D&D General How Was Your Last Session?
We played another "Dreams of Erthe" session this afternoon. The five PCs were brought before the magistrate for having cast spells within the city limits, something expressly forbidden. Fortunately, a city structural engineer butted in before the sentencing and explained he'd been clearing out the ruins of a wizard's tower which mysteriously exploded a week ago and his workers refuse to go into the underground rooms since they found signs of devil worship and so on. So the PCs get conscripted to help the structural engineer explore the dungeon level beneath the wizard's tower and ensure nothing down there is a danger to the city. And best of all, they are free to cast spells as necessary to clear out the dangers in the underground level under the structural engineer's guidance.
They managed to make it past the two dread guards okay, and then it seemed like a few of the players were on a mission to explore every available room as soon as possible, more or less releasing the monsters all at once so they'd have to fight them on all fronts (generally while cramped up in a 5-foot-wide passageway). I was kind of surprised since that's not their normal habit, but for whatever reason that's how they went about it this time. So while still fighting the dread guards, the elf sorcerer managed to find an evil obsidian sacrificial dagger that was really a polymorphed bearded devil; entered a room that triggered a wraith; and opened a bank of cells and left the door open so the iron cobra behind the door (that he hadn't noticed) was free to crawl out and attack the PCs in the corridors. Then our human fighter/wizard opened the last obvious door in the complex, triggering a symbol of pain that affected everyone but him and the structural engineer (they were the only two to make their saves), then leave the door open so the invisible imp and the unnoticed ochre jelly could fly/crawl out and attack everyone - and the imp knew the command word that released the bearded devil from its form as an obsidian dagger. We rolled once for initiative at the start of the session and then never left initiative until the entire adventure had been completed.
The best part, in my mind, was when they noticed the structural engineer - who was bald when he was in the magistrate's office with them and when they entered the dungeon - now had a full head of hair. We use initiative cards when we play and I had made up two for the structural engineer: one with him bald and one with a bunch of wavy hair Photoshopped in. Towards the end of the adventure (after the bearded devil had been freed from his dagger form) I surreptitiously swapped cards for him, and then played dumb when the player whose PC was in the room with him thought he had been bald before. I showed him the card and even flipped it over, where his name was clearly printed on the back. It was only when the cleric/paladin entered the room and saw the engineer's head - and only his head - was emanating an aura of evil that they realized the fake hair had taken over the engineer. They managed to take it out (with a swat to the head followed by a magic missile spell) and restored the structural engineer to his normal alignment. And that's when I asked them if they remembered the name of the adventure, which I had told them at the beginning of the session.
"Hell to Pay," they said. I just looked at them expectantly until the lights came on. "Son of a bitch!" they griped. "Hell Toupee!"
I apologize for nothing.
Johnathan
They managed to make it past the two dread guards okay, and then it seemed like a few of the players were on a mission to explore every available room as soon as possible, more or less releasing the monsters all at once so they'd have to fight them on all fronts (generally while cramped up in a 5-foot-wide passageway). I was kind of surprised since that's not their normal habit, but for whatever reason that's how they went about it this time. So while still fighting the dread guards, the elf sorcerer managed to find an evil obsidian sacrificial dagger that was really a polymorphed bearded devil; entered a room that triggered a wraith; and opened a bank of cells and left the door open so the iron cobra behind the door (that he hadn't noticed) was free to crawl out and attack the PCs in the corridors. Then our human fighter/wizard opened the last obvious door in the complex, triggering a symbol of pain that affected everyone but him and the structural engineer (they were the only two to make their saves), then leave the door open so the invisible imp and the unnoticed ochre jelly could fly/crawl out and attack everyone - and the imp knew the command word that released the bearded devil from its form as an obsidian dagger. We rolled once for initiative at the start of the session and then never left initiative until the entire adventure had been completed.
