|
Post by Greatshot on Feb 20, 2020 22:34:34 GMT -5
So. As I mentioned in Fresh Kills, I got recruited to DM a campaign for a coworker and his friends (DnD 5e), and at suggestion I should do so, I figure I'll keep a running thread of the game. Those of you who know me know I am perfectly willing to give you just enough rope to hang yourself with, and DnD excels at that. So with out further ado, here's shenanigans. Session 0: DnD's first "episode" is always about the same doings - building your characters. Very little is actually accomplished this first day. So out of my 3 players, only one has ever played DnD before, and that campaign died quickly and was MUCH more railroaded than the open way I run things (looking at you, Transistor Line Thread). So this is gonna be fun for everyone. GS house rules: 1: I'm only going to outright kill you if you're completely stupid. I'm VERY loose with death rules in DnD, if someone's reduced to 0 HP I operate on the assumption all adventurers know basic first aid, enough to "stablize" their friends from dying. You're out of that fight, and recover with 1 HP afterwards as long as one of your teammates spends a turn "treating" you. Further mitigated by 5e's new "death saving throw" mechanic, which allows a couple turns before they expire even with that built in. Only ways I kill you outright are DUMB shit, ie, a low level character deciding it'd be a good idea to go provoke an ancient Red Dragon - things there's no way to survive and maintain even "game logic" in the world. 2: No inner party evil, unless both players consent. I've found over the years, this more often than not fractures parties and can roll over to the real world. Inner party conflict for RP purposes, like you disagree on how to handle a plot point, cool. No stealing, murdering or betraying each other. 3: Worldwide evil is TOTALLY fine. You wanna steal, murder or betray NPCs? K, cool, go right ahead. There may be consequences of your actions, but I'll allow it. Just cause you're the main characters, doesn't mean you gotta be good. 4: I'll improv the shit out of this thing. You give me an idea you wanna do, I'm probably gonna be fine with it. Again, it may not go as you want it to, but I very rarely say no outright. With that established, here's our party of would be heroes: A half-elf Rogue, who's backstory consists of thieving antics that resulted in him being punched so hard he's a member of the RPG-hero-with-amnesia trope. Player is absolutely fine with me coming up with just about anything to fill in these gaps, he remembers his hometown of Pawnsville, which has an active thieves guild, and very little else. Bar fight lead to him being arrested. A full elf Ranger, who's backstory is that of a fairly amoral bounty hunter. After a failed murder for hire gone wrong, this lead to him being arrested. A crodillian Barbarian war champ/vet from a reclusive swamp. Think Killer Croc with a big ol' battle axe. Amusingly enough the most noble of the team. His attempting to be... erm, overly friendly with a guard in a town resulted in him being arrested (total racial profiling, my scaly dude). So I let THEM come up with how they met, to avoid the usual awkward 0 session "so, erm, you all meet in a tavern" gamestart, and they came up with the being jailed, and it being on a ship which was shipwrecked, those 3 were the only survivors. I dug it, ran with it, came up with a massive trade city that deals in everything, including slaves, which is where they were being shipped to. After being wrecked by... something on a coastline some distance away, they awoke and after exploring the wreckage (to get their starting gear, yay handwaving, how convenient that you all find armor and weapons for your specific proficiencies!", I had an intro battle against a handful of goblins planned to serve as a combat tutorial, at which point they'd be able to head to a small fishing village nearby. Goblins mowed down easily enough, they arrive in the small town. I drop an obvious hint that should lead to the start of the Big Bad Evil Guy storyline, which would initially lead to them going to the goblins home cave and having their first *real* combat, and... they ignore it to immediately go scope out the giant city I mentioned earlier. Ah. This is gonna be one of THOSE campaigns. So woefully underprepared to construct a big city, GS is in active wing that BS mode. We take a short break while I notebook the hell out of a trade city. Klahjesi is divided into 4 wards, each focusing on a specific area - a huge market that sells any and all kinds of goods as it's a trade center -- and the huge docks are just east of this, a ward that sells wares (armor, weapons, magic, etc, basically a chance to spend their gold), a services ward (thieves guild, mage school, the city watch headquarters/prison, bounties, free mercenaries etc), and a "people" ward, which sells slaves, slave soldiers, brothels, etc,, all surrounded by a large wall (and the sea to the east). Outside the wall is the "spillage", where the poorer section of the population is. The center of the city is all the large merchant manors and at the very core is a massive fortification serving as the house of the plutocracy (you *literally* buy a seat in the goverment of this city), and at the heart of that fortress is the massive central bank (which, unknown to the party is protected by an equally massive golem constructed of gold coins. What? They have a thief. I'm planning for the inevitable ). After some exploration, they encounter an elf that has the look of an adventurer about him and they initiate a conversation that leads them to a small shop with a hidden room, and their first real adventure. And as that's where we left off the first day I'll take a break here.
