Gaming and More Gaming!

[salamanca]

2 rangers, a cleric, a rogue and a sorceror and they don't think there will be variety in character creation?. Add in the usual blend of elf, dwarf, and odd race to that and nobody should be too similar. (and if you use the handbooks it should be a field day of variety). So I am deducting 50 points from all your houses for going d20. (and -500xp). Now I would have pushed for less variety and gone 2 rangers, rogue w/ wilderness scout kit, druid and wizard focusing on nature spells.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Anything up to 3.0 is all pretty much the same to me. And as I'm just going to be running mods (rather than writing my own stuff) whatever system makes the players happy's ok with me.

[salamanca]

Let me build the party: a kender that thinks he is el vago, his half orc barbarian sidekick (that is always fooled by the mask), a rastafarian paladin riding a buffalo, a merchant, an athiest priest that believes in the concept of religion and church but not gods, a wild mage who prefers grease and burning hands, and an elven trap specialist. Nevermind, that is the last D&D group I ran for. You don't want to run for that group.

[spizio]

Did the priest approve of the concept of being granted spells by a deity he didn't believe in but not the practice of being granted spells?

[salamanca]

Nope just a solitary minor psionic healing power and a tendency to lecture about loyalty and faith to his temple. The other players mostly never knew he had no spells.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Nope just a solitary minor psionic healing power and a tendency to lecture about loyalty and faith to his temple. The other players mostly never knew he had no spells.

That is awesome.

As for our regular group, we had board games this week and Her Majesty deigned to grace us with her presence. Played The Resistance http://www.indieboardsandcards.com/resistance.php In theory it was pretty good, a variant on Werewolf http://www.eblong.com/zarf/werewolf.html with members of the resistance fighting against the man while two spies try to mess them all up. Problem was, it was WAY too easy for the Resistance folks to figure out who the spies were.

We then moved on to Smash Up (made by some obscure crappy board game company no one cares about). I didn't get to play but it seemed like those who did had lots of fun (including Her Majesty).

Next up we're finally at our first 3.0 game. We'll be making characters and maybe getting started if we have enough time.

[Lady Grace]

I actually have a story for a change!

So we're level 8. Myself (a human rogue), Mike's monkey-man druid, his loyal wolf companion Snafu, and the GM run elven warpriest. We're tracking down rumors of a mysterious shadowy psycho with a scythe who's been mowing down homeless people and the occasional out of town merc in the slums. The local constable force is incompetent. After kicking the butts of a bush league band of thieves who made the mistake of trying to fight us and hauling them off to prison, we got some info on the latest attack of the psycho. Since what rumors and info we had led us to believe this guy either had magic or was supernatural in some way due to the fact he could kill messily and NOT leave a spatter trail, we thought he might be utilizing the sewers in his escape.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

We did not find the psycho in the sewers. We instead find two beholders and a pack of their pet flying strangulors. Yea verily, our dice rolls SUCKED in the beginning, both in terms of saves and attacks. Poor Snafu nearly bit towards the end, but thanks to Mike's Dire Ape form and remembering he had Flamestrike prepared, we finally took out the aberrations. Not before I got hit with a Fear ray though. With a shriek that would do Professor Screams-Like-A-Girl proud, I got in some much needed cardio running.

We patched ourselves up and looted, finding the body and journal of a dead elven druid who tried to track down these beholders previously and failed. Since hopefully we want to hook up with the druid conclave on the other side of the continent that the corpse was from, I want to get this journal back to his people. My rogue is no fool -- butt-kissing is important. Plus, Mike's monkeyman is part of a talent exchange with them.

We start moving again -- only to find that the psycho is hacking away at another poor victim on the streets again! Looking out through a handy sewer grate, Mike casts Entangle on the perp, then goes Grape Ape again to tear off the sewer grate to try to pull the psycho down to our level. I manage to hit for a measly 6 points of damage with my bow, continuing our luck of crappy opening rolls. But suddenly, the psycho appears right in the sewers with us! Bravely, the warpriest goes on the offensive since Mike has crappy initiative and does some decent damage!