The best part, in my mind, was when they noticed the structural engineer - who was bald when he was in the magistrate's office with them and when they entered the dungeon - now had a full head of hair. We use initiative cards when we play and I had made up two for the structural engineer: one with him bald and one with a bunch of wavy hair Photoshopped in. Towards the end of the adventure (after the bearded devil had been freed from his dagger form) I surreptitiously swapped cards for him, and then played dumb when the player whose PC was in the room with him thought he had been bald before. I showed him the card and even flipped it over, where his name was clearly printed on the back. It was only when the cleric/paladin entered the room and saw the engineer's head - and only his head - was emanating an aura of evil that they realized the fake hair had taken over the engineer. They managed to take it out (with a swat to the head followed by a magic missile spell) and restored the structural engineer to his normal alignment. And that's when I asked them if they remembered the name of the adventure, which I had told them at the beginning of the session.
"Hell to Pay," they said. I just looked at them expectantly until the lights came on. "Son of a bitch!" they griped. "Hell Toupee!"
I apologize for nothing.
Johnathan
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
Pretty good. There was no combat and most of the session was spent handling both between adventure and long-term logistics (selling off loot, paying debts, getting thing appraised, prepping to brew potions) - but there was other stuff like sneaking their new troll follower into the area of Saltmarsh without anyone finding out, gathering info about what's been happening in their absence (a new party moved into town and everyone loves them, the PCs are unimpressed, preparations for war, stuff like that), and talking to various other NPCs. There were a few skill checks, but even then, few dice were rolled.
We are hopefully going to handle some between session downtime online, so that when we meet for our next session in January we are ready to get going again.
We are hopefully going to handle some between session downtime online, so that when we meet for our next session in January we are ready to get going again.
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
Oh and I wanted to add that in the troll lair the PCs found a large flat stone carved in giant runes with this message on it:
“Spoils and man-flesh aplenty. Report to Nosnrah, Chief of the Hill Giants in Kylada.”
Can anyone guess what possible future adventure I am laying clues for?
“Spoils and man-flesh aplenty. Report to Nosnrah, Chief of the Hill Giants in Kylada.”
Can anyone guess what possible future adventure I am laying clues for?
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
A lot of great stories here folks!
My own last session was a great success!
I’ve been building the third iteration of my homebrew TTRPG Quest For Chevar for the last year or so (working full time makes it hard to get the work done quickly), and on Friday we finally got to make characters and test out the new mechanics.
The world is modern Earth, with hidden magic, crossroads between the 9 worlds, and lots of supernatural ancestries from Shifters (were-folk) to Fairies, to Dryads, Djinn, and trolls, etc.
My wife made a “Skater Witch” Human Bridger (think shaman) named Teddy (Theodora) whose “Fetch” takes the form of a longboard, or the form of a large spirit fox. She is very athletic, good at divination and evocation (binding and cursing magic) and aeromancy, and makes weapons of air as well as using aeromancy and geomancy to do sweet skateboard tricks. From a family of witches and Rangers in Humboldt County, Ca.
My buddy John updated his first QfC character, originally a 1930’s era character. She’s a Jewish pilot and adventurer from the East Coast, with a gun she doesn’t know is magic. She was the only one who didn’t know about magic and the 9 worlds in the group. She was there as a favor for Bernadette Colson, the local Ranger Captain. Her name is Shayna (not sure of the spelling).
My other friend Drew made a Shifter Benedanti (werewolf, or in his case weredog, supernatural mediator and investigator who protect the world from void creatures in the Night Battles), named George. He’s a very good boy, from a family with a long history of fighting evil.
I made a companion PC who is a protagonist from a story I wrote set in the same world, Garret Ayala. He’s a Human Alchemist who is a skilled fencer and track and field runner who has been Wise for about 2 years, and is still catching up. He isn’t too exceptional outside of being very good at learning new skills and adapting to new circumstances. His best friend, a Dryad Slayer named Iathella, was with them but just as a second source of exposition.
The session began with all the PCs in Garret’s heavily customized VW Bus, which serves as his “Sanctum”; which he gets as an Alchemist. It contains a small library of copies of rare books, alchemical tools and ritual tools, and a small kitchenette, with loads of tiny house design stuff where you unfold a thing into another thing, packing more than you'd expect to fit into the space. The player gets to design their sanctum.
They're driving up Ca Highway 58 from Bakersfield to Tehachapi, a beautiful mountain town with lots of apple orchards nestled into the Tehachapi Mountains, in the South Eastern corner of the southern Central Valley. They've got about an hour, and Garret starts asking them questions to establish a strategic understanding of their skills, while letting them in on what's happening. He doesn't know that Shaina isn't Wise, and doesn't notice her confusion.
