Describe your last RPG session in more than 5 words.

[Celebrim]

Just as a bit of a vent out of frustration, but you'd think that after 260 hours of pretending to be bounty hunters that the players would begin to be a bit better bounty hunters and conduct a wee more skillful investigation or at least be able to discretely pinch someone out of a bar without tipping off to everyone watching that they were planning to pinch someone. Like just a little tradecraft would be acquired by this point. I mean, it's setting up an ambush really, that's all it is too it. Or at least, don't blab all the details of your investigation to a bartender in a bar you've been warned is frequented by terrorist sympathizers, because there is a good chance they meet in the bar because the bartender is friendly to the cause. I mean, you'd think that would be obvious and logical right? You don't go into an Italian bar you think has mafia contacts looking like feds and then tell people there why you are there and who you are looking for, and then let people leave, because there is a good chance they are going to run and find the guy and say, "The Feds are looking for you." Right? That's not how you do the job. You leave a team outside discretely at a distance, maybe send one guy inside in plain clothes if you have trouble making your mark and snatch the guy with some sort of signal when he leaves quick and efficient like. Why is this complicated? After 8 prior adventures, you'd think they'd start working out how this works.

 

[Golden Bee]

The Greatest Two Minutes in Kidnapping!
“The rest of the day blurs into madness. The rest of that night too. And all the next day and night. I pointed to the huge grassy meadow enclosed by the track. "That whole thing," I said, "will be jammed with people; fifty thousand or so, and most of them staggering drunk. It's a fantastic scene.” -Hunter S Thompson, ‘The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved’

Full roster this week with the brawler-lawyer, electrician-nun, heiress-reporter… as well as the millionaire orphan, stunt driver actress, and decathlete butler. They were a League of Nations among themselves; the group is respectively Mexican, French, Australian, Indian, Italian and Argentine.

Rafe Lancaster, Devi’s industrialist mentor, invited the group to watch his new racehorse win the Kentucky Derby. Of course, he was late to lunch. Then, he took Devi aside and told her that he was selling his company, marrying his chorus girl girlfriend, and giving her to a bunch of thugs to kidnap.

Devi’s judicious about how she uses her mentalism, but with Rafe falling back into old habits, he deserved a psychic trip. His mind had no answer for the powers of the ex-goddess. The thugs were a bigger problem… until the millionaire orphan opened her purse.

“Check OK?”

She easily outbid their mystery employer, paying them to drag Rafe into a private room for interrogation.
Turns out, he had been poisoned. And given mental instruction over the phone… but by who?

The attempted kidnapping was an opportunity. The thugs lent their grimy van to the group, along with a delivery address. The rest of the ZSS disguised themselves as crooks, except the nun, who felt it was un-pious. (She was remanded to the van.)

The villain? Cheerful Charlie Cunningham, who had last tried to stab Devi back in 'Monster in the mine!' He gloated at what he thought was his helpless victim…until she shook off her blindfold. Charlie’s vision blurred between Kentucky reality and his prior defeat. With the help of the group, he was disarmed and lost concentration, stumbling in a daze…impaling himself on a particularly sharp warehouse nail. An ignominious end for an escaped murderer.

Despite that, the case did have lighthearted moments! As the group unraveled the mystery, gunshots rang out in a distant room. Sister Helene, master of psychology, noticed the bartender reacting oddly. The would-be snitch tried to dial the telephone… which she "accidentally” unplugged. And then “repaired” into uselessness, giving the sap more and more rope until he confessed everything. No violence, no mental powers, not even a raised voice, but the guy was defeated.

Also interesting was tracking down the conspiracy… while none of the members knew boss Charlie was dead. Everyone feared a murderer who was already dead in a warehouse. Easy enough for the ZSS to promise protection!

The spider at the center of the web was an unexpected foe… the daughter of Doc Midas! She had a vendetta against Devika, who apologized* and tried to convince the woman that grief was not a reason to mess with her. Whether or not Aloria Midas follows good advice is yet to be seen.

