Tales From the Tabletop

[Slaughterhouserock]

Games have been few and far between due to holidays and personal shit with some of the players, so I don't have any updates. I'm going to take this time to talk about some funny/dumb moments from older games instead.

I once played a dwarf named Dwarf. This was early on in my foray into 3.5, so I was still new to the layout of the character sheet. When filling it in, I accidentally put "dwarf" in the name column instead of the race column and, instead of erasing it like a normal person, I just went with it. It was a level 20 one-shot, so I didn't get to play him for long, but he was definitely memorable. Int and Cha were dump stats for him, both being well below 10, so I made it so that he only knew three words; I, no, and dwarf. He would introduce himself as "I Dwarf!" and generally used dwarf to mean yes.

Eventually, we ran into a Mirror of Opposition. For those that don't know, it creates duplicates of whoever looks into it, but they are of opposite alignment(typically meaning they're evil clones). Out pops an evil version of our group and a fight ensues...except for me and the evil Dwarf. Being an idiot, I just walked up and said "I Dwarf!" to which the clone replied "I Dwarf!". This was incomprehensible to my dumbass, so I said "No, I Dwarf!", and got the same response back. This went on for quite some time to the point where everyone else stopped fighting to stare at us in utter bewilderment. Someone ended up taking advantage of the distraction and the fight ended shortly after.

One of my longest running characters was a dwarf called Crom Ironside. I played him for years and his whole schtick was that he wielded a weapon much too large for someone his size. Due to some shenanigans with lots of splat books, by the time he was level 12, he could wield a Colossal+ sized weapon. For reference, a Colossal-sized creature is generally over 30' tall, and I was wielding an axe that was too big for them to carry without penalty. Utterly ridiculous, but that's the type of games we played back then. Luckily, there was a Sizing enchantment that let me change the size of my weapon whenever I wanted, so going to town wasn't an issue.

The Sizing enchantment got tons of use. At one point we were fighting some Purple Worms and I was swallowed by one. Normally, you can't do much when swallowed other than use small weapons to try and damage your way out while taking acid damage. Well, I decided to use my Sizing property to make the axe bigger than the Worm. The resultant explosion of guts was quite satisfying. Another time our Rogue was stuck on the other side of a chasm after triggering a trap. No one could manage to throw a rope far enough to get to him and we were low on spells at that point. So I pulled out my axe and made it big enough to fit across the chasm and the Rogue was able to just use it as a bridge. Later on, we played an Epic game and I just updated Crom for it. What could make a Colossal+ axe better? Make it so it could fly! I then had an insanely large axe as a flying mount. Good times.

[DancesWithWerewolves]

Man I don't know any dm that would've let that sized weapon in the game.

[Slaughterhouserock]

Man I don't know any dm that would've let that sized weapon in the game.

We were all pretty strong optimizers, so it wasn't a big deal. The rule we went by was "if the players use it, the DM can use it". In other words, don't do anything too stupid or you're likely to fuck everyone.

One day I'll talk about my Dread Necromancer. Then you'll see some truly wacky shit.

[showa58taro]

The flying axe as Bridge amuses me greatly.

[Slaughterhouserock]

Last night was a fun one. The game started with everyone about town, except me. I was in my room reading, because my character's a bookworm. I hear a noise upstairs, get annoyed, but then remember that an NPC friend(i.e. quest-giver) of ours is above me, so I go up to check it out. I listen at the door and hear random words in a rushed conversation: rift, loop, assault, continuum, rest. I knock on the door. The NPC answers and asks me to gather the group and not to tell anyone if I happened to overhear anything. So I go and get everyone and immediately tell them what I heard. She sends us to find some artifact that's on an island that materialized out of nowhere and away we go.

We get dropped of in the middle of a warzone; tons of ships fighting each other. The bad guys want the artifact, the good guys(sea elves) want to keep them away from it. Enter us. We get sent in to find it and, if possible, destroy it. Also, the sea elves' princess was kidnapped and taken below, so we've got to find her while we're down there, too. We got a new player, his character is a Triton Storm Sorcerer and was asked to be our guide into the depths below. After a brief introduction, they give us some pearls that let us breathe underwater for 24 hours. I should also point out that our druid has wildshaped into a killer whale before we made our descent.