|
|
|
Post by iacon45 on Feb 21, 2020 9:24:20 GMT -5
First, I have no clue about how D&D works so I admit I'm a little lost reading that...but I do have to ask... so there is no Spider Man allowed?
|
|
|
Post by Optimal Megatron on Feb 21, 2020 10:38:18 GMT -5
Aheh. Sorry-not-sorry? Well, I mean, it IS a giant city presumably crawling with work for standard D&D party n'er do wells. This one amuses me because frankly, aside from the physical layout, you pretty much just laid out Ul'dah, one of the cities from FFXIV. Down to the fact that despite being "run" by a Sultanate, all the real power is in the hands of the Syndicate, which basically have seats chosen from the richest people in the merchant city. Great minds and all that, I suppose. "Help! Help! The crocfolk are stealing our womenz!"
|
|
|
Post by Greatshot on Feb 21, 2020 21:42:30 GMT -5
First, I have no clue about how D&D works so I admit I'm a little lost reading that...but I do have to ask... so there is no Spider Man allowed? It's not dissimilar from the old forum RPGs with the exception that most resolutions (combat, skills, etc), are won or lost via dice rolls, and the dice come in funny shapes, a traditional 6 sided one, an 8 sided one,etc. The 20 sided dice is most often used. But very similar in game play, a player declares their action or intent and the DM describes the situation and calls for any dice rolls they feel are needed. Like for some examples: DM: You find an statue in the back of this cave. It appears to be that of a warrior. Player: "Ooh, is it a magic statue? I study it for clues" DM: "Ok, roll an intelligence check". At this point, you'd take that character's intelligence stat modifier, and have the player roll a D20 against whatever value the DM assigns the statue. We'll say it's a 15 difficulty, and the player rolls a 3, so they fail the difficulty check massively. DM: "You don't notice anything particularly unusual about the statue." Or maybe they roll a 19, passing the DC check. DM: "You can sense a faint aura of magic emanating from the statue. You recognize it as Sir Goodeknight, the hero of the kingdom from 100 years ago." At that point the player would have a hook to discover why the statue is magical - maybe it's not a statue, maybe it's a petrified Sir Goodeknight. Maybe his magic sword is sealed in the statue, or whatever. Lots of ways to improv in DnD. That sort of stuff. Works like that in combat too - the player would roll a D20 to determine if they hit the monster they were attacking, with whatever modifiers they have against the monster's "armor class" (the score you need to beat to hit the monster), and then you'd roll whatever the damage dice for their weapon is to see how much they hit for. The monster then takes that much damage. Combat can get pretty hairy sometimes, because you can definitely get walloped with Fire Emblem syndrome, missing when you NEED to hit, or that damn pesky worst time ever critical hit from a baddie. As for Spiderman, there's *literally* an in-cannon legendary Cloak of the Arachnida that effectively does make you Spider-man sans the web slingers, and it's not impossible to mimic them with spell effects, so, uh, he kinda is? But part 2 next time!
|
|
|
Post by triumshockwave on Feb 22, 2020 3:47:28 GMT -5
Combat can get pretty hairy sometimes, because you can definitely get walloped with Fire Emblem syndrome, missing when you NEED to hit, or that damn pesky worst time ever critical hit from a baddie.
And that's when the DM subtly fudges a die roll in the interest of everyone having fun.
Or just lets them die horribly because he's an evil bastard.
|
|
|
Post by Greatshot on Feb 22, 2020 21:12:03 GMT -5
Combat can get pretty hairy sometimes, because you can definitely get walloped with Fire Emblem syndrome, missing when you NEED to hit, or that damn pesky worst time ever critical hit from a baddie.
And that's when the DM subtly fudges a die roll in the interest of everyone having fun.
Or just lets them die horribly because he's an evil bastard.