So, with everyone drunk on mint juleps, it was time for an awkward conversation. Between this, Genghis Khan's tomb, the wedding and the mines, Mr. Lancaster had attempted to kill Devika too much for cohabitation. In the spirit of bad short-term decision-making, she agreed to move in with his girlfriend, the Broadway chorus girl Lillian Lamb, in Central Park West. Man, mind control gets in the way of so many good friendships…

*Devi argued that Midas wasn't her foe, because that player was GMing all the sessions that featured him.

 

[John Dallman]

AD&D 1.2e, Avalon Campaign.

Final Fay Lord body retrieved.

I'm calling it 1.2e now because one of the five characters has been rebuilt from being a 1e Ranger into a 2e Ranger. That comes out closer to what the player wanted. The character is a follower of Aldrya, the Gloranthan goddess of plants, fertility, elves and related species. D&D magic-user spells didn't really fit her, and while some of the druid spells did, a heavily customised clerical spell list was better. She's half elf, half dryad. Being a Rune Lady of Aldrya would suit her best, but is not practical in Avalon.

All the characters in the campaign have custom spell lists. We have:

• This ranger following Aldrya.
• A paladin of "The Knowing God," a religion that seems to have started as a side-effect of a plot by an evil supernatural creature, but is not evil at all.
• A ranger/cleric of Artemis, the Ancient Greek goddess of nature, hunting and virginity.
• A priest of Mammon, god of trade and wealth.
• A magic-user specialising in missile magic. My notes on many of our fights end "... and then Rama blew it away."

We retrieved the body of the last of the twelve fay lords who have been a major plot element. He was the first of them to die, very shortly after they left Fairie, and his body is intact in spite of the passage of nearly four thousand years. The wizard who keeps their spirits safe, and whom we've given their remains to, is considering the idea of bringing him back to life. This is attractive, because if he's incarnate in his body, his spirit can't become part of the Wild Hunt, which thus (probably) can't be summoned.

That has happened a few times, invariably with disastrous results. Preventing it seems like a good idea, which likely means there's a major downside somewhere. Avalon is like that.

 

[Reynard]

I managed the first real session of my Autumnlands sandbox. (Note: the Autumnlands are based on a map by Dyson Logos and full of whatever material I can fill it with, including Baldur's Gate and Freeport and the Sunless Citadel etc.)

The tl;dr of the campaign is: an evil overlord has usurped the throne and his malice has directly harmed the PCs, who have teamed up to gain strength, power, and influence in order to take him down.

The starting town is Triboar from both Storm King's Thunder and adventures by @M.T. Black . I gave them a few rumors that would lead to their first adventures (or let them go wander into the hexes) and they decided to follow the route to a modified version of Temple of the Nightbringers (by the aforementioned M.T. Black.)

It went well. there are 5 1st level PCs: monk, wizard, bard, fighter and cleric. There was some roleplaying with the bully town guards of Triboar (these were folks that supported the BBEG's coup and were rewarded with the town as their personal playground) and then the PCs headed south to find the missing travelers. Due to that little roleplaying encounter, one of the Triboar Guards went with them to show them where a goblin ambush had happened.

The party discovered they were being watched by a bugbear scout, so they ambushed the ambusher. Then the bugbear called for goblin backup. it was a fun fight where the PCs worked hard, a couple almost dropped but didn't, and in the end they won. They followed the goblin's trail into the woods, discovered a ravine where the goblins disposed of their dead along the way, and finally found the entrance to the Temple. they decided to back off and get a long rest in to recover from the fight before delving. Just as the rest was ending, a lone goblin was sent out to find where they ambush crew had got to. The PCs ganked that goblin and now have a couple hours before he would be expected back.

We are using the 2024 D&D rules and are trying to be thorough with them so we can find rule changes, so we moved a little more slowly than we otherwise might. Even so, we had a solid 3 hour session (via Fantasy Grounds). I am looking forward to watching the campaign grow and see how the PCs go about exploration while intentionally seeking growth in might to reach the goal of Revenge Squadding the BBEG.

