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

[glass]

They explored a bit more, fought a grey ooze (and one player lost a boot* kicking it), and then finished the session about to attack a roper. Since they are level 3** and the roper is CR 12, next session is going to be very interesting....

Sunday: Roper TPK in two installment.

As I feared, the party did not survive fighting the roper.

We called the session early due to one PC being killed outright by the roper's first attack (it critted and then rolled above average for damage), and the other was rendered unconscious trying to retrieve his body. So we had a bit of a chat about replacement characters then called the session. And then one of the players realised that his character was not quite unconscious. So after an exchange of messages on Discord we went back into voice chat to conclude fight. It took the roper two more rounds to finish of the remaining PC.

Also, Discord has messed with the permissions for bots, so Dice Maiden has had to change the way it works. It took us about ten minutes at the start of the session to figure how to reactivate die rolls....

 

[John Dallman]

Vampires vs werewolves, party intervene.

This is "BCU Black," a GURPS Action campaign set in the present-day UK, where the Civil Nuclear Constabulary has ended up with responsibility for occult matters. We were sent to look for the estranged son of a well-connected magician who is dying of cancer, and found that the son is a werewolf, caught up in a vampires vs werewolves conflict. We have the son, the artifact he was trying to get hold of so that he could summon Viking-age werewolf ghosts, and a young werewolf whose life my medic character was able to save and whom he hopes to recruit. All the vampires we've seen are dead bar their leader, who fled in smoke form. I have a plan involving radioactive gas for future vampire leaders, since radioactivity suppresses magic.

 

[J.Quondam]

Contract signed with the efreet.

My immediate first thought: "Why didn't they just sign it with their hands?"

 

[Guest 7034872]

My immediate first thought: "Why didn't they just sign it with their hands?"

The party bit off a bigger piece of narrative pie than I think they realize: they've just agreed to go hunt down Tzunk himself.

 

[aramis erak]

(Wed Star Wars EotE)
inquisitor found jedi via compassion...
(Oops - wrong thread!)

So the explanation... while the rest of the party were off watching/winning a big fight card's main event (starring a PC), the padawan survivor and the cap-ship astromech held down the fort...
an inquisitor was suspicious, and finds the ship's spukami... and mind controls it to drak in a force-using apex predator's tortured by the inquisitor kit as a test for compassion... and, finding it, comes to capture or kill the kiddo...

He fails, but largely because they take out his weapons, and the dark side failed him at key points... he flees...

 

[Yoh-01]

Swords of the Serpentine:

Yesterday, Group #4 and I had our first session.

It's early Serpentibile 998, early Autumn, and the Famiglia Di Marcelli (our PCs) have their weekly lunch in a tavern where they book a private room for their secret gatherings. They're delivered the Serpentine Gazette, as usual, and they learn that the Famiglia Cassini, a Mercanti family, will host an exhibition in two days where many inventions will be displayed.

Many high-profile guests are to attend, such as the Losanga, a branch of the Triskadele, but also the Church of Denari, just to make sure that everything goes well and that no sorcery is involved. The Gazette also assumes that it's a way for the Mercanti to carve their way through the new millennium in a positive way, as many bad omens and portents are certainly about to flood Eversink in a few months.

So, our PCs all decide to crash that expo by using their allegiances to secure their ticket in. The sorcerer in the group also learns that one of the inventions, the Prophetic Automaton, will certainly be the highlight of the show, and they way his fellow sorcerers describe it, it seems that it's not a genuine invention, but knowledge stolen from the Di Marcelli family a century ago during its demise (what the family calls "the Great Purge").

However, when they gather in another place in the evening, they realise that they have no real plans and no common objective, an issue this very dysfunctional family will need to fix if they really want their self-appointed mission to succeed.

 

[John Dallman]

Killed quickling, looted the fort.

This is GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, playing through the Pathfinder 1e adventure path Kingmaker. We've just finished part 2, "Rivers Run Red." The characters are probably more capable than the 4th-5th level Pathfinder characters the scenario is designed for, but the party is very small.

We have a knight, operating with broadsword and shield, an air magician, although his player has been absent from the last two sessions, a necromancer and his clerical henchman.

The necromancer is . . . eccentric. He calls himself a psychopomp, and has a sense of duty to the recently dead. So we find ourselves doing funerals for people killed by monsters, and the necromancer goes round in chain and shield, hitting things with a battle-axe. He's considered learning Turn Zombie, but GURPS requires you to know how to make zombies before you can turn them, and learning that would be very much against his principles. I'm not sure just why he's become an adventurer, but his clerical henchman is here to try to reform him.

 

[glass]

Thursday: More giants. Drakes. Eldritch blast!

The first three words were pretty straight-forward - things we fought. Eldritch blast was because I, with the GM's permission, had reworked my character to include some Warlock levels, so I had something better to do than resort to acid splash when I was running low on spells (or was worried about running low on spells) - which considering Shattered Star includes a lot of fairly-large dungeons is basically all the time. This was the first time I got to use it!

 

[kenada]

“thief tips with an axe”

This session started with a rebuild due to homebrew system changes, but we got some time in playing. The party had made it out of town and through the swamp to a camp site. Wanting to reduce the danger modifier to the event roll, they decided to take steps to hide their camp.

So the barbarian turns to the thief and says, “I’m going to find some branches we can use to find the camp. Use my axe to cut them down.” The thief then asks, “Is your axe a two-handed weapon?” You see, the thief is a vuple (a small, anthro, fox-like ancestry). Small creatures can’t use 2-handed weapons. He’s about two feet tall.

So he’s like, “I grab your axe and tip over backwards.” The whole group started laughing at the ridiculous situation, but it gets better. The barbarian (being of the sort that doesn’t like magic) then tells the thief to use his magical dagger to cut the branches. That really got people going!

Fortunately, they ended up figuring out another way to work together to get what they needed.

 

[kenada]

“thief makes barbarian punch cleric”

The party entered the dungeon this week, which is The Incandescent Grottoes. It’s a trippy dungeon with a nice helping of traps. Inside, they found the ooze cult’s template and started exploring it. There’s one part with a stuck door that reveals a room with some shelving, strange eyes on the ceiling, and a mysterious switch. Naturally, having no sense of self-preservation, the party wants to flip the switch. The cleric and the retainers‡ retreat far back while the barbarian pokes it with her spear and the thief peaks around next to her to watch. The switch activates the eyes, which requires them to make a saving throw or go berserk. Naturally, they both fail.

The cleric hears the commotion and goes to help with the problem: the barbarian and thief are wresting and biting and punching each other. I run with mostly table-facing information, so they know it will be over soon, but the cleric wants to help anyway. She casts cleanse* on the thief, which removes the berserk effect (her cleanse is at +3 and can remove paralysis, fear, poison, and curses; so I figured it was probably something like a curse). With the thief back to normal, he yells at the barbarian, who was still beating him up, “Look, there’s a magic user†!” Which is true. Clerics are in the mage group in my system, so they are magic users. So the barbarian goes over and punches the cleric.

---

* I’m working on a modification to magic for my system that converts traditional D&D spells into a system that uses magic points and treats spells as a form of magical speciality you can acquire like other specialties. I’ve combined similar spells together in places and made their rank determine what effects you get.
† The barbarian class in my homebrew system takes cues from classic AD&D barbarians in not liking magic, but it doesn’t require they smash magic items or restrict who they can have as a companion. Instead, they have 0 mp no matter what (making them incapable of using magic) and gain extra stress from most beneficial effects.
‡ It is ironic that the group who disliked retainers in Old-School Essentials now has three retainers in a system designed with the expectation they wouldn’t be necessary.