Gaming and More Gaming!

[Black Jack Rackham]

Started gaming today early, yesterday I had enough of not having Sentinels of the Multiverse and went out and bought the whole lot. Played last night and Her Majesty was so enamored with it she demanded we play again this morning. Lots of fun, she's hooked (and I am stunned, I would never have guessed she'd like it).

[smafdi]

based on what i've put together hearing about her, i'd assume the fiddlyness of sotm she wouldn't like, but i think if you manage all that stuff and she doesn't have to think about it. I'm glad she likes it ^^ one of us~

[Lady Grace]

When we last left our heroes, we had just bypassed an encounter with an aboleth and its skum slaves to go directly to the last boss of the dungeon: the Evil Morningstar artifact and its 4 giant skeleton guards. Having handily dispatched them all and subduing the relic, we spread the ashes of the previously deceased adventurers before the entrance of the tunnel and the dwarf popped up a Wall o' Stone to protect us so we could rest and recover for the night.

And I...I had a Plan.

"Don't worry, I have a Plan!" said I with confidence.

"Does it involve us being meatshields?" asked the dwarf, lacking my confidence.

"NO! Maybe..."

Evidence of the last night confirmed that skum had been checking out the wall while we rested. Verifying that yes, we had our respective spell slots refreshed, I asked the GM a simple question: How wide was the whirlpool the aboleth was lurking in? He gave his answer -- and my confidence grew as I shared the power of the Plan. And lo, my party members nodded in agreement as they too saw the brilliance of the Plan. And the eyes of the GM widened in shock as he realized the full scope of the Plan.

So we snuck back to the tunnel and, with the element of surprise backing us, had the dwarf cast Wall o' Stone -- horizontally over the whirpool, sealing the aboleth in for the time being. Mike meanwhile summoned a huge fire elemental to start having a fish fry with the skum and I got myself to a proper vantage point JUST in case.

The aboleth was NOT happy as its first attempt to break the wall of stone was less than successful. It was even more unhappier when the dwarf cast spike stones, thereby giving it even more of a headache and nickel & diming its HP away. Mike, Nicci, their respective dogs and the fire elemental were merrily taking names and kicking skum butt while I was readying myself...

...and the aboleth FINALLY broken the wall of stone and I read my fireball scroll to blast it in the face and take out the last skum to boot. It was still alive! It was angry! It was then flushed down the drain as the dwarf then cast Control Water to lower the water in the whirlpool.

It was at this point that the GM conceded the aboleth fled in shame.

Leaving the burial ground, we heard drums to the north. A quick surveillance via Clairvoyance had us spotting a 50+ war band of hill giants, ogres, stone giants and a certain ogre mage pumping each other up. We hoofed it back to town ASAP to alert the church of Pelor what was up.

On the outskirts of town, we were invited to witness the (hopeful) destruction of the morningstar from the one and only Mordekainen. Alas, the disjunction attempts were unsuccessful, leaving us with two options in getting rid of this horrible thing -- and neither of them good (let's see...a portal to hell or a maelstrom to the elemental plane of Water). See, a good-aligned mage could not just teleport this relic to one of these two places (we decided Water would be better than getting it to the Nine Hells), but an evil mage might.

And the priest we had been in contact with? Well, his estranged brother just happened to be that necromancer we had heard rumours of way back in the beginning...

Actually, taking a boat was also an option. But there's a huge kraken roaming the waterways to where we would need to go. And time is of the proverbial essence. At least the necromancer isn't "MUST SLAY ALL LIVING" sort (supposedly)....

[Black Jack Rackham]

We're supposed to do Laura's 7th Sea game today but not sure if we're actually going to do that. I have a couple of back-up plans* so we'll see where this all goes (we may end up doing board games if not enough folks show up).

Ideas just to remind myself
7th Sea
The "Beginning of the Frenzy" Adventure (Frenzied Paix)
All Vesten Party Adventure (sequel to the one I ran at cons for a while)
Interim Chateau du Cheverny adventure (between the end of the last campaign and the beginning of the next)
Pirate adventure

Shadowrun
(not real sure about this but Laura said she might be in a mood to kill stuff and SR is good for that).

Rotted Capes
I wrote a bunch of stuff for this a while ago and have never run any of it. Willing to give it a go if Laura is interested (thinking of the Down To Earth adventure)

AD&D
A cool retro 1st Ed adventure might be fun (like say the "A", "T", or "U" series)

[Rebecca Iavelli]

Mark, I told you last week that I would be too tired to run anything today, we were supposed to do boardgames or you were going to do a one off of something. Still at work at the moment, having lunch. Be there later.

[Black Jack Rackham]

So we ended up watching The Knights of Badassdom! It was everything I expected. Horrible, cheesy, and great fun! Well worth your time if you can grab the dvd. The in-jokes are stupendous and the gore is gratuitous (and plentiful).