We made our down to the entrance underneath the island where there was an archway with a glowing sign above it saying "ENTRANCE", complete with flashing lights. We were all confused by this, but then a dude showed up named Wonko that looked like he came straight from the fucking circus, complete with top hat. He said "welcome, tickets please!" and then we knew things were about to get weird. So some wacky magic shit is going on. As mentioned, the island just appeared one day, and all sorts of random shit is happening around the island. We figure out what, but not why, later on.

So our big dumb fighter asks how we get tickets, causing Wonko to say, "You have to have tickets to enter...unless you're on the VIP list." And I dial up the goofy meter to eleven. I say, "I must be on the list. Don't you know who I am?"
"No."
"I'm Ergo the Magnificent!"
"I don't have any Ergos...I have a (some name I don't remember)."
"You must be mistaken. I'm Ergo the Magnificent! Tall in power, short in stature, narrow of purpose, and wide of vision! I must be on the list!"
"Well, I can change (random name) to Ergo easy enough, but I can't let your companions in without tickets."
"You must let them through! This is my trained whale, and these (pointing to the other party members) are its handlers."
"I can't be responsible for letting a whale in. It might wreck the place."
"I assure you it is very well trained."
"...alright. But if it breaks anything, it's on your head."
"Thank you my good man."
And with that, we were in. No deception checks or any other skill checks were made. I think the DM was just so confused by the whole situation that he just went along with it.

The place is laid out like a museum of random weird shit. Kinda like a Ripley's Believe It or Not. There's stuff from all over the multiverse, complete with labels saying what the things are and where they came from. I start to get an idea of what's going on, but keep quiet until I get more confirmation. At one point some Sahuagin pop out of a portal and attacked, but we plowed through them. The only noteworthy bit about that fight was that I rolled a 31 to hit with a cantrip and did a massive 3 damage...

Eventually we found a large group of Sahuagin, the princess and her bodyguards, and another portal. The new guy uses Improved Invisibility, walks into the middle of everyone and blasts off a Cone of Cold. It kills 3 or 4 little guys and damages some heavy hitters. Initiative is rolled and I go first. I move up and lob Fireball(made of Force due to the Lore Wizard ability) and take out everyone that lived through the Cone of Cold and another little guy. All that's left is two guards, one caster, and one big dude. The druid(now back to normal) moves in and casts Ice Storm on the remaining guys. The caster was out of range, but he killed the little guys and hurt the big guy. The caster summoned a water elemental before one of the others got to him and killed him. The Paladin and Fighter were taking on the elemental while the casters all moved in on the big guy. He decided we were a bit too much to handle, though, and jumped into the portal.

The princess was saved, but reality decided to go apeshit. I don't remember all the weirdness that was going on, but we ended up falling and landing back in town, in the inn we were staying at. Our NPC friend's room to be exact. And now everything makes sense. She said "What are you doing here?"
"We were after the artifact when we were tossed through a portal, I think."
"But I haven't sent you yet! What day did you come from"
*Tell her the day, but don't really know the day since it's never been mentioned*
"That's a week from now! It must be a rift!"
"Great, a time loop. Something strange is afoot at the Circle K."
"You can rest here for now, but keep quiet! You must not see yourselves or who knows what could happen!"
And then I knock on the door. We've come full circle and that's where we ended it.

I've never played a game that involved any sort of time travel, but this was done really well. He even almost got all the dialogue I heard at the beginning right. I thought about trying to include those words just to make it flow, but he said we heard the knock before I came up with anything. The campaign is almost over, so there probably won't be many more of these before we start another game, but I don't know when that'll be.

[Slaughterhouserock]

We finished the campaign last week and it was probably the most disappointing game I've played in awhile. There was no big battle with the bad guy. Instead, we had the equivalent of a QTE in new video games. In other words, it was shit.

