Describe your last RPG session in more than 5 words.

[John Dallman]

Hold Person battle on snowfield.

The form of government in Greensward is . . . repressive. The nobility are in charge of absolutely everything, and have a lot of control over their magicians and priests. Their peasants are bound to the land, and taxed heavily.

Petersport killed off its nobility after everyone was transformed into undead, and now has a council-based government. It has no interest in being re-integrated into Greensward and is sheltering runaway peasants.

In the Avalon campaign, the Monday night party have been assisting the Greensward resistance movement ("The Free"). Last week, they sneaked through Greensward from Petersport to a site where the Free had been collecting runaway peasants, and escorted them most of the way back. The deep snow makes travelling harder, but means few people are out and about to spot a party of about sixty people. The PCs have magic that helps a lot with travel in winter.

Yesterday, as we were crossing the last patrol line before Petersport, we got spotted by a party of 10 light cavalry. They had a piece of Greensward magic, a banner that prevents use of arcane magic within about 50 feet (the higher nobility of Greensward have better versions, with radius of up to about 500 feet). There was a little hand-to-hand combat fighting but most of the cavalry were taken down by bow fire targeting their horses, and Hold Person spells targeting the riders. This caused an unusual aspect of Avalon to be highlighted. You don't get saving throws against spells cast by priests serving the same god as you personally worship.

Most Greenswardians worship Mammon, and so does the party's main cleric. He was fortunate to manage to take out the priest with the cavalry before he got targeted. The two priests differ quite a bit on how to practice their shared religion, and there were shouts of "Heretic!" as the fight started. That priest will be coming with us into Petersport, who will have questions for him.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

The Duke of Waiting, The Prince of Emptiness and the Viscount/Viscountess of Rebirth are chilling in their Chancel (demi plane for you dnd folks) when their Imperator, Sorghum, unexpectedly calls on them to carry out a number of small missions. Most of them are simple: Bring a particular person to their chancel, clean out the Empty Palace and kick out the semi-spiritual Time Crabs. One of them is trickier though, they need to steal a particular painting from a museum in New York.

Cleaning the temple was easy. Emptiness had the crabs turned into nothingness. Getting hold of the requested person was slightly more challenging. It resulted the deaths of three bystanders. Emptiness had one person erased from the surface of the earth, while Rebirth tossed two books at two other witnesses, killing them both instantly.

The task of tracking her down in the first place was assigned to the Duke of Waiting, who spent most his time walking leisurely from place to place and asking people for help. It was effective, though he was confounded by the advice he was given by a police officer, that "You should try and google the name".

They also spoke to the Camorra, acquiring the tools necessary for travel from Europe to the United States (money).

end of session

Nobilis is a very strange rpg. Since this was our first session in the system it wasn't smooth, but the rules are not that complicated. I am sure it will become much smoother.

 

[John Dallman]

GURPS occult WWII, India campaign:

Simla: possessing spirit imitating Thuggee?

June 1940. The central government of British India is at the summer capital, Simla (nowadays spelled Shimla). There is an outbreak of murders and attempted murders by strangling. Of the four known perpetrators, one claimed to be a member of the secret Thuggee cult (the historical existence of which was believed in at the time, although there's a lot of doubt about that nowadays) when he was arrested, but seemed to know nothing about it the next day. One was concussed when he was arrested and has not been able to say anything, and two did it during periods they can't remember.

Magic detection abilities have revealed that the latest one was definitely possessed. Tracking spirits after they've left is obviously difficult, and the party's opponent, whoever they are, hasn't made any obvious mistakes yet. The latest attempt was on a member of the Viceroy's Executive Council, so it's all getting a bit worrying for the party, who are investigators for the Indian Imperial Police. They work for the Delhi Investigation Bureau, which was MI5's opposite number in India; their role as its occult team is secret. The papers haven't got hold of the story yet, although that can't be far off.

 

[MarkB]

I'm hitting the post-post-ession crash. Came off a fun session yesterday inspired to set up the follow-ups for that session's events, set up some encounters, clues and handouts - and now it's all done, but it'll be most of a week before I can let it loose on my players.