The job: A team of Rangers got rekt up in Tehachapi, including Bernadette herself and Garret's friend Iathella, when they got ambushed by a pack of void wolves lead by 3 void witches in a mountain hiking pass. Bernadette has called in some favors to get a team well suited to the task to come up and take care of the somewhat weakened pack before they can hurt more people and "recruit" more members to replace those they've lost.
The Preparation Phase: Before a conflict scene, if the team has time, they can each make one roll to prepare for what's coming.
Initiative. George and Garret are using a Stealthy approach, while the others are lying in wait until the two hitters make contact. It's not the smart approach since they could have used the kill box to make the enemy come to them after a round of ranged attacks, but George and Garret both want blood, and so it goes. Both succeed on their Stealth (Sneaking) rolls, while the other two wait. Teddy rolls Aeromancy (Aerokenisis) to make a hammer of air, and Shaina rolls Perception (Examination) to take careful aim.
Since all four succeed, the enemy would have to get very good Perception checks to have a chance of not being ambushed. They make Perception rolls (NPCs don't have specialties, just skills), and get a partial success. The team won't get automatic success on their first attacks (total failure), but the get to take their whole round of actions before the enemy can act, and automatically have the Initiative due to a successful ambush.
Combat Phase 1, forward combatants and things that trigger at the start of conflict. Garret and George rush in from stealth and make their opening attacks, getting a bonus die of damage on a hit due to ambushing their targets. George targets the biggest void wolf, which is a monstrous hybrid form werewolf with inky black fur and the smell of decay around it. George is in dog form, something like a really big blonde sheep dog, and goes for the throat. Partial Success. He pushes it by taking a complication rather than spending AP, meaning he does 3 dice of fatigue, and fails to grapple the target, falling prone himself alongside the void wolf. He does 18 fatigue, which inflicts a trauma. The player chooses to inflict the Bleeding condition with that Trauma, which means the target takes 1d fatigue at the start of it's turn every round.
Garret pushes a Partial Success to Total, and just wollops the void witch. As a Quick Action he enhances his strike with Evocation (Gaes) to inflict a Silenced binding on her. She gains a Physical Trauma and is at a 1d penalty to perform magic or communicate.
Phase 2, passive and nuetral stance characters. Teddy is in a Readied Stance, which means she can go in any phase she chooses, and chooses to move to where she is close to the fray, and wait to take the rest of her turn.
Phase 3, rearward stance characters go and complex maneuvers resolve. Anything that happens at the end of the round happens now. Shaina starts her turn by making an Active Defense check against shock. I don't recall what skill she used, but she focuses her mind on the tasks, concentrating on terrain, targets, allies, cover, trajectory, and nothing else. Partial Success. She gains a mental trauma, but won't be effected by it until the end of the scene or she gains an additional mental trauma. She takes aim now and shoots the second Void Witch. Critical Success, she adds her bonus die from Garret to the damage, doing something like 30 damage, and I rule that she witch just passes out, 30 being within a couple points of her Fatigue Limit, and thrice her Toughness score.
Next the bad guys go. The uninjured 3rd witch tries to envelop our melee heroes in magical darkness, and fails due to Teddy using a Quick action to interrupt her with an Aeromancy attack, dealing minor damage but dropping the triggering attack to a partial failure, causing the heroes and their enemies to be in a haze of darkness.
Teddy takes her actual turn next, and uses Geomancy (Inertiakenisis) to slow two void wolves.
The Void wolves go, attacking George and Garret as a swarm, which means they roll with a bonus die for every 3 creatures in the swarm, but a penalty from the magical darkness, so they roll with 3 rank dice, but can't get a critical success. They get a total success, and our heroes have to make an Active Defense Check to mitigate the effect. We have since streamlined this process, so I won't go into detail, but they reduce it to where George takes about 6 fatigue, and Garret takes 12, which gives him a physical Trauma, and neither is pinned by the wolves. Lastly, the injured but standing witch uses a quick action and spends AP to successfully end the binding on her, and tries to bind Teddy in place and silence her, spending most of the rest of her pool of AP. Teddy spends 3 AP to do an Active Defense and activate her Defensive Curse spell, allowing her to counter the binding with a Evocation (Malisons) check to curse the witch. She still takes 10 fatigue, but neither binding effect come through and she successfully curses the witch with a Barbed Magic curse, making her take fatigue immediately and any time she uses magic.