The bad guys were on an airship, so we hopped on one to chase them down. The DM gave us some NPC's to control, so we had three groups of characters: our main group, some half our level, and others that were level 2. Each group had a task they needed to perform in order to accomplish our goal of taking down the bad guy airship. Lots of rolling for random garbage to see if we can speed up, or arm weapons, or even steer the damned airship. There was two whole sessions of this.

And to top it off, the DM brought back skill challenges from 4E. If you've never played 4E, or don't know anything about it, then I'll explain. A skill challenge is where you use your skills(not magic, not items, not anything, just skills) to solve a problem. You need a certain number of successes before you reach a certain number of failures to pass the challenge. I can not accurately describe how much I hate skill challenges. They are annoying, put the players on the spot to be creative, and punishes anyone with that has shit skills. This was our finale...a fucking skill challenge. And it wasn't even our main characters! We had to escape the exploding airship with some alts that the DM made and were forced to do it via skill challenge. In the end, we failed the challenge(because none of them had skills worth a damn), and the DM pulled a fucking deus ex machina on us by having some dragons come in and catch us while we were falling(we had used the dragons before, so at least they weren't completely out of the blue).

So yeah, not a very good ending for a campaign ending at 13th level. Honestly, the last couple months have been mediocre at best, and the plot seemed to get thrown out the window at some point, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. We're taking three weeks off until we start a new game, but a couple of the players were interested in starting another game on Saturdays with me DMing. I've been working on that, but there's only two of them(the others play in a different group on Saturdays) and we'd need at least three for what I want to do. We'll see how it goes, but I'm at a point where I'd much rather DM than play anymore. I like knowing everything that's going on, hate having to deal with bad DM decisions, and generally have more fun watching others reactions to what I throw at them.

[DancesWithWerewolves]

Bummer man.

I get to refurbish a character I was really not liking the build of (it was something that sounded good on paper, but in practice was less than mediocre). I also had a backup character on hand in case I died. I was very hopeful the character would die because the build was so lackluster. But now we're in between books of the module, and the DM said I can refurbish her in the "downtime" so that's awesome. Now she'll probably die when I don't want her to

[Slaughterhouserock]

I had a fairly infuriating game this past weekend. We were playing the side game where I'm a bugbear, which will be the main game for awhile, since our DM is going out of town for three months. I should give the lady some leeway since she's new to DMing and doesn't know any better, but damn it, I want people to do shit right. I'm a grumpy old man. I've been a grumpy old man since I was about ten, but it just shows more now that I'm actually old and no fewer fucks could be given.

I've got a thing about encounters. If your players enter a room and there's something there, describe it. What the fuck does it look like? Is it humanoid? Does it have wings? A tail? Arms? Five heads? Is it blue? Fucking give me something! Don't just put two minis on the table and say roll initiative, play out the encounter, and never say a fucking word as to what we're fighting! Fucks sake! After combat and looting was taking place, I had to ask, "what the fuck were we fighting?" I knew, because I'm a fucking grognard and know a troglodyte when I see the signs, but damn it, there's a way of doing things and shit needs to be done otherwise it's just "here's a thing, roll to hit it, you killed it, next room, here's another thing". Fuck that noise.

Learn your monsters abilities. If you know that your players are going into an area filled with trogs, read up on trogs. They have a stench ability, they're filthy fuckers and renowned for it. If I don't get hit with a big cloud of smelly shit when going into melee with one, I am disappointed. Not because I like stinky lizard dudes, but because I know that you aren't doing your fucking job. They get three attacks. Not one, not two, three fucking attacks! Use them damn it! Also, we found their nursery and instead of having them try to protect the eggs/young, they just straight up attacked. The fuck? Bunch of dead trog babies because of our over-zealous cleric. Good roleplaying opportunity just down the fucking drain.