 

[Golden Bee]

What’s yours is MAYAN!
Wealth beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.

How do you run a game that's funny? While most sessions are going to have laughs when players switch from silly to serious, there are ways to get them far more consistently.

The first way is to have exaggerated characters. This session, we had a returning player play a new character… 12-year-old mathematical prodigy, Janie Voss*. Devika started out as a mentalist and kid sidekick, whereas Janie is… good with numbers. In fact her Trouble aspect is "Utterly Underestimated.” So we have a shy girl with a genius intellect who won't stop carrying around an indestructible dolly named Bella.

(Another great way to get comedy is to give someone a prop. Throughout the session, everyone would address the doll differently. Some would ignore it, some would roll their eyes, and the real weirdos like Steel Eagle asked the doll questions and treated its non-answers with great severity.)

Anyway, the tagalong was accompanied by extreme rich egotist Rafe Lancaster, excitable Japanese hipster Zelda Saeki, and fastidious and jealous sniper Javid Kulfi.

Want another source of yuks? Give players autonomy. Rafe kept having flashbacks, but in them, his villainous plans had succeeded and he had murdered all his (current) friends. A bit of investigation revealed the cause. Someone whose business Rafe had crushed had sent over a cursed gem. How to get revenge? Well obviously… have the Japanese detective and the 12-year-old go to the guys house, disguised as a Girl Scout and her father. Because of course.

It's important to know who the straight man is in a scene. An elderly guy who owned an orchard is probably the normal one, compared to disguised liars entering his home under false pretenses. The players successfully investigated and found … that the man had gone to a magic store, bought something, and then sent it in the mail. (When prompted with what they were actually going to do with the stone, they decided to hide it in his toilet tank. Pity the poor plumber who starts hallucinating during repairs!)

Sometimes though, it's the characters’ jobs to be normal. Shopkeepers are good for this, but fellow customers are great for this. When the players investigated the magic store, it was about to close, and the only other person besides the owner was Tibetan party boy Steel Eagle. Not only did he let the owner know that Rafe was his rich buddy, he also kept alternating between believing and pooh-poohing the expensive treasure map the storekeeper was trying to unload. Once they agreed to buy it, he immediately left (to hang out with some NPCs who otherwise might've gone on the trip).

Sometimes though, salesmen are so slick that even the characters are enraptured. The treasure map started at a small village in Venezuela, where a friendly Australian had the greatest supply shop south of the equator. Of course, everything was really expensive… It's not like he had a lot of customers. But no one who went up river ever came back to complain, so he promised a complete satisfaction return policy! And although he knew that the entire operation was a scam, he never technically lied. The most charming people can deceive with the truth!

A surprising combo with mirth? Danger. Javid argued with the native guide, a quarrel that was interrupted by a river crocodile! Despite being outnumbered by the group, the fear of being dragged into the water and devoured brought back an intensity and kept the game from descending into flippantness.

Any improviser will tell you though, if you want to be funny, don't tell jokes, pay attention. The group basically ignored their native guide when she fell in the water, and by the time she got back to the boat, it was too late to warn them that they were headed towards a waterfall! Rafe managed to pilot his boat to the shore, but the other one had no good crewman in it. The only person on shore was Janie Voss… So she threw a rope from the supplies over to Javid and Zelda.

“Wait, don't you weigh like… 70 pounds?
“Sure, but my doll is helping.”

The players, now forced to go upriver in one boat and a makeshift raft holding their equipment, pissed off their guide so much she quit. Which mucked things up, because the angry Mayans in the temple were actually actors.

The group seemed extremely tickled by how grateful the "Mayans" were. After finding how much he paid for supplies and the treasure map, they told Rafe that he was not only a great explorer, but a patron of the arts.

But just because you've solved the mystery, doesn't mean there's no more tension. It turns out someone else had solved the mystery too… when they revealed their "ancient Mayan artifact” at a society dinner and found out their rivals had the exact same one.

The only appropriate response was to revisit the village… with a tank.

