Gaming and More Gaming!

[CaitlinCallahan]

So, I'm about to run my first Pathfinder campaign (as in, tomorrow will be our first session). The 17 year old daughter of friends of ours wanted to play, her dad is super swamped with their business, so I got recruited as a GM. (Sorry, Dave, I know how you feel about D20 systems, but this is what the girl wanted...)

The cast of characters is as follows:

True neutral barbarian
True neutral witch
Chaotic good cleric
Cut throat ranger (not sure of the alignment - she wrote up the character herself, and I won't see it till tomorrow - keeps me on my toes)

Should be an interesting afternoon.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Terrific game tonight! We've been playing a once-a-month Modern Era Champions game at my FLGS for over two years now (which included a brief, 6 or so month, side-trek of villains-as-heroes ala Suicide Squad). While they've long suspected an oft-reoccurring NPC was a major nemesis, tonight they discovered the truth of it (or at least the first layer of the truth of it). He is a gizmo building super who's responsible for everything heroes have been using from communication to weapons to transport. And he's been watching them the whole time. So now they've had to dump everything they've come to rely on in the hope that their gear is the only way this villain (who calls himself Clockwork) has to keep an eye on them.

It was tremendous fun and one of the players even called me a dick (high praise indeed!)

[Black Jack Rackham]

Don't feel bad Deb, I myself am running a 3.0 game for the home group (they got sick of Deadlands and wanted a change).

[Lady Grace]

When we last left our heroes, Mike and I had cleaned up after the psycho killer and his gnome handler, dealing with paperwork with the local constabilary. We got our reward and made arrangements for the body of our Timmy to be returned to his people for burial. After a generous donation to the church, we also got a Bless spell cast upon us for a day. This actually came in handy...

So, the plot railroad was nudging us south, in the form of rumours of ambushes by ogres and hill giants. Rather than go off alone, we decided we were at least going to make some money off this deal and got ourselves hired as security for a spice merchant heading that way. Along the way, we were introduced to our new Timmy, a dwarven cleric of Fharlagn (sic?), who was an actual new player and not a GM-PC.

And, of course, we DID run into a trio of ogres with a hill giant that night. Hardboot the dwarf made use of Spike Stone, which I had never actually seen taken in play before. But it saved our collective bacon as the magical traps helped nickel and dime our foes down. Pretty soon, only the hill giant was left.

So, this was the time said giant started rolling crits against the dwarf and Grape Ape, bringing those two down to negative HP and leaving me to deliver the killing blow yet again from a safe distance. A couple of healing potions got Mike and Steve back up to positive straits.

And then the ogre magi showed up.

Long story short, we've been given a "Get this relic back for us or DIE!" proposal to end the night. At least we're now all level nine...

Tonight hopefully, Deadlands Noir...

[Black Jack Rackham]

Tomorrow is gaming, and we're back around to boardgame week, Jenny is looking forward to it (since she gets to play!).

[salamanca]

Boardgame week.... So you bought the 50 Shades of Grey party game then?.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Ok had our very first 'official' 3.0 game. Lots of fun (though we did spend an inordinate amount of time looking up the rules to re-familiarize ourselves.

My oldest (playing the Moon Elf Ranger) spent most of the session sneaking everywhere, silent as a ghost. So silent in fact that when he lead his fellow players out into the dark, none of them could find him to follow...

Add to that our Halfling thi..er ROGUE who was also super sneaky and we have the makings of an awesome first strike squad.

Or so they thought right before the big confrontation of the night. Both of them head out to see what big bad and his minions are up to and BOTH roll Natural "1" on their Move Silent roll. What makes it even more awesome (though they didn't know it when they started out) was that big bad has an unnatural hatred for all things Halfling, AND his orc minions (as per the adventure) are looking for any excuse to kill Elves.

I should also note that we have only one Halfling and only one Elf in the party...

David's PC went down real quick but they were able to bring him back from the brink with magic, and they defeated everyone. Everyone that is, save the big bad who used invisibility and levitate to get out, but not before swearing bloody revenge against all of them!!

I'm still chuckling at the double fail.

Anyway, last awesome thing. Halfling decides to see if she can take a bit extra for herself during the 'loot-the-corpses' phase, and rolls awesomely. Everyone is fooled. Everyone that is, but the Paladin who rolls more awesomely and catches the Halfling red-handed. This happens several times throughout the night with her rolling excellently and someone rolling more excellently...