And then is on the receiving end of the psycho's (who happens to be a multiclass fighter/barbarian/berserker as we later found out) Power Attack. Yeah, the elf can't withstand that twice -- and the surprise lightning bolt from elsewhere in the sewers finishes him off for good. Mike manages to hit his full array of attacks with his Dire Ape form, complete with Rend and the psycho is for once not looking good. Then Snafu, loyal Snafu, actually SUCCEEDS in beating the perp in a Strength check to trip him. Since I'm now flanking him and he's trying to get up, my Sneak Attack actually crits and finishes him off.

But there's still another suspect in play -- the brains of the operation, a gnome illusionist with Improved Invisibility. Through some lucky dice rolls and a well-placed Flaming Sphere, we're whittling her down anyway (sadly, she made her save against my Wand of Silence) -- at least until she casts Evard's Black Tentacles, grappling us hapless fools! Snafu manages to wriggle free! Mike...not so much. But Mike has strength in his favor. My rogue, however, does not have high strength. Or points in escape artist (yet).

What he does have, however, are Boots of Dimensional Striding. And he hasn't used their teleport function for the day. I port out of their attack area and between me and the wolf, we FINALLY drop the evil gnome wench down into unconsciousness.

And that's where we left it for the night. We're going to need another Timmy...

[Black Jack Rackham]

You know, from your description, I thought you might be playing either D&D or Shadowrun (though to be fair, the Druid comment did help a bit).

[Lady Grace]

I've just missed regular gaming, BJR. So some silly cross-genre shift in my description is to be expected.

Also, it was indeed confirmed for all that Gnome Women ain't nothin' but trouble...

[Black Jack Rackham]

Well I'm going to be trying a crazy experiment in which I sandbox the whole campaign. I've been reading lots of adventures and calculating some ways to get heroes involved, but not much besides that. We'll see how it goes. Fortunately for me, while I think this'll be lots of fun, I have not much personally invested in seeing it succeed (so I am not trying to make it better and fretting about my efforts like I normally do).

[salamanca]

Shortcuts to sandbox D&D:. You need a list of people in town they deal with (tavern keepers, sheriff, local healer, store owner, etc) just names, a person to base them on and some stupid problem they can ask the players to help with if they are slow about offering goals. Then you need a map of your area and the town itself. (I'm partial to Homlett for villages and lankhmar for a city and, oddly, the basic edition "known world" around Karamiekos for region). Once the base and NPCs are done, I like to have a character I plan on becoming a villian develop based on who they slight in an early session. And the rest builds off whatever the players try. And I normally try and track the villian's developing plans against the time the players spend doing stuff aside from confronting the bad guy. (a calendar planner works well for that).

[Black Jack Rackham]

Wow, I have done none of that (though I expect the village will be Daggerford (which I have a map of, and a listing of NPCs), the city will be Waterdeep (though I haven't even started reading that) and the Sword Coast for the map).

I'm thinking now of doing up two maps of everything (noting all my NPC locations on mine).

I also need to do more than a cursory glance over the Deck of Encounters.

As it currently stands I have about 7 adventures they can get themselves involved with (assuming they're interested). I think that's more than enough to get things started, so now its on to populating the world.

[Rebecca Iavelli]

I also have the Greyhawk maps Mark, should you want to use them.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Oh I have everything (including those maps) I just haven't read all this stuff in a WAY long time (I think the last time I actually played in the Realms was late 80's early 90's (so well over 20 years ago). Some of that stuff has slipped from my brain in that time...

[salamanca]

Tip for the deck:. Empty the dining room table and read through them. Then re-sort the cards in to category stacks. City encounters, road encounters, wilderness, monsters, etc. (they will really volunteer themselves to locations.). As you do this, several will look vwry much like good session start points. Out of the rest, you can cull encounters to take place on the way to or from dealing with those encounters. I recall sorting them by threat level so the easy stuff was up front and troubles grew in later cards. Some of the better early cards (i remember a wandering band of goblin or kobold minstrels or actors) ended up becoming regulars.

