block. They know its Psi Blast can paralyze you, and it can consume the id of those it paralyzes. It’s also capable of manipulating energy and gear (destroying it).
During the second week, Dingo focused on recovery. He was down HP, MP, and stress. Spending both activities on MP recovery and healing let him restore all of those back to clear. Deirdre has one more downtime activity, but we had to wrap up the session there.
Overall, I thought the session went okay. The dice mechanics with factors went well. For example, when Deirdre went scouting the settlement, that added a +2 for scale. I also like how the 0-degree success played out with Tama’s interaction with Severin even though it was accidental. I hadn’t planned it that way. In the previous version, Mixed Success added a tick but also added consequences. I kind of like how it opened another approach. I’ll think about whether to make that the standard way in the system going forward.
We’ve had a couple of sessions since last time. The gist of it is the PCs wiped out the stirge nest. Along the way, they met Malif the ice dragon, and they set a lot of stuff on fire.
Last session, we picked up after that. This was the first session after some revised dice mechanics. As noted elsewhere, I tried opposed rolls, but they felt bad. This session was (back) to 2d6+mods versus 8+factors.
Anyway, we picked up in the morning after the PCs had finished dealing with the stirge nest. The final problem left before the hex where their settlement is located is a
The trip back went mostly smoothly. On the first night of camping along the way, the party stopped at a camp site they’ve used before. It’s got a convenient source of water and is a pretty decent site. While Deirdre and Tama were grazing their horses, Dingo decided to improve the camp. This proved not to be a very good idea. Before we got to the camp, I had determined the event for the evening (and that there would be one), and it was going to involve fire beetles.
Some time ago, the party found a ring of plant control, which has Dingo kept and occasionally used. The way I handle magical items like this is to treat them as another method for skill checks using the item’s rank as the modifier. I mention all this because Dingo decided to use his ring to improve the camp.
Dingo decided that he was going to help conceal the camp by using his ring of planet control. It’s only rank +1, and he used Intellect, so he was rolling 2d6+1 vs. difficulty 8. That’s not great odds. Consequence-wise, the fire bettles were in play as was the camp. Naturally, he rolled like crap and failed outright. I brought both consequences into play (as described here): he did a bad enough job that the camp was going to be ruined after this (meaning they would need to establish a new one the next time and improve it all over again), and it was now infested with fire beetles. Dingo could resist one of these but not both.
Dingo chose to save the camp, he rolled Resilience + Strength to prevent some of the trees from crushing things and took some stress. Unfortunately, having a bunch of glowing bugs about a meter long does not make for a good sleep experience. No one got a restful night sleep that night because the camp was infested with fire beetles and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. (Why the PCs didn’t just kill all the fire beetles, I don’t know. They could have done that, but they chose to put up with them. It wouldn’t have even been a contest.)
After that, the party continued back to town. The event on the second day of travel was further evidence that the raiders the party has been antagonizing were in the area and monitoring traffic along the road they established. The party talks about going to see the raiders and wipe them out. That would be … interesting. The raiders at this point are mostly interested in parlay (after the PCs wiped them out), but they want some of the PCs’ people as leverage in the parlay. The PCs are aware of the raiders’ designs on them, but I don’t know what exactly they plan to do about it. When it comes time to roll faction clocks, I guess we’ll find out more (from reports from scouts most likely).
The party made it back to Finland (the other settlement) towards the end of the third day. Their travel is slower than normal due to having a wagon full of rations — which Tama gave away once they were situated in town. Deirdre met up with Ilsa (her bard retainer) to find out more about the situation in the area since they’ve been in the area. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I think it was more information on the raiders.
The party had booked private rooms Sugar’s Place as usual, which gave them two downtime activities plus food and water plus standard quality place to sleep. For their first, everyone advanced to 6th level. Surprisingly, no one invested in Manipulation in spites of its coming up several times over the last several sessions. After they finished leveling up, Dingo went to track down Kitty to find out more about vampire hunters while Tama and Deirdre went looking for information on dragons and the couerl. The way these would be handled is a 4-tick research project for the couerl information (because the party wanted a lot of detail) with single rolls for the other things.
First up was Dingo, who went looking for Kitty at the main bazaar. He managed to locate her, so he wanted to see what she’d heard about vampire hunters. Dingo’s check was Rapport + Wisdom (for his experience with underworld stuff). He got a 0-degree success, which means a consequence and success. I’d foregrounded useless information and some kind of extra cost, but since he got success, I couldn’t use the first one. Kitty wants Dingo to help her with a heist at some point in the future. I expect it’ll be run as a fairly standard adventure with just the two of them. The information Dingo got was pretty good.
As was known already, Diane (an alias of Deirdre’s) is one of the known vampire hunters. However, there is another. The rumor coming ahead of his arrival is that Léon, a former parliamentarian and occult research, had taken an interest in the rumors of fitting the description of a vampire and was on his way to Finland. His arrival is expected in a few weeks. I’m not sure exactly where this is going to go, but the Warin-Graf Occult Society is now on my faction radar. They’re almost certainly going to be interested in Natalia, the party’s vampire friend/ally.
Deirdre and Ilsa went canvasing dives to find out more practical information. A 2-degree group Rapport + Intellect check lead them to the Smelly Elf, a dive down an alley with an appropriately crude sign. The inside also smelled pretty awful, but there was a familiar face inside: Helmfried, a merchant they rescued from a bulette. Deirdre and Ilsa spent their time talking to him. They learned that there was an area southwest of Cal Maestros (their settlement) that merchants were avoiding. There was something black and panther-like lurking there. Something important he’d heard was that apparently someone had successfully negotiated with it, but it was capricious, so it’s hard to say what the PCs could use to successfully do that themselves (they’ll have to try and see how it goes).
Tama met with Severin, a sage friend of theirs, but the meeting was only modestly fruitful. Her Rapport + Intellect check was a 0-degree success. Severin was just too busy with administrative work to really speak with Tama, but said she was welcome to use their library. During the next week’s downtime activities, Tama spent her time there researching both dragons and the couerl further. The dragon check was successful. She learned that dragon attitudes tended to be similar to their elemental (so a fire dragon is going to be feisty and an ice dragon cool and measured). They know Firlax, the fire dragon, is interested in their settlement, so knowing whether they can trust the dragon to keep his word (which appears to be the case even for fire dragons), opens options other than trying to fight the dragon.
Tama also made some progress on the couerl with her Research + Intellect check. That advanced the clock one more tick (putting it at 3 out of 4). They’ve learned most of the information I have in the stat block. They know its Psi Blast can paralyze you, and it can consume the id of those it paralyzes. It’s also capable of manipulating energy and gear (destroying it).
During the second week, Dingo focused on recovery. He was down HP, MP, and stress. Spending both activities on MP recovery and healing let him restore all of those back to clear. Deirdre has one more downtime activity, but we had to wrap up the session there.
Overall, I thought the session went okay. The dice mechanics with factors went well. For example, when Deirdre went scouting the settlement, that added a +2 for scale. I also like how the 0-degree success played out with Tama’s interaction with Severin even though it was accidental. I hadn’t planned it that way. In the previous version, Mixed Success added a tick but also added consequences. I kind of like how it opened another approach. I’ll think about whether to make that the standard way in the system going forward.
Just to check - I'm assuming the link between the event and the raiders was established by you after making the roll and determining the base result. Similar to how a camp or town event would work in Torchbearer.
Correct. I rolled, got an event, and then decided it was raiders-related. There’s an active clock for the raiders to come after the PCs’ people.