Boss room. Chief trog and his big lizard mount. We walk in and just see the lizard, boss is invisible. Cool, trog with spells. Not something you see every day. The problem? She breaks the invisibility to yell at the druid for taking off with the lizard(she rolled over 20 on animal handling to get it out of the room so we could grab the treasure it was guarding). Dude could have dropped a bomb on our asses, she just has him go "hey, come back with my lizard!" Frustration mounts. Kill the dude in two rounds, doesn't even get a spell off, because the one she tried the PC passed the save.

If you're new, I get that, everyone's gotta start somewhere, but fuck man, you had one monster to run! One! Figure that shit out! I don't mean to be an elitist prick, but I'm too damn old to put up with this shit anymore.

[DancesWithWerewolves]

Before KMart sucked the weekend away from her, Alli actually liked trying to run games, though she's a newb. We tell her what she should work on, etc., but at least things wind up being fun. She will forget to notice many monster abilities though.

[Slaughterhouserock]

Before KMart sucked the weekend away from her, Alli actually liked trying to run games, though she's a newb. We tell her what she should work on, etc., but at least things wind up being fun. She will forget to notice many monster abilities though.

I just don't have the patience for it anymore. Everyone else was enjoying the game while I was being a crotchety bastard. So it's mostly on me for being an old cunt.

[showa58taro]

I’m with Slaughter. The fun is surely in the detail. If it’s just rolling dice I’ve got a great Yatzy set here at home.

[Slaughterhouserock]

I've started DMing this past weekend and it went well for the most part. I'm rusty as fuck and kept losing track of shit in my notes, but I've thrown them into a sandbox and let them run wild. I am running an old 2E campaign called Night Below: An Underdark Campaign. It's my favorite D&D pre-made campaign and the first game I ever ran way back when. NB should take them from 1st to a minimum of 10th level. And from there I plan on sending them through Necropolis, which is what I ran for you guys ages ago. I already have plans to connect the two (e.g. an early villain in NB will become the lich in Necropolis, his ultimate goal to resurrect Iuz, god of deceit, suffering, pain, and oppression). This is, of course, assuming they don't all die, which is how NB ended the last time I ran it.

The PC's are:
Duergar Cleric (not evil)
Aasimar Warlock (new celestial variant)
Firbolg Ranger
Tabaxi Ranger
Satyr Fighter (going for Eldritch Knight)

They started off on a simple enough task of delivering a chest to a wizard(Tauster) in the town of Thurmaster, for which they were being paid well. On the way they were ambushed by some bandits. Once it was obvious who the spellcasters were, the bandits tried to knock them out while trying to kill the others. The PC's were able to take them out without too much trouble, though. While looting the bodies, they discovered that the leader of the group had a distinct fishy smell to him. Unable to figure out what was causing it, they moved onto the village of Milborne.

Here they stopped in at the first inn they found, which turned out to be where all the local miners go to get drunk and fight after a hard day's work. Most of the party left after being told about the "quieter" inn on the other side of town. Two stayed behind, one to drink, one to fight. After knocking a couple people out, the Fighter went on to rejoin the rest of the group, while the Tabaxi kept drinking and ended up talking to an old dwarf called Old Grizzler. She got some info about the mines, a "wild woman" in the nearby woods, some waterlogging issue to the south, and possibly more, but I can't remember. When she finally passed out, she was robbed and failed to notice it. Lesson learned about staying in the shithole.

Back at the other inn, the group got rooms for the night so they could be well rested on their journey to Thurmaster. They woke up to a commotion downstairs. There was a group of people arguing with the innkeepers about their companion (an alchemist/wizard) that had apparently disappeared in the night. The group searched his room and found no signs of struggle, but his gear was still packed away, so it didn't appear that he left on his own accord either. One of the missing person's companions asked the group to see if Tauster had seen him. They had apparently been working together on something, so he may have gone out there.

