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

glass

(he, him)
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.

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glass.
 
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glass

(he, him)
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.

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glass.
 
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kenada

Legend
Supporter
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.
 

glass

(he, him)
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....

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glass.
 

Yoh-01

Explorer
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.
 

heks

Explorer
'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.
 

glass

(he, him)
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.

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glass.
 


Bill Zebub

“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
"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.
 


glass

(he, him)
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.

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glass.
 
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Mezuka

Hero
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.
 

G

Guest 7034872

Guest
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.
 

thullgrim

Adventurer
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.
 

kenada

Legend
Supporter
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.
 


glass

(he, him)
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....

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glass.
 
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pemerton

Legend
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.
 

aramis erak

Legend
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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