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

[John Dallman]

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.

 

[AverageMojito]

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).

 

[J.Quondam]

"Flying dinosaurs are stealing underpants."

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

 

[glass]

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.

 

[billd91]

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.

 

[overgeeked]

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.

 

[aramis erak]

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.

 

[overgeeked]

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.

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.

 

[aramis erak]

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.

 

[overgeeked]

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.

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.

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.