[Black Jack Rackham]

No gaming this upcoming week (we're having a Halloween party for the kiddos from 2-4 on Sunday), so we'll get back to gaming on Nov 2 (there's some discussion about whether to do a horror adventure or a Year 5 playtest since we'll be missing two of our players).

[salamanca]

Horror game. Use a system not geared for that and make it spooky. Supers in a horror game or a space opera or gangsters. Just don't tell them what it's gonna turn into. Start with a straight session then twist it. Hell, fake a year 5 playtest and then go all ghosts and vampires or something in the walls on them.

[CaitlinCallahan]

I second Dave's recommendation. Floyd has done some pretty fantastic horror game sessions around this time of year (the 7th Sea game on Halloween was especially creepy).

[Lady Grace]

Last night: 3.5 D&D

Well, more of a progression episode, due to both Steves arriving late (one GM, one player). After remembering to FINALLY divvy up the phat lewt from the previous sessions (aka "This Wand of Magic Missiles could have been USEFUL last game..."), we were off back towards the city, the ominous warning of the ogre mage echoing in the back of our heads. Another caravan along the way told us about hearing drums off in the distance. Sadly, we had to make camp again one more time...

My rogue with a nat 20 on his Listen check could hear drums far off in the distance. I warned Mike's monkeyman, who could also see the glow of fire as well. Determining that they weren't getting closer, we quickly shielded our fire so its glow couldn't been seen just in case. Switching out watches, Mike warned the dwarf.

Things you don't want the GM to say: Hey, do you have Tremorsense?
Dwarf: Uh, no...

Yep, yet again on the dwarf's watch does the fecal matter hit the rotating blades -- this time in the form of two landsharks. We actually do take them out with minimal damage to ourselves. Mike actually remembered to cast Summon Nature's Ally in the form of a large Earth Elemental (one of his feats augments his summoned allies' power, plus he has a ring that helps on that as well) before going Grape Ape, the dwarf buffed us up with Bless and Aid (Mike only for that one) and I went pew-pew-pew from a distance.

Clean-up, heal the horse that got savaged but was barely hanging on and we hit the city finally. We collected our pay from the spice merchant and set about selling the excess loot we had and couldn't use. Unfortunately, we didn't get nearly as much as we could have for their value because both me and the dwarf crit-botched our Diplomacy rolls...

We decided then to hit the church of Pelor to see if they knew where we could get some lore on the ogres and giants in the surrounding area. Yep, they like to use drums in their rituals. Also, horns. Hey, one of the things that we kept was a large bone horn! What, that's not made of bone? It's made from the carapace of a landshark? And it's got markings dedicated to the god of slaughter?

Oh CRAP...

And that's where we left it for the night.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Horror game. Use a system not geared for that and make it spooky. Supers in a horror game or a space opera or gangsters. Just don't tell them what it's gonna turn into. Start with a straight session then twist it. Hell, fake a year 5 playtest and then go all ghosts and vampires or something in the walls on them.

I second Dave's recommendation. Floyd has done some pretty fantastic horror game sessions around this time of year (the 7th Sea game on Halloween was especially creepy).

I have one player angling for the Dread game that never went off at GenCon and couple of meh-level votes for a playtest and one who (probably) expects our usual Golden Age Champions game.

I've also considered running a FATE game just to get myself familiar with the system (so I can be more comfortable when it comes time to run the kids game at TC). I was watching Kingdom of Heaven earlier today and thought that might be a good setting for a FATE game (no magic, Crusades, Templars, defending castles, etc.)

[Black Jack Rackham]

Ended up playtesting Episode 9, received a LOT of cursing from Megan who was both impressed and horrified that all of the original stuff was coming back to bite her in the ass. Got about a page worth of suggestions but that's all gonna stay on the back burner as I still need to do the edits for 7 & 8.

This week, we're back to boardgames. YAY!

[Black Jack Rackham]

We played Betrayal at the House on the Hill this week, and as I predicted (and will continue to predict) if we play this game and I am one of the players, I WILL be the traitor AND I will KILL everyone...

Next up, we find out how our adventuring group will fare with the rest of the orcs they found in the woods and whether or not their thief will ever get her stuff back, as our 3.X game continues.