GMs, feel free to escalate.
With a sneaky approach, it’d be possible to… Oops, the players botched that. But Rafe was extremely good with schmoozing, and the tank team were former clients… oops, that botched too. The player side didn’t want to take on a battle tank head to head… And it's not like it was an actual village anyway…

Javid, who had dedicated his life to taking down tyrants…bit his tongue.

Elated that things had gone so well, the bad guys offered to let the players shoot at the tank with small arms. In a comedy, the bad guys enjoy their success.

*Janie was introduced as another ‘remarkable young woman’ in The Girls of the Greenbrier. She became a lot more competent when elevated to player character.

Janie:

 

[Golden Bee]

Song and Dance by Oscar Rios

“You can’t just sell someone’s flatware back to them,” said Diamond.
“No,” corrected O’Rourke, “you can’t. But it’s smarter to return them for a reward.”

A light was on in JP Diamond’s office.

It was a few days after Christmas, his girlfriend wasn’t home… suspicious. He snuck in with the help of his trusty parrot Tango, opened the door, and confronted…his parents!? Yes, having read of his daring adventures across the globe, they had finally traveled from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. Letters and phone calls simply wouldn’t do.

So…who was this Captain Ivanova woman? And was he going to marry her?

A good detective can play his cards close to the chest. A great one can conceal that the woman he’s being ‘convinced’ to court left her underpants in the next room over. But while it was nice to see his parents, they should get back to their hotel, because he had to prepare for a costume party.

Also on the guest list: Butler Aldous Bingen, cat burglar Thaza O’Rourke, and (in a rare situation) another detective, Yoriko "Zelda" Sayuki.

Normally, the only detective JP teams with is his beau, the Captain. But the women’s styles couldn't be more different. Saeki could move mountains with her charming, easy-going nature. The Captain was more the type to find the guilty party and harangue them into confession and/or catatonia.

(In a lighter moment: the theme of the costume party was Sherwood Forest, and both Zelda and Bingham insisted on being Will Scarlet. The most obscure Merry Man.)

The galawas fine, until midnight, when every skilled singer and dancer lost their skills and fell into melancholia. Bebe Broussard, musical impresario, could barely speak. The investigators quickly ruled out poisoning or enemy sabotage as the reason… But what was it?!

The next day, the newspapers revealed the extent of the damage. All across the South, anyone with any song or dance skill was in at best a deep depression, or at worst taking their own lives. Thaza, pawning off some of the silver punch bowls that she stole at the party, decided to spend the money on a long distance call to Australia. Florence Zee, lounge singer extraordinaire, had gone through similar symptoms… but, having been woken up at 5 AM, felt inspired to pen a new song! In fact, she sounded positively manic.

Of the four adventurers, only one was a Louisiana native. That caused some problems. Zelda, eager to crack the case on her own, found a redacted newspaper story and looked up the author, Beatrice Piper. Piper had written something that important people didn't want printed, and her problem quickly became Zelda's when up the stairs came hulking bruisers Mr. Black and Mr. Blue.
Now, JP would probably take the beating out of a sense of Southern gallantry. Captain Ivanova would stand behind the door and drive a wedge between the two, running her mouth until she could summon a group of local Pinkos to even the odds.

Zelda apologized.

“It sounds like something got into The Item that shouldn't have. This woman has already been beaten up, all you guys can really add is committing felony assault in front of witnesses. I think you leaving is going to be the best for everyone.”

This actually worked.

Thaza had a harder time learning the lessons of the Crescent City. She was fine hitting up her criminal contacts like “Jinx” Jenkins. But when it came to genteel members of society, the fact she was raised by apes shined through. She used her strength to put cracks into a city elder’s desk, and when escorted out by a butler, foolishly followed his advice to "Wait, because someone interesting wants to talk to you.” That person was a cop on the take, who gave the woman some truncheon-to-kidney Southern Hospitality.
***
Some more digging, and the characters found out the source of the problem: two rich idiots practicing voodoo. Wanting to have the best party season ever, they had summoned the Greek muses of dance and song into their bodies, distorting arts across the world.

