Pens and Papers

[Ruki]

5 minutes ago, Toe said:

Once this is done, I think I want to jump into the new Phandelver book. Playing the Faerun instead of this dark and dreary demi-plane should be a great change of pace. 

The Phandelver book is really interesting to me! I'm excited to read it once it comes out. Might run it next. Who doesn't love a remix/remaster (not quite sure which) of the original Beginners Box with lots of extra content (mind flayers!!). 

[Toe]

Scheduling is the hardest part of TTRPGs. Struggling to get a date set for the next session always just drains away the excitement I feel after a fun session. 

[Ruki]

That used to be the biggest struggle for me too, and why I stopped playing for years. But I discovered that setting a consistent night (for me, Saturday and Sunday evenings, the Friday game is a little harder) and running even if we are down a person or two, is the best way to get a game going long term (I've completed Waterdeep Dragon Heist x2, Storm King's Thunder, Call of the Netherdeep, Out of the Abyss, and Spelljammer because of that). Of course, that only really works if you have a consistent work schedule (I'm 9-5, M-F, and I have kids, so I'm always home in the evening, and schedule the games for after they go to bed). 

[Toe]

4 minutes ago, Ruki said:

That used to be the biggest struggle for me too, and why I stopped playing for years. But I discovered that setting a consistent night (for me, Saturday and Sunday evenings, the Friday game is a little harder) and running even if we are down a person or two, is the best way to get a game going long term (I've completed Waterdeep Dragon Heist x2, Storm King's Thunder, Call of the Netherdeep, Out of the Abyss, and Spelljammer because of that). Of course, that only really works if you have a consistent work schedule (I'm 9-5, M-F, and I have kids, so I'm always home in the evening, and schedule the games for after they go to bed). 

That's what I was hoping for when I started the campaign, but one of my players is in law enforcement and another is a real estate agent, so they have schedules that are all over the place. 

[Ruki]

Do you only play when everyone is available? If so, you could change it where as long as you have over 50% of the players, you still play. 

[Toe]

55 minutes ago, Ruki said:

Do you only play when everyone is available? If so, you could change it where as long as you have over 50% of the players, you still play. 

No, I know that would be impossible so my rule is we play as long as 4 out of 6 players can make it.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

If anyone wants a trip down to Kent in March we're running our second convention! Saturday is all roleplaying games while Sunday we're going to be running a Megagame!

Come and hang!

[Ruki]

D&D is just the best. We picked up tonight in the last bits of a dungeon. 3 rooms, should be in and out and onto something new within 30 minutes. Nope. The whole dang session took place in those rooms. In the first room they fought a basilisk, which managed to petrify one player completely the combat took forever because everyone but the warlock rolled like doodoo. Second room was a Will-O-Wisp, high AC, hard to hit. People kept missing until it retreated (and later attacked someone who wandered off alone)

 

Then the main room, a room that could turn illusions into reality (depending on the roll). One player suggested testing the machine with an illusory cookie. The other player took 'cookie' as slang for a chef. So he made a little humanoid chef, who became a real living, breathing creature (for 8 hours, but they didn't know that). This 3 inch creature took up the majority of the session as they tried to teach it things, horrified that they accidentally created life, and then grew to lovingly accept it. Then 8 hours later it said goodbye to it's creator and winked out of existence. People were sad. It was great. 

[Ruki]

Ah jeeze, my cleric died tonight. My first PC death in years. Killed by the person he had a crush on (dominated by a mind flayer)!

 

But! It did cause emotional damage to everyone. 

[Benji]

Posted in Board Game thread cause I forgot it was separate to this, so I'll post this here too.

Is anyone else interested in BREAK!! ? Its a JRPG inspired rules lite tabletop RPG. Its due for release soon and I just placed my order for physical and PDF version so if anyone is interested in playing once I've read through the rules, then I'd like to try and find some people to GM for.

Website here for the interested.

[Ruki]

That sounds delightful, I love the art on that!