[Rebecca Iavelli]

It gets the Laura approval. I liked it. It was well done, for the type it was, and it had decent special effects, without going too cheezy, or horrible, and the story actually worked, for the most part.

I would own this and watch it again.

[smafdi]

Last night got a chance to play the new Marvel Dice Masters game. So for those of you who've played quarriors it's very similar. I haven't played since the first edition in the metal tin box so there are several improvements to the system that I don't know if quarriors have fixed. Overall very light and quick with some interesting decisions. I'll probably bring some with me to origins since it doesn't take up much space currently and can play in less than 30m. On another note, still love flash duel.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Tomorrow we're back around to boardgame day. Jenny and David have both expressed a desire for more Sentinels of the Multiverse (as has Megan) so it looks like that will be at least on of the games.


Oh who am I kidding I want to play too!

[Black Jack Rackham]

Ok so game went terrifically, we won the first one then lost the next two. Interestingly those mark the first and second times we've actually lost the game. And oddly, I was relieved by that, because it had seemed (at least to me) that the game was kind of unbalanced in favor of the heroes. But now I see it was just as much a matter of knowing which heroes to use and where to fight the bad guys.

This weekend I'm doubling up. Got the Modern Age Champions game on Saturday (first time in a couple of months so I am not exactly sure how many will show up), followed on Sunday by our 3.0 game. Speaking of which, I need to re-read the adventure to see how I can fix it given how badly my players messed it all up last time (messed the adventure's railroad rather than screwed up anything themselves).

[Black Jack Rackham]

The Champions game at the FLGS went off like a dream. Good roleplaying and we started things off right with another cool twist on an old favorite. Found a way to truly mess with the players and it took them most of the session to figure out how to defeat this week's bad guy.

As for the home game however, alas, it never materialized. One of our members had a funeral to go to (and he brings a second member who, obviously, also couldn't come) one (my kiddo) chose to go to the movies with mom instead of gaming, a third was sick and a fourth got no sleep last night. That left Laura and I, so I just called it DoA.

Next week it's Laura's Explorer's adventure! (assuming it happens). I am REALLY looking forward to it.

[Black Jack Rackham]

May get in an extra gaming session this weekend as one of my oldest's friends invited himself over with the hopes of playing D&D this weekend. So if my oldest is amenable (and he ought to be) we may run a kids-only game on Saturday.

[Rebecca Iavelli]

This is board game week if I remember correctly, and I've asked Mark if we can play the Arabian Nights game he just got at Origins. I think his wife will like it.

[smafdi]

You should force him to play the takenoko game he stole from me at origins!

>.>

[salamanca]

PANDA STRIFE...I feel like it's my fault. But I say combine them and play the gardener in Arabian nights. Keep in mind, mechanically that there are only a finite set of cards and skill chips so have some paper handy to note your advantages, curses and stuff.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Hey now Stephen, if you think about it, this is really YOUR fault. You started bringing board games for us to play, you wouldn't stop talking about how awesome Sentinels of the Multiverse was, you even got me some of the promo cards, you were the one who secretly snuck up to Dave's house in the middle of the night and performed illegal (and highly morally questionable) experiments on his brain in order to make him more willing to promote the games you like to play.

Did any of that happen, I don't know (though it'd be pretty awesome if you were an evil genius) but that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

[smafdi]

I've always walked that fine line between genius and insanity!
and pfft evil is soooo subjective just think about everything from the "villan's" point of view. Ganondorf? he was trying to bring his people out of the desert to unite with the hyrulieans, then some snot nosed kid killed him based off what some little girl he just met told him. "he makes me feel funny". girl that's your lady parts saying hi not bad joo joo.

doctor doom? he's just trying to make life better for latvarians then the "righteous fantastic four" come swooping in and shove their "capitalist" beliefs on his people causing war and strife in a STABLE AND PRODUCTIVE kingdom. Reed Richards Mister Fantastic? more like Mister OPPRESSION!

magneto? all he wants (now) is to live a life away from people who persecute him and his kind, he IS a jew that lived through the holocost. he knows that the sentinel program is all about rounding up the "mutants" (read jews and gypsies) for execution. it's not his fault that some righteous asshat (cyclops) decided to "raid" his compound causing it to crash and be destroyed.

green goblin? he's just crazy, no argument from me about him being a bad guy.

[salamanca]

Goblin? you obviously never read the Dark Reign run of Thunderbolts.

"Girl starts causing trouble with all these allegations and everybody leaves it to Norman to shove her off a bridge". - yes, that was a direct quote. Norman Osbourne was just looking our for the interests of his company.

[smafdi]

Oh man, that's fantastic, must go read now

[Rebecca Iavelli]

So what have people got planned for their gaming pleasures this weekend? Me, I'm going to be sitting at home because everyone is away for the long weekend, so it's going to be a lot of solitaire on the computer.