But where could one track down living embodiments of music and motion? How about a New Year's Eve dance-marathon out by the old amusement grounds?

While all this was going on, JP was constantly distracted by spending time with his parents, his Russian explorer "friend", and his annoying sister-in-law Alice. So on New Year's Eve, he had to combine the rescue operation and date night.

The 10th Annual New Orleans Charleston Contest was the place to be… And everyone knew it. Including Mr. Black and Mr. Blue, who were at the next table over. They suggested the group "take things outside”. Sounded like a plan! Unhappily for our heroes, Mr. B and Mr. B had done the reading. JP was impervious to physical beatdowns... His Japanese friend, not so much. The twins were giving Yoriko a good shellacking when Thaza LEAPT off a fire escape, knocking everyone onto the gravel.

And when the group resorted to gunfire, the crooks on stage decided to skip the final two hours and declare the embodied Muses the winners! If they would just accept their trophy, then they could sign for the prize money backstage…

Captain Semya Ivanova, without a second’s hesitation, reached into her purse. She pulled out her whip, and smashed one of the branches of a chandelier.

“This contest is illegitimate, let me at the stage!”

She pushed through the crowd, and addressed a ballroom filled with hundreds of people. This would be an extremely difficult thing to do, hijacking a party as an obvious foreigner.

“Wait. These girls are upper class right? Why doesn't Ivanova just berate them?”

And indeed, she did, telling the ‘spoiled brats’ they should get back to their limo and head home. She made sure to stall long enough for Saeki and O’Rourke to evade Black & Blue, and follow the socialites…

The moment having passed, the musicians started playing again, no longer maddened by Terpsichore and Euterpe. The Captain was going to retake her seat when a bedraggled JP Diamond coaxed her into the green room.

“Now, I might not be the smartest man in God's creation, but even I can notice the best thing that's ever happened to me. I hope this little hoop of gold is enough to tell you I want you in my life forever.”

Ivanova, for the first time in a very long time, began to cry. She reached into her purse and pulled out a small, dusty box.

“Josiah, I don't mind you very much at all. I was intrigued when I met you, and must've fallen for a man too stubborn and Southern to be subdued by death. So I give you a little bit of metal, and offer the rest of my life, which will hopefully line up with the rest of yours.”

The rest of the group was ecstatic at the news. Zelda and Thaza had persuaded the Muses that they were too good for this earth, convincing the socialites to undo the ritual. JP’s pal Devika was over the moon at impending nuptials. (The Louisiana shamus quietly returned the additional ring box she had slipped into his jacket.)

Of course, one person was unhappy with the news. He had no godly beings to capture and manipulate. And the Undying PI was set to wed the World’s Most Dangerous Explorer. This wasn’t just horrible news. This was unacceptable. So proclaimed THE SINISTER SKULL!

 

[aramis erak]

Classic Traveller (at Corvallis Community Center's C3 Con.)
Tractor beam nabs them. They must go through the corrosive atmosphere, into the spooky structure, to turn off the tractor beams

Fabula Ultima
I played; fun boss battle! For once I was not GMing. It's fun, if one can engage with meta currency/

 

[Bomberooski]

Struggling with my weekly game (we play Sunday nights so it’s fresh). 1 player is simply a power builder and has had 4 characters in 8 sessions. He dies on purpose (attacks everything) so he can bring in a new build. Another player is a combo of power builder and also someone that needs to make every decision for every situation in the campaign. The 3rd player is very quiet but very enjoyable to play with. He takes the game seriously but is also there to have a lot of fun and hasn’t overpowered his character.

But the toughest part for me is that the GM just doesn’t click for me. We get into situations where we have no clue what to do and he just waits and waits for us to figure it out. We’ll try a ton of stuff and he just laughs and says that none of that really did anything and we just keep on trying things until finally we just go quiet because we’ve tapped all our ideas. At that point he will kind of move us along down the story but it’s very weird and very hard to follow along with what the adventure is.

