Describe your last RPG session in more than 5 words.

[aramis erak]

Wed Deadlands
Demon Puppeteered; Drinks Holy Water!

Rewinding a bit. They get in their Ether flying rescued stolen blimp, and head for earth...
Much hilarity as they realize I'm letting them figure out how to cope with zero g and stores, and the lack of a proper 0G privvy...
They make it to max's (Female character, elizabeth, on the run since dad, near the end of the war, made an arranged marriage for her...) mother's funeral, finding out she was working with Union Intelligence during the war. And then that Max's dad was replaced with a demon...
And said demon is there to disrupt the funeral... And force Max to get married... They soon realize all these NCOs' and Officers' swords are worthless, then Josephius the Houngan puppeteers the Demon, and forces it to drink holy water.... until it disappears.

 

[overgeeked]

Finally called it a night.

Those players were trained to passively accept whatever story they were being force fed and literally could not comprehend that they were free to pick up or ignore scenario hooks. There's an Alexandrian article about that.

 

[ichabod]

Gnomes have fled, continue down.

The previous session they had been fighting gnome cultists, almost to a TPK, but they retreated into a room and barricaded the door. They rested there, not realizing that the gnomes were down to a mage and a quaggoth and the reserve that was watching out for hobgoblins. The gnomes decided to flee, and after their rest the PCs explored the hastily abandoned gnome encampment (freeing some captives of their goblinoid allies). Then they talked to their head hobgoblin, and decided to do some quick scouting of the fourth level. There they met a friendly ettin.

Now, we're about to lose a player, and I've had trouble finding one. But during session two of the players are like, "What about Roy? Wasn't he looking for a D&D game." So Roy joins the discord and I'm multitasking with him about house rules and the setting. He's concerned because there's a lot of house rules, and this may be a more hardcore game than he's ready for. Then one of the players says "Don't worry about it. They're mostly intuitive and to the player's benefit." And then the new guy starts talking about my home brew races, and I'm like, "Cool, no one ever wants to play my home brew races." And two of the other players started talking about how much they liked the gori, one of my other home brew races.

I spend so much time focusing on where I need to improve with my DMing that it was really nice to hear that my players appreciate the stuff I am already doing.

 

[Golden Bee]

Fate Core:
"Tire marks on his dinger!"

1935.

The players confronted Amram S Khan, master mystic, in a slipshod way. They were very clever to divert reinforcements, so he tried to flee the way he had before; a puff of smoke and his clothes left on the floor. Unfortunately, his invisibility spell failed, and he fled starkers. He evaded Florence’s attempted trip, sending her tumbling down the stairs (to be caught by teammate Kabir). Khan fled to the elevator, heading towards the basement garage… where Lala was waiting with her motorcycle.

He tried hypnosis, but she pinned him to the wall and he had a quick, painful death. Few could believe the movie actress killed a nemesis by “running over his dinger”, but it happened.

More here and here.

 

[John Dallman]

AD&D1e, the Avalon campaign.

Logistics, logistics, logistics, rumbled, depart.

We have been evacuating the assets of a provincial cathedral of the Church of Mammon, god of wealth. The cathedral and the surrounding provincial capital were wrecked in "Skyfall," an orbital bombardment that took place a few game years ago, but the vaults were untouched, apart from the entrance being buried. Getting into the vaults requires casting the correct spell to open each door. We're doing this on behalf of the Church of Mammon, but there are politics involved that would be complicated to explain.

Last session we found the keys to the safes. This session we got organised. We had only about 2500lb capacity in bags of holding, but we were able to evacuate all the L1 to L4 scrolls and corresponding potions. We had an item of teleportation with a high weight limit for going back to base, and two High Priests of Mammon (one PC, one NPC) to use Word of Recall to get back here. We opened the L4 safe, which had 40-odd tons of gold in it, and moved a few tons closer to the exit. Then we found out that the guards in this post-apocalypse city had spotted where we'd dug out the entrance, so we sent all the gold with the NPC high priest back to base.

The PCs returned to their base camp outside the city and found it intact. The local guide was still there and we came to a plausible conclusion about why the guards had been searching (a rebel against the repressive local government had likely been caught and had talked). We set off for base, travelling through thick woodlands wherever we could, and made it back in three nights of travel. No combat, but a lot of tension.

 

[MarkB]

Dreadful Glare, Mummy ally MVP.

I'm running Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden. In one of the early quests it's possible for the party to pick up a good-aligned Mummy ally who will stay with them until destroyed. They're 7th level now, and the mummy Sahnar hasn't been advanced in level at all, and with his 20-foot speed tends to be the last into melee combat, so all he generally manages to do in a fight is hit someone with his measly DC 11 Dreadful Glare.

The number of major antagonists who have not only failed their saving throw against this ability but failed by 5 or more and become paralysed is starting to get ridiculous.

 

[Andvari]

Two party members almost walked into the lair of the BBEG of our nearly 2-year long campaign, by themselves, while trying to dodge another NPC. They were creeping down the 20 foot stairs leading down to his lair before turning around at the last minute. They do not know it's his lair, but may have suspected.

I'm not sure exactly what would have happened had they gone in there without the rest of the party. But I suspect it would have been bad, and I'm glad I wasn't put in the position of having to decide.

I'm also glad they struck a bargain with a group of medusas instead of fighting them, as that saved them important spell slots and consumables.

 

[corwyn77]

on to finale, backpack nuke

Action horror game set in vietnam, the party's final mission is to destroy a magic-fortified temple with said nuke.

 

[the Jester]

The pcs rescued a captive audience from a homebrewed Fey called an applause drinker. The applause drinker literally feeds on plaudits from an audience, and had captured about two dozen commoners and was keeping them enthralled in a set of bleachers they constructed in the woods while its semi-captive performance troupe and it put on plays on a stage. They were giving the audience free food and booze, which was spawning another type of homebrewed Fey- whiskey pixies- that were the manifestations of drunkenness. The pcs waited until around dawn to strike, when everyone was asleep and before the day's whiskey pixies spawned (they die when the creature they arise from sobers up). The pcs managed to storm the stage and defeat the applause drinker and its hired goons.

 

[MarkB]

applause drinker

Resistances: Self-awareness
Vulnerabilities: Waldorf and Statler