This group of PCs apparently WANTS me to be my evil bastard self because they asked me to stop rolling behind my screen, even after I explained why I do it
|
|
|
Post by Greatshot on Feb 23, 2020 17:15:40 GMT -5
Okay, so session 2! Behind the door is their first contact/contract chance, an Elven Wizard (Enchanter school focus) named Quilynn. The other elf that directed the party here is Trelen, her twin brother (fun fact, when I rolled up their stats, they added up to the same total point value, and I went "oh, ha, that's funny, they're twins. Yanno what, sure, they're twins. ) so they're twins, he's the brawn (Fighter, Eldritch Knight), she's the brains. The elves are former slaves that earned their freedom due to Quil's secretly learning magic to charm their old master into freeing them. Said master remains charmed (karma's a bitch), and now runs this shop as a front for their agenda, which is to buy their way into the city's government. The party agrees to join forces with them, as they have the same ultimate goal (power and riches), and begins to work as agents to win the favor of lower level political pull folks. Ultimately they learn via discussing with the town's guard/garrison, that trade convoys heading west are being hit by bandits and they decide to stop the bandits. But first, in true RPG fashion, lets sidequest and explore the city! They drink, they revel, they learn a bit more about the city, and encounter a beautiful woman being purchased by a "noble" at the slave market. The party thief takes umbrage to this (plus he thinks the lady is hot), and decides he's gonna rob this guy later. Inspecting the noble's carriage, he sees the family crest, a white bird (which I decide is a dove because my name generator came up with the surname Dovbrek for them). GS immediately has one of his "oh, im a bastard, silent giggle" ideas, which i file away for future use. They head out, and lay in wait for a high value convoy. Indeed, the bandits strike in force of about 10 or so, which the party wins fairly handly with only a small bit of help from a couple of convoy guards. At this point, I learn my party are loot goblins and want to inspect every corpse. I wasn't really expecting this, so I quickly improv'd that they all had brand/tattoos indicating they were former slaves. I figure this will give them a plot hook to figure out which side they should look further into. Nope, my guys go "Lets cut off the tats to prove we killed them!" Okay, yep, it's definitely gonna be one of those games. Level up! Everyone hits level two, doles out their new abilities, HP roles, etc. Keep this in mind, as I did not, and it benefited the PCs. When they head back to the garrison, they are paid a bounty (after a mildly negative reaction to the pile of skin chunks dumped on his desk) and then hired by the captain to find the bandit's base of operations and to kill the rest of them. Party decides to rest up and then head out to hunt for clues to the bandit base location. They opt to leave after sunset. I opt to teach them what a terrible idea running off into the woods in the middle of the night in D&D is. Encounter, Giant Spider! They discover this critter by wandering into it's web, and the thief is immediately entangled. The Barbarian tries to cut him down, totally muffs the roll, and gets his arm caught too. The giant spider scrambles down from its position higher up in the trees, and shoots a web at the ranger, catching his feet and preventing him from moving but not acting. This encounter just went from a dangerous "you guys should be more careful in your planning" to a "well, they could really be in trouble now" fight, and then... "Wait," says the ranger. "I just learned Animal Friendship, can I cast it on the spider?" Me: "...Oh, right, i totally forgot you picked that up. Yeah, go ahead." Spider successfully talked down, it dawdles around them for a few turns and then wanders off into the forest in search of an easier meal. They find some footprints, and head towards the bandit camp, and we called the game there for the day.