After all that, they met up with Jelenneth, Tauster's apprentice, who was to guide them on the last leg of their journey. She took them by barge down the river to Thurmaster. On the way, the group talked to her about the mines, the woman in the woods(turned out to be a feral elven druid that likes to keep to herself), the local rangers that seem to try to keep things under control by making sure the goblinoids and whatnot stay away from town, and about Thurmaster. Once they reached Thurmaster, they made their way to Tauster's tower. He thanked them for the delivery and they were paid the rest of what they were due. They asked about the missing guy, but he hadn't seen him in over a week. He was supposed to come by later to pick up some items (some of which they just delivered), so he would keep an eye out and let them know if he showed up. In the meantime, he said they should check with Kuiper, one of the rangers. He is on their way back to Milborne, so it's not out of the way and he would know if the guy had passed through there.

Of to Kuiper's farm they went. Once there, it was getting late, so Kuiper put them up for the night. In the morning he talked about the rangers, the Eelhold to the northwest (where a water elemental just moved in, and a nixie already resides), the goblinoids in the Great Rock Dale to the north, the bandit problems, and a variety of other things. He said he'd offer to help search for the missing guy and that he would most likely be along Hog Brook to the south if he was nearby. So they set off and spent the whole day searching the 25 mile long brook, but found nothing. Towards the end of the day, they ran into Oleanne, the druid, and her two wolves. She mentioned she was tracking a boy that had turned into a bear and ran off into the woods. Kuiper, seeing that their search was fruitless, offered to help her in the morning. The others were undecided, and would think of what to do in the morning.

That night, just before daybreak, they were set upon by orcs. The wolves alerted them, so they were ready when they showed up, but it was still a hard fight. 4 archers, 6 melee, and one orog. Luckily they had the help of the ranger, druid, and the two wolves, otherwise it would have been a slaughter. Still, three were knocked out at one point, one only one roll away from death. Once the orog and half the others were down, the archers started to flee. One was taken out before he could escape, but the others got away. They all had a design of a bloody skull on their shields. Neither Kuiper, nor Oleanne had seen the design before. They also noticed that the orog had a distinct fishy smell to him. They finished up their rest and we called it a night there. I think they decided to help with the boy-turned-bear, so that should be where we pick up next time.

What's with the fish smell? How are the orcs and bandits connected? Where'd the missing guy go? Was he kidnapped? Is he the boy-turned-bear in an experiment gone wrong? What's causing the waterlogging? Are the goblinoids in the north going to be an issue? What about the water elemental at the dam? Are the mines of any importance, or just some local fluff? These are the questions the players had at the end of the session. If they're left guessing, we're doing good.

If you want to know what's going on here's the basic plot. There are some aboleth that are trying to find a way to expand their ability to mentally control humanoids by creating some towers to amplify it. This will make it so they can dominate you at any range and be able to rule the world without every having to leave their subterranean dwelling. To do this, they need to harness the essence of spellcasters, so they are kidnapping them. They are being aided by illithid, ixitxachitls, duergar, kuo-toa, and some demons and devils for good measure. The fish smell is from potions of domination that allow the aboleth to control whoever drinks them at a much greater distance, though it's limited, since their telepathy doesn't reach that far.

[DancesWithWerewolves]

Did you go full 2nd edition or did you adapt it to 5th?

[Slaughterhouserock]

Did you go full 2nd edition or did you adapt it to 5th?

Adapted to 5E. All but one player has never played anything but 5E, so it'd be hard to get them to play another edition(though I have been talking up 3.X since day one in the group).

[DancesWithWerewolves]

Did you go full 2nd edition or did you adapt it to 5th?

Adapted to 5E. All but one player has never played anything but 5E, so it'd be hard to get them to play another edition(though I have been talking up 3.X since day one in the group).

Nice. Really wish I could enjoy 5E though, but it's so mind-numbingly simple and bare bones. I understand it's easier for new players though, it's probably the easiest version of the game I've ever seen (I only started in 2E, so I don't know if the original stuff is simpler).

[Slaughterhouserock]

Nice. Really wish I could enjoy 5E though, but it's so mind-numbingly simple and bare bones. I understand it's easier for new players though, it's probably the easiest version of the game I've ever seen (I only started in 2E, so I don't know if the original stuff is simpler).