We ended the session there because it was midnight, and then talked for a bit about the mechanics and how they felt and all that, mad a lot of notes, and resolved to play again ASAP. Everyone really enjoyed their characters, the preparation phase, and once we dialed in the active defense mechanics they started to feel really good.
A fun session and a lot of useful information for fine tuning this new version of thegame.
My own last session was a great success!
I’ve been building the third iteration of my homebrew TTRPG Quest For Chevar for the last year or so (working full time makes it hard to get the work done quickly), and on Friday we finally got to make characters and test out the new mechanics.
- changed from 2d10+(1d10 per skill rank) to 1d12+(1d6 per skill rank).
- Reduced the skill list by combining some of the skills that struggled to justify themselves, and redesigned the character sheet to fit the entire skill list on the front page, along with the success ladder and the Trauma Track.
- Changed from a DC based system to a success ladder with 5 steps; utter failure, partial failure, mixed success, total success, critical success.
- Ditched HP. Instead you gain fatigue, and you have a toughness score and a fatigue limit. Toughness is 8+an attribute (1-5), Fatigue limit is 3x Toughness. When you gain fatigue over your Toughness you gain Trauma. If the effect was physical, you gain Physical Trauma, otherwise it’s Mental Trauma. If you hit your Fatigue Limit, you are out of the scene. Trauma sticks around longer than fatigue, and inflicts a condition that gets worse as your trauma gets more severe.
- Fatigue is based on skill roll results, and you simply count the dice from your skill roll. Ie if you get a total success, you count the 2 highest dice from your pool. If you get a mixed success, you could the single highest. Critical success let’s you add an extra die of fatigue. All dice can be trades for a secondary effect like inflicting a temporary condition, gaining an advantage, or giving an ally an opening.
The world is modern Earth, with hidden magic, crossroads between the 9 worlds, and lots of supernatural ancestries from Shifters (were-folk) to Fairies, to Dryads, Djinn, and trolls, etc.
My wife made a “Skater Witch” Human Bridger (think shaman) named Teddy (Theodora) whose “Fetch” takes the form of a longboard, or the form of a large spirit fox. She is very athletic, good at divination and evocation (binding and cursing magic) and aeromancy, and makes weapons of air as well as using aeromancy and geomancy to do sweet skateboard tricks. From a family of witches and Rangers in Humboldt County, Ca.
My buddy John updated his first QfC character, originally a 1930’s era character. She’s a Jewish pilot and adventurer from the East Coast, with a gun she doesn’t know is magic. She was the only one who didn’t know about magic and the 9 worlds in the group. She was there as a favor for Bernadette Colson, the local Ranger Captain. Her name is Shayna (not sure of the spelling).
My other friend Drew made a Shifter Benedanti (werewolf, or in his case weredog, supernatural mediator and investigator who protect the world from void creatures in the Night Battles), named George. He’s a very good boy, from a family with a long history of fighting evil.
I made a companion PC who is a protagonist from a story I wrote set in the same world, Garret Ayala. He’s a Human Alchemist who is a skilled fencer and track and field runner who has been Wise for about 2 years, and is still catching up. He isn’t too exceptional outside of being very good at learning new skills and adapting to new circumstances. His best friend, a Dryad Slayer named Iathella, was with them but just as a second source of exposition.
The session began with all the PCs in Garret’s heavily customized VW Bus, which serves as his “Sanctum”; which he gets as an Alchemist. It contains a small library of copies of rare books, alchemical tools and ritual tools, and a small kitchenette, with loads of tiny house design stuff where you unfold a thing into another thing, packing more than you'd expect to fit into the space. The player gets to design their sanctum.
They're driving up Ca Highway 58 from Bakersfield to Tehachapi, a beautiful mountain town with lots of apple orchards nestled into the Tehachapi Mountains, in the South Eastern corner of the southern Central Valley. They've got about an hour, and Garret starts asking them questions to establish a strategic understanding of their skills, while letting them in on what's happening. He doesn't know that Shaina isn't Wise, and doesn't notice her confusion.