|
|
|
Post by Greatshot on Feb 26, 2020 23:48:41 GMT -5
Session 3: Bandit Showdown! Had a 3 week break at this point due to real life scheduling incompatibilities, so had some time to really flesh out the bandit encampment and set up some future plottings. I decided to build the camp around the party comp, give them a chance to really go nuts if they picked up on the clues. In addition, all of the bandits are human and thus have no darkvision, to give the party an additional edge with an elf and a half-elf. We left off with them in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night, so in the interest of throwing them a bone because I'm not pure evil (contrary to popular belief), after realizing our ranger never picked a favored terrain I said I'd handwave and allow "forest" to be that type if they wanted. They used this advantage to track the bandits and find the camp. Scene: Dead of night, they approach thru the woods and see a single bridge over a river that empties into a lake. On the other side are the ruins of a small village which is where the bandits have set up. There's a couple archers at the far end of the bridge, and a trio by a campfire on the shore of the lake. Also, unknown to the party, a few in each of the houses and an archer in the steeple of the old church, plus a group at the back of the village up against the mountainside it's nestled against that includes the encounter "boss" (who's not really the boss bandit), for a total of 19 Bandits +1 Thug (the boss, who's NPC important enough to get a name, Stig). So they pick up the breadcrumbs, croc-guy sneaks into the lake to sneak up on the fireside group while the rogue and ranger sneak around the far side of the lake to pincher ambush. I do a behind the screen perception roll, bandits don't notice them. Jaws ambush successful, but he muffs the damage and the bandit survives. BOTH of the sneaky types miss with their initial bow attacks. Combat a-go, bandits fight back while the two archers by the bridge run towards the noise, and after a couple rounds, the bandits in the nearest house wake up (right as the first group dies). The nearest house has a healing potion in it, which they find when they duck in to regroup. They hear noises, step out and see bandits coming out of a nearby house, one has a torch. Ranger and thief fire on him with arrows hoping to get him to drop it and send the house up in flames, miss miss. The dice hate these guys so far tonight, but that'll change. Fracas in the center of the village, croc barb scores a few big hits while the ranger climbs up on a roof of a hut and starts sniping. At this point, this guy becomes fucking Legolas and will remain Legolas for the rest of the encounter. I opt not to bring in the rest of the bandits at this point and to hold them and the boss back as being "out of range/too drunk/etc" to notice what's going on, as I don't want to swarm them. They clear this crowd of 5 or 6 out, find another healing potion off a body and head deeper into the village. Archer in the church finally pays the fuck attention (after like 4 tries he finally passes his perception check, what a shitty sentry this dude is ). He sounds the horn and the remaining bandits (2 more archers and 2 swordsmen) and their leader come out to fight. The thief sneaks into the church, stealths his way up the stairs and pushes the sniper out of the tower to his doom. Palpatining opponents looks like it may become a recurring theme in this campaign. Ranger sets up a distance away and shoots at a swordsman, critical hit, dead. Barb takes on the Thug boss, scores a hit, the boss snickers and attacks back, at which point the party realizes this big meathead gets two(!) attacks with his mace, and he hits pretty hard. He is also a terrible shot and misses with both of them. Next round, thief tries to sneak up on the boss and fails, opts to talk shit to said boss. I let him roll that as intimidation, aaaaand it's a 3. Thug orders his men to "kill that one first" and attacks the thief. Thug critical hits the thief on his first attack(!), misses on the second. Healing potion consumed in a panic on next turn as the remaining two archers miss the thief. DM makes secret decision that death of thug will result in the remaining thieves disengaging. Ranger takes out an archer (d'oh!). Barb hits the Thug, who is staggered but still very much alive. Thug misses the thief. Twice. Ranger hits Thug. Barb hits Thug. Thug decides the barbarian is a bigger issue than the thief and attacks him. big damage hit, followed by a hit with almost no damage. Barbarian also very much in trouble now. Thief attacks Thug, has him down to like 11 or so HP. Ranger's turn, critical hit, but he juuust survives. Barbarian finishes him off, party chases down 2 of the remaining thieves while one escapes into the hills. Battle over, they limp back into the woods to rest and recover. I take mercy on them and despite the lack of setting a watch or anything, I let the rest go uninterpreted so they can heal up, because in the morning they return to inspect the village and discover two things - 1) there are caves in the mountain, 2) there's someone there. The party's thief takes the lead and approaches the woman from behind while she's looking at the pile of corpses. "Can I shoot her in the back?" Me: "Are you sure you want to do that?" "Actually wait no, that's a terrible idea. Lemme just talk to her." Thief walks up and attempts to say hello, is cut off with her replying calmly: "You killed my men. That's.. inconvenient." However, she doesn't sound anything more than mildly annoyed by it. Player asks what he could do to make it more convenient and she replies that he can forget he saw her, and she walks towards one of the caves without looking back at him. He