Just needed to vent about my latest DnD session

 

[uzirath]

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy:

Wraith snacks on my soul.

This was part of a delightful family game run by my 8-year-old. He's relatively new to the
GM's chair (having run his first game last summer), but he's doing great. This little romp highlighted a bunch of things that I appreciate about GURPS.

We used pre-generated characters, but it was easy to get to know them via their disadvantages and quirks. My half-ogre martial artist, for example, was fundamentally peaceful and kind, but as a member of a "monstrous" race, she is sometimes turned aside from "civilized" communities. It was exciting to roll to see if the town guards would let her in. (The mechanics were that if you roll a six or less on 3d6, you are excluded. We had to check twice.) Lots of fun role-playing moments in town.

We were able to use some of our knowledge skills in town to prepare for the adventure, doing research in the local library and consulting with a temple to learn about the rumored guardian of the MacGuffin. (And the final boss was tough enough that we really needed the hints that we gleaned ahead of time!)

Even with our preparations, the final wraith had some tricks up its sleeve that we weren't expecting. We knew that it was a creature of darkness, so came with numerous continual-light objects. Even so, it's gloom was powerful enough to dim them to mere glows. We weren't blind, but faced some darkness penalties. It was also able to raise a Draugr to fight at its side, and it could create terrifying voids that seemed to disintegrate anything that touched them. Our ranged attacks weren't doing much damage to it (mostly passing through its immaterial form), and it had a nasty ability to suck our souls by glaring at us (effectively injuring us and healing it). My character was sucked to zero HP twice, but managed to chug healing potions before falling unconscious.

So we're running around, fighting the Draugr, and trying to injure the wraith faster than it is hurting us. Ultimately, after many failed attempts to take it down, we improved our tactics. We spread out around it so that it couldn't face all of us at once. This allowed the wizard to blast it from behind (denying it any active defenses). He poured everything into a single sunbolt that was able to knock it into deeply negative hit points. Even so, it had a high Health score, which gave it a good chance to resist collapse for a few more turns. Luckily, the GM rolled a terribly and it was destroyed.

This, of course, unleashed it's final curse: a void wave that spread out from its point of demise. My character was again at zero HP, but the Holy Warrior was able to heal me. We grab the MacGuffin and being to sprint out. Alas, the wizard has lots of expensive hobbies (i.e., he has the Greed disadvantage), so he was tempted to grab a few more choice items. Tense words were exchanged, and we convinced him to choose survival. (Mechanically, he rolled against the self-control number for his disad to see if he could resist it. He succeeded.)

As we collapsed outside the cave, we were relieved to see the void field dissipate at the entrance. (We briefly feared that we may have inadvertently triggered the apocalypse.)

We are no richer (in fact, a fair bit poorer after our expenses in town), but was achieved the primary mission of retrieving the artifact. More importantly, it was an exhilarating ride with plenty of laughs and gasps for all of us.

 

[John Dallman]

Honor & Intrigue, Privateers of the Complications:

Rafted past the giant spiders.

As we ascend the Orinoco River looking for El Dorado, things are gradually getting weirder. We had zombies in a graveyard ages ago, but man-sized spiders are definitely another step away from mundane reality. We were attacked by three while we were moving along the river bank, and had to stop to rest and recover. Overnight, we were attacked by two more, and while all five of them died, we were not in great shape, with two people paralysed overnight and our Captain playing his usual role of a pinata for local wildlife.

We were pretty sure we wouldn't survive another day and a night in the spiders' territory, and turning back would mean abandoning El Dorado. We had been carrying a two-man canoe with us, because we were bound to have to cross water at some point, so we got slightly creative. The Orinoco is flowing fairly slowly where we are. Two people paddle the canoe, towing the other four of us on a rope. After a bit, we stopped and gathered wood to make four small rafts, and the journey become much less horrible.

There are spiders on the other bank, so we camped on a sandbank and caught fish for dinner. It seems like a different world from the horrors of yesterday!