The job: A team of Rangers got rekt up in Tehachapi, including Bernadette herself and Garret's friend Iathella, when they got ambushed by a pack of void wolves lead by 3 void witches in a mountain hiking pass. Bernadette has called in some favors to get a team well suited to the task to come up and take care of the somewhat weakened pack before they can hurt more people and "recruit" more members to replace those they've lost.
The Preparation Phase: Before a conflict scene, if the team has time, they can each make one roll to prepare for what's coming.
- Garret is making a Command (Strategy) roll to give the team bonus dice they can use during the scene to add to a roll. He gets an 18, which is just short of a Total Success, so he spends an atribute point from Wits to push the check one step. This means he gets to give everyone a bonus die, rather than just 2 characters.
- Shaena asks about the terrain, and Garret has Iathella share a tactical map Bernadette gave them with her. She makes a Shooting (Tactical) check to determine where the best position is for her and for the close up fighters, and try to find a good ambush location. She gets a 30, with 3 6's on the dice. All she needed for a critical success was to succeed and have 2 or more max results on the dice. So, she finds exactly the spot, and will be able to start the fight exactly where she wants to be. She also will roll her initiative check with a 1d bonus.
- Teddy wants to stock her bomb materials, using her Bomb Maker trait which allows her to quickly make bombs safely, including when improvising a bomb from scavenged materials, and to mark the team with a sigil of protection. She spends an Atribute Point from Will and rolls Alchemy (Sigils) getting a partial success. She doesn't push it, so everyone has 1d Physical Armor (reduces incoming damage by 1d6) that will dissipate if they fail an Active Defense check. Total Success would make it last until the end of the scene regardless.
- George wants to get a read on the spirit world, and the location and strength of the enemy. Because void creatures are related to the spirit world and the Night Battles, he can use Animism (Trance) to do so. He gets a Partial Success and uses his bonus die from Garret, increasing it to a Total success (17 +4 =21). He finds the exact location, and combining his efforts with Shayna's, they find exactly the point to wait for them in ambush, and get the high ground.
Initiative. George and Garret are using a Stealthy approach, while the others are lying in wait until the two hitters make contact. It's not the smart approach since they could have used the kill box to make the enemy come to them after a round of ranged attacks, but George and Garret both want blood, and so it goes. Both succeed on their Stealth (Sneaking) rolls, while the other two wait. Teddy rolls Aeromancy (Aerokenisis) to make a hammer of air, and Shaina rolls Perception (Examination) to take careful aim.
Since all four succeed, the enemy would have to get very good Perception checks to have a chance of not being ambushed. They make Perception rolls (NPCs don't have specialties, just skills), and get a partial success. The team won't get automatic success on their first attacks (total failure), but the get to take their whole round of actions before the enemy can act, and automatically have the Initiative due to a successful ambush.
Combat Phase 1, forward combatants and things that trigger at the start of conflict. Garret and George rush in from stealth and make their opening attacks, getting a bonus die of damage on a hit due to ambushing their targets. George targets the biggest void wolf, which is a monstrous hybrid form werewolf with inky black fur and the smell of decay around it. George is in dog form, something like a really big blonde sheep dog, and goes for the throat. Partial Success. He pushes it by taking a complication rather than spending AP, meaning he does 3 dice of fatigue, and fails to grapple the target, falling prone himself alongside the void wolf. He does 18 fatigue, which inflicts a trauma. The player chooses to inflict the Bleeding condition with that Trauma, which means the target takes 1d fatigue at the start of it's turn every round.
Garret pushes a Partial Success to Total, and just wollops the void witch. As a Quick Action he enhances his strike with Evocation (Gaes) to inflict a Silenced binding on her. She gains a Physical Trauma and is at a 1d penalty to perform magic or communicate.
Phase 2, passive and nuetral stance characters. Teddy is in a Readied Stance, which means she can go in any phase she chooses, and chooses to move to where she is close to the fray, and wait to take the rest of her turn.