[salamanca]

Mark, does your set have Blue or green ink on the face side with the location symbols?. If blue, you will need a pile for "not for my game setting".

[Black Jack Rackham]

I have both Set 1 (with the green) and Set 2 (with the blue). So I will make extra sure to sift through Set 2

[Rebecca Iavelli]

Trying to remember our line-up from yesterdays creation of our DnD characters.

David - Ranger - ? Elf or Half Elf? - ?NG? (He was not at the game, due to haveing to go to a B-day party.)
Laura - Druid - Human - NG - Heather Wyndael, has a tuffed ear squirrel named Tree as a animal friend.
Megan - Paladin - Human - LG
Eric - Cleric - Human - ?NG?
Jen - Thief - Hafling - CG
Earl - Sorcerer - ?Human? - ?NG? (has a cat for a familiar)

(Anything between question marks are things I am unsure of.)

If you can remember better Mark, can you fix it. Did not get any character names either.

To start us off, Mark had us returning to Waterdeep, from being mercenaries out on the Dales, and during the night, on Jen's shift, she heard a sound out in the woods, and went to wake us up, but the first "person" she found (reaching behind her to try to grab at one of our feet), was a hairy foot, just like hers. She turns around quickly to find another halfling, with her backpack in his hands, that has all her "stuff" she aquired at the Dales. He takes off, she follows, with a quick yell, that only wakes me up. I see her heading off to the wood, and take a moment to wake the others.

I think that is where he left us at, since it was 6pm by that time, and he had to make dinner for the family.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Got most of it right. Here's what I wrote out:

Paladin (LG – Human, played by Megan, born in Cormyr)
Ranger (CG – Moon Elf, played by David from the High Forest)
Cleric (NG – Human, played by Eric, from Cormyr)
Rogue (CN – Halfling, played by Jen, from Waterdeep)
Sorcerer (CN – Human, played by Earl, from the Dale Lands)
Druid (NG – Human, played by Laura from the High Forest )

Yup we have a nasty little contingent of Chaotic Neutrals in our good party. This ought to be fun...

[Lady Grace]

Well, admittedly both my Mike and I are playing CN, but as we stressed to our GM, we're playing it as Chaotic Selfish and NOT Chaotic Psychotic.

[spizio]

Yup we have a nasty little contingent of Chaotic Neutrals in our good party. This ought to be fun...

But conveniently chaotic is my favorite alignment to play.

I also like to take curious and impulsive as disadvantages in systems that allow such things. For the triple threat you can also add hard of hearing.

[salamanca]

Cn is too easy to play. I forbid myself from taking it. I have also been unilaterally banned from playing "anything even remotely evil because you will destroy the party". So now I am left with CG and LN to cause trouble. Letting me have LN is very problematic to parties. I actually enforce common rules and stuff like stealing from the dead being wrong. (even if you made him dead a minute ago). Which means I am really only allowed to play CG and NG characters.

[Lady Grace]

Does anyone have any info on the Savage Worlds core rules? I might be getting involved in a Deadlands Noir game and I read that it uses the Savage World rules...

[salamanca]

I have a copy around someplace. Basically, they took the Deadlands game, streamlined it extremely into a minis game, then re-expanded the mechanics into a universal system.

If you played the old system, it's pretty simple to pick up on but I filed the exact info out of my brain from lack of use.

[Black Jack Rackham]

I have a copy of the basic book (back when I thought SW might solve some of the problems of the original Deadlands rules instead of creating a whole new set of problems which are (in my opinion) worse than the original).

I've heard a couple of people (Charlie among them) who really liked the Noir book, but for my money I'd probably use it for background info and go with Ubiquity for a system.

Dave's right though, if you remember Deadlands, you're about 80% of the way there.