[Lady Grace]

D&D last night!

Our dwarf wasn't able to make it, but we managed to coax our friend Nicci into giving the game a try. Based on her interests and input, the GM designed a halfling bard for her, complete with a war hound to ride upon. Despite Mike's misgivings about giving a bard to a new player (he was trying to recommend fighter or sorcerer), Nicci actually took to it pretty well. And he wasn't complaining when she saved his hairy butt later on...

Our dwarf was taking time out to tend to the shrine of Fhlarganan (screw it, I'm calling him Phil from now on) outside of town. After asking him to keep an ear out for any news from incoming travelers, Mike & I were left to ponder about the lore we had uncovered about the ogres and hill giants in the area, and how they REALLY liked the god of slaughter. This did not make for happy feelings.

Meanwhile, at the Purple Parrot, a bard was flirting with the bartender and getting some info about some shady types who seemed to be interested in grave robbing and relic-pillaging. Specifically, looking for a Drow artifact called the Urn of Aracnae (not sure if that was how it was spelt). Cut to Mike twitching OOC as he has real life issues when it comes to spiders and other creepy crawlies. Yes, I'm the one who has to kill centipedes in our house for him. Anyway, Mike & I enter this particular bar, as the spice merchant from last episode recommended it to us, so the metagaming was kept to a minimum. We spy a shady type picking the halfling's pocket; Mike yelled out a warning to her; thief tries to bail; Nicci zaps him with Glitterdust and I crit taking his now-blind butt out.

I actually got a LOT of good attack rolls last night, just for the record.

We drink! We bond! My rogue looks like an idiot trying to flirt with the bard about how to "properly" use Sleight of Hand! She tips us off to the grave robbing and possible artifact snatching. This gets our interest, even though the ogre mage didn't exactly tell us what artifact he was looking for. Either way, this sounds like bad news for bad people to get their hands on.

I worry that our GM may soon run out of ideas on how to try to kill Mike off. This time, in one of the crypts we came across two thugs, an Assassin AND an Invisible Blade (prestige class). For once Mike did NOT go Grape Ape and this nearly lead to his demise (again). And the Assassin was invisible. Which no one knew about. I thought the IB might have been a caster as we had heard some sort of incantation being muttered prior to combat, so I zapped him with my Wand of Silence. It seemed like a good idea. Hey, we had heard rumours of necromancers earlier! Unfortunately, he was still able to Feint and hit Mike for some NASTY sneak attack damage.

But fortunately for Mike, the IB then failed his save from Nicci's Hold Person. I wasn't quite within range to deliver a coup d'eat, but I did some nasty sneak attack damage of my own. Which Mike then finished him off with his little dinky staff -- and the IB yet again failed his save and died an embarrassing death. So, we thought we only had the 2 thugs left to deal with, but then the Assassin tried a death strike on Nicci with a bolt laced with Black Lotus Extract!

And missed terribly.

Now visible, I managed to do some damage to him. He tries to retreat and Tumble his way past our occupied squares. Bad idea, for as I mentioned earlier, my dice were HOT. And I have Expert Tactician, which helps my allies make Attacks of Opportunity. But the little bugger is still standing! Still fleeing! He's outside!

Mike casts Entangle. He's slowed, but he's not trapped. His AC is still annoying. It's Nicci's turn and I take a quick glance at her spell sheet. I point a spell out to her. She grins.

The Sound Burst finished him off for good.

There's some good loot to divvy up here. And there's a sarcophagus in the back with a hidden entrance leading down...

[Lady Grace]

As an aside, the Deadlands Noir game has been fun. Unfortunately, due to playing it over Skype, sometimes it's REALLY hard to make out what some people are saying at times, so it makes recollecting a chore. But after the next session, we will probably be switching out to Classic Deadlands for a spell.

Which means I get to design an character concept that I've been excited for: "What if Brisco County Jr. had been played by Lucy Liu instead?" aka the anti-"Kung Fu".