[Black Jack Rackham]

So what have people got planned for their gaming pleasures this weekend? Me, I'm going to be sitting at home because everyone is away for the long weekend, so it's going to be a lot of solitaire on the computer.

For me Laura, it was soccer (tell you all about it Sun)

Speaking of, our next game is the return to the Golden Age of Supers, with, In The Beginning...

[smafdi]

For us it was a bunch of board games all weekend. we took some stuff to the park to play while we waited for fireworks to start, ended up being a bust they shot off the fireworks behind a bunch of trees from where we were. :*( The rest of the weekend we cleaned out the game closet and started playing some games we bought but never got around to playing before. Good times were had.

[Lady Grace]

After a 2 month hiatus due to Origins and other real life stuff, we got back to the 3.5 D&D game a couple of weeks ago. When we last left our heroes, we had been tasked to see if we could convince this evil necromancer if he would be so kind enough to teleport us to the Elemental Plane of Water so we could theorhetically safely dispose of the evil artifact dedicated to the god o' Slaughter.

Well, we started near the keep of the necromancer, managing to hide JUST as a gargantuan creature called a cadaver collector was making a delivery. This thing had ogre corpses as shoulder pads, for [MEEP]'s sake! We were all ready to make with the casting of various invisibility and silence spells to sneak in afterwards, when Mike suggested that "NO! We need to be up front about this. No doubt, this man is used to people sneaking to try to kill him -- let's use diplomacy!"

Oh, Mike... *sighs*

At the very least, we made sure that the gargantuan undead construct was GONE before attempting anything. And avoiding the sickly glowing energy trap on the front door. Compentency buff from Nicci and the stage was set for her to make with the diplomacy to see if we could get inside! She did an admirable job!

Nothing...maybe?

Mike suggested that we wait. After a few fast-forwarded hours, I noted that the trap had been turned off -- and the door was unlocked. Again, Mike wanted us all upfront. No sneaking!

So, when we turned the corner of one hall, we got jumped by a pack of shadows and their Very Special Friends. Before we could see if the diplomacy worked, the shadows appeared to be waiting for orders...and then said "[BLEEP] IT!" and attacked us.

Great...

...see, we were told by the necromancer's brother earlier that he REALLY like his undead. So, we decided that if we came across any undead, we couldn't really KILL them if we wanted to sway the necromancer into helping us. Hence why the ORIGINAL plan was to use Invisibility to Undead when we got here so we could avoid potential conflict. And this was something that the GM was expecting us to do.

THANKS, MIKE!

*sigh*

Now, our cleric could at least turn the shadows. While I was griping out loud in case we were being scryed that they attacked first, so my conscience was clear, Nicci made with the Glitterdust -- and the shadows actually missed their save so they all got blinded. Blinded, confronted by a cleric and made to look sparkly, the shadows retreated -- but their Very Special Friends stayed behind to continue the fight.

Those friends? Two Shadesteel Golems.

Damage resistance, resistance to most spells, can't be critted or hit with sneak attacks, immune to mind affecting abilities and poison, super strong buggers anyway and they have this NASTY negative energy attack they can burst off every 1d4+1 rounds that would have healed those shadows if they had stuck around. So we were in for a MESS of hurt. Poor Snafu yet again nearly bit it. Mike turned into a bear, but held off summoning any of his friends (again, THANKS, MIKE!) but even with the various clerical and bardic buffs, we were barely nickel & diming them as it is. And what spells and magical items we all had weren't going to be of any use, we thought. In character, my rogue was useless.

Out of character, on the other hand...

*starts flipping through the PHB after my turn*

"Hey Mike, you've got THAT spell still on your list, right?"

Yes, it was a spell I remember he made a big deal about taking when he first designed his character. Even though he never ended up USING when it could have been really handy in that very first encounter we had with the berserker in the full plate mail way back when.

Mike's eyes went wide as he reacquainted himself just what exactly Rusting Grasp could do to a ferrous creature like a ShadeSTEEL Golem -- especially since he could do touch attacks on top of his other damage now.

So yeah, THAT saved our collective bacon. And I'm sure the argument could be made that the GM went easy on us, but he's a GM who doesn't usually pull punches. And he likes it when we think outside the box in terms of strategy.

We left it there for the night, after hammering into Mike's head that NOW we were going to break out the Invisibility to Undead spell.

[Black Jack Rackham]

No gaming this weekend, nor next either (at least at the Edwards household) but we will be doing the Hammer & Tongs campaign in two weeks.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Another fine gaming day has come around! This weekend we've got a few folks who won't be making it (specifically Eric whose character is really the focus of this week's adventure for Champions) so we'll be giving it a rest and running something else today. What will that be? Not sure yet... But It'll be FUN!