wisely interprets this as her being absolutely confident of the results of any battle between them and lets her leave. Player asks if he recognizes her, I let him roll an int check (DC 15) to ID her correctly. He gets an 11. "She seems vaguely familiar, but you just can't place her. However, you notice she is very attractive" (hint). You also notice that she's wearing a suit of leather armor that is absolutely covered in daggers, a few on her arm, one on her belt, one in a boot, etc" At this point the party decides to bail out and head back to town to resupply and turn in the bounty for the thieves, agreeing amongst themselves to say to the town's garrison commander that big dumb angry Stig was the boss and pretending they never met the scary knife lady. OOC knowldge - Scary Knife Lady is the personal assassin and left hand to my planned Big Bad. She's absolutely amoral, and would probably be considered a sociopath or psychopath in the modern real world. Willing to do anything for a price, and patient enough to set up a long con like a whole fake identity. While in town, the garrison informs them there was a murder of a noble while they were gone, and the city is on alert looking for the murderer. Garrison commander agrees to let them help due to their fine service so far, they head to the villa. Villa has a big ol flag with the family crest on it (a dove, the same as seen on the carriage at the slaver's market). Big hint #2. They talk to the guards and get access, poke around a little, find the body of a dead noble with the same description as the previous one with this crest, who was killed by being stabbed in the eye with a freaking dagger (players, I can't telegraph this any harder). They fail to find any other clues at the scene beyond the obvious and decide to head back to explore the caves, as I described them as looking "man made". They are, in fact, tombs (The dungeon part is kind of in the title, afterall). There are 3 of them, one is sealed off as the tunnel has collapsed (possible future planning), the other two are accessible. They pick one and head in. Oh hey, the main door is already unsealed, wonder why. After a bit of exploration they turn a corner and find a huge pile of loot, the haul from all the caravans the bandits had hit, most of which has a lot of value but will take some effort to sell (spices, furs, tapestries, etc) and would obviously have to be taken somewhere else to be fenced as they decide it's way too risky to try to sell that back in the same city. They decide to leave the loot for now and press deeper into the tomb, where they encounter the Scary Knife Lady from earlier, who is already engaged in combat with a suit of magically animated plate armor. The barbarian and ranger opt to rush right in to offer aid. Thief holds back, and asks me if he can use his turn in combat to try to recognize her instead of attacking. Sure, i'll allow it. Armor battle, round one. SKL lands a pair of nasty dagger hits, does some solid damage. Armor misses her in return, Thief fails his int check, still can't recognize SKL. Both barb and ranger miss the armor. Round two, SKL miss, armor misses her with its first attack, hits the barb with his second. Thief fails to remember, Barb misses, ranger misses. I realize I may have undersold this armor's, well, armor score. It doesn't have much health though, so one or two hits will do the job. Round 3, SKL lands one hit, misses with her second. Armor clangs a hit on of the Barb and one on SKL. Thief rolls to remember again, 17. "You finally put two and two together and realize she is the woman the noble bought at the slave auction." Player facepalms, goes "how did I not figure it out, you gave us like, 14 clues, it's so obvious now." Barb hits the armor, brings it down to a few HP, Ranger finishes it off.
SKL appreciates the assistance even though it wasn't really needed. Thief decides to shoot his shot and ask who she is. Good roll, so they win info. They learn her name is Sila Bloodthorne, that she could not care even a bit about "her men" that were murdered as they were a means to an end (though what end that is she doesn't elaborate on), and also confirms she was behind the murder of the noble. When asked why she did it, she presents a family ring which she then uses to unseal a small magically locked panel in the wall and retrieves a crystal of some sort from it, which she states was her job to recover. Vague about who she's working for, just "someone very powerful and very dangerous." Thief decides to press his luck and basically asks for what amounts to a friggin job interview. I take a moment to call an OOC timeout and explain "You folks do understand her boss is the bad guy, right? I mean, if you want to go down that road and work with her, you CAN, but it may not end so well for y'all." They confirm they understand that, I time in, and she decides sure, she'll contact her employer about them. She's impressed the three of them wiped out almost 2 dozen bandits. She pops out an earring (really one of a sending stone pair) and gives it to the thief stating she'll be in touch soon. The party departs the tomb at this point deciding not to try to share in the loot or do anything else that might impact the situation. After they leave the room, Sila vanishes in a flash of blue light. They exist the tomb, and that brings Session 3 to an end.
|
|
|
Post by Matrix Dragon on Feb 27, 2020 4:27:29 GMT -5
Yup, it's gonna be that kind of campaign...
|
|
|
Post by Optimal Megatron on Feb 27, 2020 10:01:58 GMT -5
Well, I mean, it's not like the nobles she's robbing ever did anything for them. Maybe if she'd been introduced kicking babies or cooking puppies or something. But the first thing I see coming is they're useful but also an expendable scapegoat.
|
|