[Black Jack Rackham]

So when we got through with our first session, my players had pretty much taken care of the entire contingent of bad guys. But the problem was, the PCs met them all outside rather than in the 'dungeon.' You see their reaction to the first big fight was to retreat and get rest rather than charge in as the adventure seems to think they'd do. And given the bad guys don't really check on their underlings, they didn't figure things out till the morning, and that's when the PCs showed back up to make their second foray (this session). And THAT left me with an unpopulated dungeon. So I added in some reinforcements, a couple of wandering monsters, a trap and everyone's favorite dungeon-cleaning monster, the Otyugh.

Our thief finally got her stuff back and had a rousing time stealing from the halfling thief that had taken her stuff initially (or should I say, she had a rousing good time stealing from him whilst he stole from her). I particularly had fun making up a story about the dagger he stole from her (and offered to allow her to borrow it, with the admonition that it was from his sainted, mother, grandmother, aunt, and sister*)

*the story changed every time, but he insisted that it hadn't.

We left it at them having gotten all the stuff from the bad guy, found his 'treasure' map (which they have yet to decide what to do with) and a couple of low level magic things (mostly potions).

EDIT: Oop forgot to add that this upcoming weekend should be Laura's 7th Sea game but Eric's not going to be with us so we may have to do something else...

[Black Jack Rackham]

GAMING TODAY!!! Should be our Golden Age Superhero campaign (wherein the heroes learn how their very own Todd Tomorrow, Man of the Future, became a strange, alternate reality/timeline's greatest villain...) However, I know Eric (Todd Tomorrow) won't be here today so we'll see where this goes.

[Black Jack Rackham]

No gaming again this week But we did get to play boardgames specifically one of my old favorites, Empire Builder and the other players were even nice enough to let me win!!!

Next week we should have everyone back in town, JUST in time for (wait for it)... BOARDGAMES

[Lady Grace]

Into the D&D breach we go!

This time Nicci was unable to make it due to Real Life Crap, so the GM had her war hound bound back to town with her still on it. Meanwhile, Hardboot tagged out to another priest of Phil and was given a cryptic message to head out to the crypts to the east. Which he did. And saw the remains of our previous battle.

Dwarf: Why am I not surprised to see you guys did this?
Me: They started it!

After filling the dwarf in as to what was happening, he made a spectacular roll on his Knowledge/Religion and confirmed that the Urn was, indeed, Bad News. Despite this, we decided to check out the secret passage in the crypt. After a quick clean up of the bodies into some empty stone coffins (I figured no sense in having dead bodies attract undue attention while we were gone just in case), we got to work. I found traps finally! I was useful!

And then we came across a rather UGLY undead behemoth called a plague spewer. Who was backed by a couple of rat swarms. And regenerated injuries. And the Dwarf actually missed his Fort save. Fortunately, Mike decided this called for PURIFYING FLAME~! and summoned a fire elemental. Which was good, 'cause the unholy abomination then decided to focus its attack on the elemental instead of us. Eventually, the creature bit it for good and we torched the body for good measure.

Uneventful camping for a change, but it gave us time to heal our injuries and refresh needed spell slots. Such as casting Remove Disease on the Dwarf. The battle had revealed a hidden passage behind a tattered and now-torched tapestry as well. This time I missed the lightning trap on the door, but it was OK as I had Evasion and made my save. So did Snafu. The Druid and the Priest...not so much. Fortunately, the GM didn't roll that well on damage so they were only slightly singed. The door led to a strange elevator contraption. Thoroughly paranoid, I took ten on the next search and found the lever, if pressed, would open the floor and we'd plummet. Fortunately, there was an override switch. We descended...where we found what appears to be an entrance to a suburb of the Underdark.

And that's where we left things for the night. I am strongly considering we figure out a way to collapse this entrance and/or tell the town authorities that they might have Drow in the neighborhood. So, at the very least, if we're sent back to this spider-infested hellhole, we get paid for it.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Did my monthly FLGS Champions game, and had only one player show up but between the two of us we hammered out the plots of the two upcoming (non-7th-Sea) games I'm running at TC. So much so, I just need to do a little detail work and I should be ready to go (well detail work and character creation).

Boardgames this week, but I'm gonna see if maybe since we've been doing boardgames for weeks on end we could play some RPG one offs (I am really chomping at the bit to play!).