Phase 3, rearward stance characters go and complex maneuvers resolve. Anything that happens at the end of the round happens now. Shaina starts her turn by making an Active Defense check against shock. I don't recall what skill she used, but she focuses her mind on the tasks, concentrating on terrain, targets, allies, cover, trajectory, and nothing else. Partial Success. She gains a mental trauma, but won't be effected by it until the end of the scene or she gains an additional mental trauma. She takes aim now and shoots the second Void Witch. Critical Success, she adds her bonus die from Garret to the damage, doing something like 30 damage, and I rule that she witch just passes out, 30 being within a couple points of her Fatigue Limit, and thrice her Toughness score.
Next the bad guys go. The uninjured 3rd witch tries to envelop our melee heroes in magical darkness, and fails due to Teddy using a Quick action to interrupt her with an Aeromancy attack, dealing minor damage but dropping the triggering attack to a partial failure, causing the heroes and their enemies to be in a haze of darkness.
Teddy takes her actual turn next, and uses Geomancy (Inertiakenisis) to slow two void wolves.
The Void wolves go, attacking George and Garret as a swarm, which means they roll with a bonus die for every 3 creatures in the swarm, but a penalty from the magical darkness, so they roll with 3 rank dice, but can't get a critical success. They get a total success, and our heroes have to make an Active Defense Check to mitigate the effect. We have since streamlined this process, so I won't go into detail, but they reduce it to where George takes about 6 fatigue, and Garret takes 12, which gives him a physical Trauma, and neither is pinned by the wolves. Lastly, the injured but standing witch uses a quick action and spends AP to successfully end the binding on her, and tries to bind Teddy in place and silence her, spending most of the rest of her pool of AP. Teddy spends 3 AP to do an Active Defense and activate her Defensive Curse spell, allowing her to counter the binding with a Evocation (Malisons) check to curse the witch. She still takes 10 fatigue, but neither binding effect come through and she successfully curses the witch with a Barbed Magic curse, making her take fatigue immediately and any time she uses magic.
We ended the session there because it was midnight, and then talked for a bit about the mechanics and how they felt and all that, mad a lot of notes, and resolved to play again ASAP. Everyone really enjoyed their characters, the preparation phase, and once we dialed in the active defense mechanics they started to feel really good.
A fun session and a lot of useful information for fine tuning this new version of thegame.
Greenfield
Adventurer
My last session? Like a song
Specifically, "I've been working on the Railroad, all the live long day..."
The Dm complained, in character, that ours was the most chaotic group he'd seen. Not in terms of alignment, but in terms of group dynamic. Translation: "You won't do what I want...".
As mentioned before, my game group plays "Round Robin" style, where we take turns DMing the same group in the same world. Individual adventures are supposed to be working towards a common, long term goal.
He introduced (as in, drove home with a sledgehammer) a number of magic items that are just short of artifacts. All are aligned and he was frustrated and infuriated than none of our characters were LG alignment, so one of his pet items can't actually be wielded by anyone.
He asked us to make some Will saves. Those who failed would be participating in a scene, for the rest it was optional. Until, that is, the scene began and we found that the DM was telling us that we were participating anyway.
Our characters are 13th level or so, so no where near Epic. Not world shakers or anything like it, yet in his scene no less than 12 deities were having a conference regarding us, and which one of them would "take over" as our patron. Several bowed out, saying that they didn't have the time (although they apparently had time to attend a group dinner and discuss how they didn't have the time.)
We were told that that weapon would be leaving the group. (That's what I meant by him complaining about us, "in character".)
As a general complaint: I've played a lot of games, and I'll play by whatever rules someone wants to play by: Book rules, table rules, house rules, hell, outhouse rules if that's what it takes, but I like to know what those rules are. This DM keeps making them up as he goes. I've known him for several decades, and he tends to railroad, but this is over the top: I've never seen him in the role of conductor, complaining that we're not riding his rails like good little passengers. We keep acting as if we had free will or something.
I'm about two words from walking on his game, but I'm the "host" who lays out the map and moves the miniatures. If I'm not there the game doesn't run. (That's not my ego talking, that's the way its worked out when I couldn't be there. They just stopped.) So if I quit, the whole game group breaks up.
Makes me want to scream. Well... I guess I just did...
Specifically, "I've been working on the Railroad, all the live long day..."
The Dm complained, in character, that ours was the most chaotic group he'd seen. Not in terms of alignment, but in terms of group dynamic. Translation: "You won't do what I want...".