 

[Velderan]

PF2e Abomination Vaults

Next week is exposition galore!

The group finally discovered the hidden journal of Belcorra, along with blueprints explaining the Gauntlight artifact and how to reactivate the teleportation circles they’ve discovered so far. Being unable to read Aklo, they brought them to the library to be deciphered so next week I’ll be providing them with a much more in depth history of the Abomination Vaults and Belcorra’s exile from Absalom.

They also met the ghost of Otari who explained how to unlock access to the lower levels, so they’ll be shifting to a bit of overworld exploration and role playing in town to figure out how to acquire what they need. For being a mega dungeon, there’s a lot of story to uncover and we’ve had fun with it so far. It probably helps as GM I haven’t played every encounter as straight to combat without the group understanding why the various creatures they’ve encountered are there and what their motivations are. Playing up the different factions is the key to making this AP interesting.

 

[overgeeked]

Really. Talk to each other.

I'm running two games in two different systems with two completely different groups of players...and for some reason, not a single player among them is willing to have their PC just talk to the other PCs. I don't mean using a funny voice. I mean literally just talking to another PC. Any PC. They will interact with any NPCs just fine but, somehow...as a group...have all decided that talking to other PCs is completely off limits. They will metagame and strategize as players playing a game, and table talk isn't an issue, but apparently PC-to-PC conversation is verboten. I don't get it.

 

[ichabod]

"Stay here, kid." Kid explodes.

This is getting a lot of reaction, so I thought I would explain.

Spoiler: Dungeon of the Mad Mage Spoilers

They ran into some hags in a previous session, but didn't realize they were hags. They though the hags were just nice old ladies. Further exploration got them around to the back of the hags' caves. Their they found a strange cauldron that was part of the floor, which they did not mess with. Then found the pantry, with a goblin and a young boy (human). At that point it became clear the hags were hags and were eating people. They let the goblin go and are trying to get the boy back to town. But they figure they should kill the hags first. So they tell the kid to wait in the room with the cauldron while they kill the hags.

Now, one of my players is sort of an instigator type. One of the things I was planning to do was add instigating NPCs to play off of that. So that's how I was playing the boy. The adventure write up says he stole a boat, so it seemed to fit. And his instigating had already found them some treasure. If he's an instigator in a room with a cauldron, I figured he mess with it. The cauldron had a random effect, and the one I rolled up for the boy was 10d10 fire damage. They get back to the room after the fight with the hags, and find a charred corpse.

This has turned out kind of interesting. Now they are agonizing over resources. They have a scroll of raise dead, and enough diamonds for one revivify. Diamonds are scarce in my world, because they are so useful in magic. That means they are not getting any more diamonds for another month. And they are arguing with themselves over bringing the kid back to life. I think they're going to do it, but they didn't do it last night. We'll have to wait for next session.

 

[uzirath]

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy:

High priest tossed in lava.

Edit: Oops! Wrong thread.

 

[Voadam]

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy:

High priest tossed in lava.

For the other thread?

 

[uzirath]

For the other thread?

Lol. Yes! Well, I might as well explain it now.

I've been keenly disappointed with The Shattered Obelisk, but decided to extract some value out of it. To my surprise, chapter 5 was rather fun to run. Went through it this afternoon from start to finish. The party moved quite rapidly and avoided a lot of potential slowdowns. Although written for D&D, it was trivial to convert to GURPS on the fly. In fact, the variety of challenges allowed GURPS' famously (infamously?) extensive skill list to shine. There were also a number of battles where the more intricate combat system was quite rewarding. This culminated in a final scene where the only standing PC, a massively strong barbarian, grappled the BBEG and began dragging him toward a cliff over a pool of lava. This led to a frenzied three rounds where the barbarian continued pulling him across the floor while the BBEG unleashed everything he had in a desperate attempt to break free. Despite landing a critical hit which nearly ended the fight, the BBEG couldn't prevail. The barbarian miraculously clung to consciousness and managed to hurl his foe into the magma before collapsing.

It was an extremely satisfying finish for all involved.