[Lady Grace]

D&D 3.5

The band got all reunited for the first time last night. Divvied up some more loot with Elvis and Snafu now sporting spiffy Amulets of Natural Armor, the bard with a new buckler and me with an acidic short sword. Mike's monkey-man asked for a loaner on the party funds so he could buy a Wilding Clasp and a Monk's Belt to help improve his AC when he turns into a more hideous beast than normal, so we allowed it. We hit the temple of Pelor to warn the authorities about possible Drow. Fortunately, the cleric on duty corrected a few things for us, saying that Drow are actually on the OTHER side of the continent and that buried in this crypt was an elf who was really into collecting Evil Stuff and was a bit of a hoarder. But if he DID have this Urn, it would be bad news indeed. So, at least "Plan for Getting Paid to Do Stupid Stuff" is a go as said cleric offered us 2000 platinum to get the Urn and get it away from the city.

Of course, this cleric of all that is good and holy isn't going to betray us next session... (mental note, put more points in Sense Motive)

But once more we head off into the crypts. No sign anyone else has been there since we were thankfully. We showed off the fully-dead plague spewer to the bard on the way, pointed out the various traps so far...and descended into the cavern underneath. Spiderwebs everywhere, stalactites and stalagmites and the sound of running water up ahead. We saw a narrow rock bridge with a huge underground river rushing underneath it. Bravely, I volunteered to check out the bridge first in case it was trapped. Pragmatically, I had a rope tied around my waist just in case.

And then the giant squid popped up from the murky depths.

Bravely, I ran back away from the beast before its tentacles could grab me, ie I won initiative. Mike summoned a water elemental, the bard tried for a sound burst and the dwarf blessed us. Unfortunately, the squid then grabbed the dwarf and the druid! The water elemental missed! It looked like curtains for our heroes...

...and for once, one of my magic items came into play as I plugged it with two Arrows of Biting -- and the squid missed its immediate save. Twice. Which meant it lost 11 points of Con. Which translated into a [MEEP]ton of HD now gone and soon died afterwards. We continued onwards towards a pair of ornate doors with the hoarder's name written in Draconic above them. Of course, they were trapped -- this time with a nasty delayed fireball trigger. Fortunately, Bard singing Inspiring Competency + Cleric casting Guidance = Rogue just able to disarm the trap.

The chamber ahead of us has statues dedicated to evil gods and demonic powers worshipped as gods. Like Lolth, Orcus, Demogorgon, Nerull, that god of Slaughter worshipped by the ogres... Fun stuff! On the ceiling is a planar map (earlier, when we visited that one cleric of Pelor, he was looking over a similar planar map when we came across him, hence my paranoid sarcasm towards the top of this entry). The statues aren't trapped, the door isn't trapped, but it's unlocked. Mike casted Detect Magic and could sense some heavy Conjuration and Transmutation ahead.

So, I had him open the door.

Two web golems and a colossal-sized spider. And the room ahead was webbed something fierce.

Bard buffs + Cleric buffs = sick to hit bonuses. Caveat, helps if you can then actually roll decently. Which I could not. All my luck was apparently used up on the traps and the squid. Fortunately, Mike called on some more friends in the shape of two fire elementals and then turned into a bear this time. There were some close calls, but we managed to destroy them all. The Urn was ours...as was 19000 in copper pieces (he was a hoarder). Likewise, there is a scroll, a potion and some scale mail of unknown properties.

And that's where we left it for the year.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Not sure what we're going to do about Gaming this weekend. Right now weather reports are saying that we're either going to have a lot of snow or hardly any at all. You know, can't take any chances of being wrong about the weather so they're going to be vague enough that no matter what happens, they were right.

Meanwhile here we sit. Not making any decisions yet we'll see as the storm gets closer (though I'm betting in any case that Laura will decide to sit this one out).

I just want you all to know you're killing me with this lack of gaming...

[Rebecca Iavelli]

Well, as of yesterday, I heard that in my area in Natick, we are expecting about 9 inches, which are supposed to fall between 2pm and 8pm on Saturday (oh joy, I will have a fun time getting home from work, uhg!), should it happen.

Sunday is still up in the air depending on what happens Saturday.

[Black Jack Rackham]

So far (and well this is early in the storm so take that for what it is) we have had no more than a heavy dusting (maybe 1/4" of snow). And while the forecast says 4-6 inches, the weather map shows us in the wintry mix area now and then the rain only area tomorrow.

And I'm really jonesing for a game, so I may just come and pick everyone up.