As mentioned before, my game group plays "Round Robin" style, where we take turns DMing the same group in the same world. Individual adventures are supposed to be working towards a common, long term goal.
He introduced (as in, drove home with a sledgehammer) a number of magic items that are just short of artifacts. All are aligned and he was frustrated and infuriated than none of our characters were LG alignment, so one of his pet items can't actually be wielded by anyone.
He asked us to make some Will saves. Those who failed would be participating in a scene, for the rest it was optional. Until, that is, the scene began and we found that the DM was telling us that we were participating anyway.
Our characters are 13th level or so, so no where near Epic. Not world shakers or anything like it, yet in his scene no less than 12 deities were having a conference regarding us, and which one of them would "take over" as our patron. Several bowed out, saying that they didn't have the time (although they apparently had time to attend a group dinner and discuss how they didn't have the time.)
We were told that that weapon would be leaving the group. (That's what I meant by him complaining about us, "in character".)
As a general complaint: I've played a lot of games, and I'll play by whatever rules someone wants to play by: Book rules, table rules, house rules, hell, outhouse rules if that's what it takes, but I like to know what those rules are. This DM keeps making them up as he goes. I've known him for several decades, and he tends to railroad, but this is over the top: I've never seen him in the role of conductor, complaining that we're not riding his rails like good little passengers. We keep acting as if we had free will or something.
I'm about two words from walking on his game, but I'm the "host" who lays out the map and moves the miniatures. If I'm not there the game doesn't run. (That's not my ego talking, that's the way its worked out when I couldn't be there. They just stopped.) So if I quit, the whole game group breaks up.
Makes me want to scream. Well... I guess I just did...
vecna00
Speculation Specialist Wizard
My last session went pretty great! I started a 5e Spelljammer game using some conversions I found online (ignoring the stuff I didn't like!).
Campaign started off with the PCs aboard a ship they were hired to help protect and said ship (tradesman) being ambushed by two dragonflies. That battle took most of the session and ended with one dragonfly destroyed, the other disabled, and the tradesman brought below half HP.
The players had a lot of fun and we're looking forward to next session!
Campaign started off with the PCs aboard a ship they were hired to help protect and said ship (tradesman) being ambushed by two dragonflies. That battle took most of the session and ended with one dragonfly destroyed, the other disabled, and the tradesman brought below half HP.
The players had a lot of fun and we're looking forward to next session!
Older Beholder
Hero
Last session we completed a dungeon crawl through ice caverns that had lasted 6 or 7 sessions. Lots of puzzle solving and combat.
My arcana cleric lost an eye, and was dropped to 0 HP’s by a Demi Lich in the final fight. Thankfully we’d invited an NPC bard along, (He was an NPC from our early days of adventuring that we had run into before setting out) as I’m the only character with healing. It was one of those adventures where the characters feel changed from the experience by the end.
Afterwards we went up to level 17, a first for me in any edition of the game which was pretty exciting. (Game has been going since April last year)
My arcana cleric lost an eye, and was dropped to 0 HP’s by a Demi Lich in the final fight. Thankfully we’d invited an NPC bard along, (He was an NPC from our early days of adventuring that we had run into before setting out) as I’m the only character with healing. It was one of those adventures where the characters feel changed from the experience by the end.
Afterwards we went up to level 17, a first for me in any edition of the game which was pretty exciting. (Game has been going since April last year)
In tonight's "Raiders of the Overreach" game we had to trek out of a desert where teleporting was not possible. We ended up killing a Colossal necromantic-enhanced scorpion (not undead, but it was a living creature inside an undead carapace - weird!) in our first battle of the day, then a group of four barbed devils later on.
It turns out having a human sorceress wearing a robe of eyes and levitating 50 feet in the air (with a rope tied around her ankle at one end and the back of the dwarven barbarian's belt at the other, so he could drag her along like a balloon) makes for an excellent aerial lookout; we had plenty of advance notice for both encounters.
Johnathan
It turns out having a human sorceress wearing a robe of eyes and levitating 50 feet in the air (with a rope tied around her ankle at one end and the back of the dwarven barbarian's belt at the other, so he could drag her along like a balloon) makes for an excellent aerial lookout; we had plenty of advance notice for both encounters.
Johnathan
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