[thepunkrockicon]

Just finished up the first kind of 'Arc End' session of my campaign. The players defeated the Necromancer that was terrorizing the town, only for her last act to be destroying the effigy to the god of death in the mausoleum. This led to the second phase of the fight where they had to fight off an unending sea of undead while their cleric ally attempted to rebuild the effigy and stop the dead from rising. Really fun stuff and really the first time I felt really in my element behind the screen. They levelled up and now have to decide what they're gonna do about the goblins and bandit gangs running around the local area.

[Benji]

On 13/09/2023 at 19:39, Ruki said:

Do you only play when everyone is available? If so, you could change it where as long as you have over 50% of the players, you still play. 

One question I have with this - if you're in the middle of a chapter, how do you deal with this? Do you just have the characters be quiet but roll on their behalf for attacks? Do you not include them at all?

[Ruki]

4 hours ago, Benji said:

One question I have with this - if you're in the middle of a chapter, how do you deal with this? Do you just have the characters be quiet but roll on their behalf for attacks? Do you not include them at all?

I have the other players tell me what they want them to do in combat. But for non-combat, they just follow along. That way I'm not rebalancing encounters I made. 

[Toe]

I just say they aren't there. If they had a plot important item, we just say someone else is borrowing it. I don't want to risk killing a PC while the player is away, or having them involved in something they wouldn't want to do. So the PC is just not there, and when they come back they get a recap and can react to whatever happened in the last session.

[Ruki]

In combat, I almost never target someone who isn't there. Especially never to the point where they might die. That would just not be fair. 

[Ruki]

One of my players in Blood Lords just has the WORST dice luck. 

 

This is over 4 sessions. He is almost 2 points below average, when everyone else is 10.5-10.9.

[Ruki]

Playing in Phandelvor and Below, my character is a superfan of the Sword Coast famous character Volo. Following in his footsteps, I am 'writing' (I am using ChatGPT to clean it up) 'Lolo's Guide To Adventuring'. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XWtKhglVq0jzC3_qaF6LjNKk6o4hMryCNYiS6FQZmm4/edit#heading=h.91dcoyq807m

 

It's silly, but it's fun!

[Toe]

Finally got my Curse Of Strahd campaign going again, and the party made some pretty big progress. 

I also came literally one initiative step away from killing a PC in what I thought would be a pretty simple fight. The party was facing a group of werewolves, and I decided to make some of the werewolves spellcasters when they were not in wolf form.

[Ruki]

Speaking of killing a PC... had two sessions of Rime of the Frostmaiden this weekend! The first session was doing a bit more of the dungeon, some RP, and then heading back to town to prepare for a dragon attack. The second session was the actual attack broken into multiple bits.

 

First section, they fight the dragon (and a few duregar snipers) who isn't doing too much to focus fire, not being smart (was gonna fly off after taking 50 damage). Except the paladin has an ability to lock down the enemy where it can't leave more than 30 feet! So the dragon had to fuck him up to leave.

Second section was some more duregar that were killing civilians. Except one of the civilians was an assassin from the paladin's backstory who chose this oh so inopportune moment to strike. Knocked him out twice. And was about to get a killing blow... except the warlock landed a critical hit with an Eldritch Blast. Was a close one!

Third section was a mini-boss fight with a bunch of minions. It was a hill giant that the party had 'befriended' and then abandoned in the tundra, telling him he was playing hide and seek. So the hill giant returned with a frosty vengeance. This was ok.

Fourth section I knew was gonna get spicy. The Blood Hunter had pledged their allegiance to the frost maiden, so was tasked with hunting down people who cheated their way out of the human sacrifice lottery. Two of those people were characters from a past campaign... a level 17 druid and a level 10 bard. Rather than be sneaky about it, he just started blasting, and managing to drop the bard! The druid, not appreciating her girlfriend be almost murdered, unleashed hell. The other players turned on the Blood Hunter and managed to drop them... the paladin tried to talk down the druid with a 24 on his diplomacy check. She rolled a 25 to save. So she used a 9th level Blight to make a point... save failed, enough damage to insta-kill them. 

Everyone was hyped and loved it, which was great. Next week it's the final stand against the dragon!