It is kinda shit compared to the other editions(except 4E, nothing will beat that when it comes to being absolute garbage). 2E is just an updated(i.e. easier to read) version of 1E. There's only minor differences. THAC0 and all those wonderful tables are the same between the two. I really think they peaked with 3.X.

[Slaughterhouserock]

We now have four alternating games going. Shit's getting confusing. Started a new game yesterday and I'm playing two characters because the DM thought we needed another one since we were down two players. I thought three was enough, but fuck it. I had originally made a Dwarf Cleric(Tempest) and they thought we needed a wizard, so I rolled up a Dwarf Wizard who is my twin brother and hates religion. Made for a fun dynamic and I get to argue with myself.

The other players are a Drow Monk and a Gnome Rogue. The player of the Gnome decided to make her the most annoying cunt possible. After just one session, I'm already sick of her. Why the fuck would anyone want to play someone intentionally annoying? She's not even roleplaying, she's just making noises to indicate that she's yapping away. She literally a "di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di!" sound at the highest possible pitch to indicate her prattling. It's fucking maddening. She's also gave herself a feat, even though humans are the only ones that can get a feat at first level. That's just annoying to me in a different way.

The Drow player is alright, though he tends to play the same character no matter what race/class he chooses. Not great, but I can deal with it.

The DM is a first-time DM, so there's lots of fumbling around with rules and whatnot. The story's been good so far, though, even though we just started and didn't get a whole lot accomplished. It's an urban setting, which I haven't played in in ages, so I'm interested to see where it goes.

In other news, the previous week we played the Bugbear game. In what turned out to be a rather tense fight, I was possessed by a ghost-thing and had to fight the party. The DM made me roll the attacks and my dice have never rolled so long, so consistently. It was perfect timing to start rolling like shit. Over the course of four rounds(eight attacks), I never rolled above an 8 to hit. If I had hit, I could have easily taken out the whole damn group since I'm a Fighter built for damage. In the end, they had to take me down to get the ghost out and kill it. I was revived afterwards, so all is well.

[DancesWithWerewolves]

Fighters are underrated as fuck.

A new game started last Saturday, it'll be every third Saturday of the month, and I'm playing a 3rd Party (non-Paizo official) archetype of the Vigilante class. I showed the DM ahead of time what I wished to play, and she looked it over and gave me the okay. So I am essentially playing Venom (minus super strength and spider-man abilities). Over time I can become the party Tank, but at low levels I'm not that impressive. Was fun starting off with referring to myself in a plural sense, but I did state that's only when the Symbiote is out, or coming out. First attack in combat I got to bite off the head of a Zombie Pig (only because others wore the HP Down so I got the kill blow).

If only the Pathfinder Vigilante class didn't waste so many levels on "Social Talents", it could be even better. Social Talents are extremely situational stuff when you're in your "social identity". Really the only flaw I've seen with the Vigilante, but I'm playing for flavor, not power.

[Slaughterhouserock]

I called it quits with my group a couple weeks ago. It was a combination of things; the time was late sunday, so I only got about four hours sleep before heading into work, the multiple campaigns with no real structure for when they would be run was making things too confusing to follow, a couple of the players just refused to learn how to play their characters causing everything to be much more difficult than necessary, and our play styles generally did not mix well(I like a serious plot, but with the ability to be as goofy/weird as fuck as I want with my character, they were generally serious at all times). I was looking forward to running my game, but knew it would end up being once every five or six weeks, so it wouldn't be fun. No one would pick up on what the hell was going on with a rotation like that. I'll keep it on the back-burner for if I ever find another group.

I've been thinking about looking into roll20, but when I checked online for 3.5 games, there were only a handful and none seemed all that interesting to me. I'd put up an offer to DM a game on there, but dread the idea of getting a group of nutjobs as players. I'd go into as much detail as the program would allow, so it would suck if all that time gets wasted. As is always the problem with me finding a group, I just hate everyone.

[showa58taro]

That’s a shame dude. Loved the game thread and some of the fun stuff you got to do. Here’s hoping a good game comes along.