Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

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Bret Ripley
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by Bret Ripley »

honorentheos wrote:
Sat Nov 19, 2022 11:02 pm
... they asked the Jessels to team with them to both find the Mallus Deus and also take on the Grinning Sinners.
Awesome.
At this point the paladin charged in and killed one with the use of a smite after his longsword bit following the bard having used vicious mockery on it.
Heh. Wait, that works?
They all said it was really fun and want to keep playing asking questions about leveling up and such. And now it's a campaign.
Good stuff!
As a coda: the guy who played before asked me if it all tied together, essentially asking if this would make sense to them eventually.
If he's worried about things making sense now, perhaps it's just as well they didn't end up on the story arc that involved waking up in a rehab facility in Albuquerque.
I told him no, I was pulling a Stephan King so at the end they were going to end up fighting s killer extra dimensional clown and win with just their imaginations, courage, and the power of friendship. :)
Bloody perfect.

They seem like a fun group -- it'll be interesting to see how things play out.

How's your painting project coming along?
honorentheos
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

Hi Bret -
Bret Ripley wrote:
Fri Dec 02, 2022 3:39 am
They seem like a fun group -- it'll be interesting to see how things play out.
They are, and it's been a fun add to the gaming hobby. It's interesting to have this low-level, beginner game going on while the other campaign I'm running is at level 11 and running over 2 years now. Both are very different which makes for different kinds of fun in each. Last night's game for the long running campaign once again involved a ton of unintended comedy. A few months back I'd explained the old divide between mirror shades and pink mohawk approaches. I think they have been trying to be more mirror shades which has had the opposite result as inevitably someone does something that blows the plan, and the game goes where it will. As with everything, it helps to have a couple of the players who are all in on the rolling with it when it goes down. Good times.
honorentheos wrote:
Sat Nov 19, 2022 11:02 pm
...At this point the paladin charged in and killed one with the use of a smite after his longsword bit following the bard having used vicious mockery on it.
Heh. Wait, that works?
Oh, yeah! Time to get nerdy! The jackalwere stat block describes their immunity as:
Damage Immunities Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from Nonmagical Attacks that aren't Silvered
So they can be hit with a non-magical or silvered weapon, just immune to the damage the weapon causes which is one of the three main physical types.

A paladin's smite ability reads:
Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon’s damage.

The ruling in 5e is anything that uses a spell slot is treated as magic but not a spell, and jackalweres aren't immune to radiant damage. So when the paladin hit them with his longsword, he wasn't able to do damage with the blade directly, but the use of the spell slot to use a smite was able to do the 2d8 of radiant (magic) damage. The one he managed to kill had been injured by the bard using spells in previous rounds and he did almost max damage.
As a coda: the guy who played before asked me if it all tied together, essentially asking if this would make sense to them eventually.
If he's worried about things making sense now, perhaps it's just as well they didn't end up on the story arc that involved waking up in a rehab facility in Albuquerque.
Lol. There's a chance they end up going that way before heading back to the village so it's not entirely off the table. I'm hoping they do. The confusion during play testing with the long term group was delicious. I have a strong feeling this group would freak out. It would be a ton of fun. But then again, I presented that area as clearly something to avoid due to the cloud of trapped insects so who knows. If players always did the smart thing they wouldn't go that way. So, they'll go that way. :)
How's your painting project coming along?
I haven't started the ancient black dragon yet, and am thinking it will be my vacation project over the holidays. I've been busy painting minis for the games I'm running. That included painting up an small army of archers and shield/sword soldiers plus a few single creature minis for the higher level campaign. Here's a pic of a few of them including the Allip that just showed up in that campaign at the end of last night's session.
IMG_20221203_220014.jpg
IMG_20221203_220014.jpg (63.31 KiB) Viewed 535 times
IMG_20221203_220152.jpg
IMG_20221203_220152.jpg (73.64 KiB) Viewed 535 times
honorentheos
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

We had our third session for the work game today, with it largely encompassing the encounter at the farm. I presented the "family" as a three person household with a father, mother, and son which the party didn't question. The paladin went outside to pick an ear of corn and used divine sense...revealing that the very ground he stood on was evil, the cornfield was evil, and there were undead in the well as well as in the cornfield. He went back in and decided not to confront the family right away. Instead, they engaged in chitchat about the instrument and who made it.

One of the players had to miss last session, so I had her character "retreived" by a mysterious figure who returned her into the yard outside of the farmhouse. She could hear her friends inside, so she decided to sneak in through a window and began poking around the bedrooms until she was heard and had a mini-standoff with the family to smooth things over. The other rogue decided to head outside for some fresh air and was hanging around the well when she heard the sound of something scraping against the stone. She lit a torch and looked down in, in time to see a zombie slowly climbing up the stones inside of it. She shot it with an arrow, causing it to fall back into the well, then burst inside to confront the family over what was going on.

I kept feeding them hints that things weren't what they appeared to be between the father figure, mother, and son. They had to work out ideas, asking questions, and eventually the bard decided to ask if the mother would help her do something in another room. They managed to get time alone, and the mother revealed that the two men were not actually her husband and son, but two strangers who had shown up about a month before. Her husband, son, and some workers had been killed by monstrous things in the corn, and she was only alive because she could play the piano instrument her husband had made which seemed to sooth the entity. But they were in a stand off as she wasn't willing to just let them get away and they needed her to play to open the path to try and lure others in that they could rob for food and leave for the undead that prowled around at night.

The party ultimately managed to get on the same page as the wife who had been suggesting they all go to bed for the night, and that they should give the guests the two bedrooms. Fox, pretending to be the father, disapprove especially because he had the Mallus Deus hidden in a parent's bedroom under a floorboard under the bed. But the party became pursuasive and he relented, saying he. the wife and his hired hand pretending to be their son would sleep in the main room.

The party went into their rooms and began debating what to do. After going in circles, I had the father and son realize they had likely been compromised, so they took forcibly grabbed and carried the mother to the tool shed where they hid in a potato cellar after having busted the front door wide open and throwing a rock through a bedroom window so the undead would have access to the house.

The main combat of the game took place at this point, with six zombies and a scarecrow attacking them being supported by a skeleton with a short bow who dodged in an out of the corn. I learned that the most fun aspect of this turned out to be my rolling the dice in the open to see if any zombie knocked down to zero hp would get back up due to undead fortitude. It made what could have been a slog into a good time where every time a zombie went down, it became its own mini-game to see what happened. I'd announce the roll needed (5+the damage done -3 for the zombie's con save) and then roll it in the tray of one of the players. It was a blast multiple zombies kept proving difficult to take down, making the final attempt that finished them feel earned. The opportunity to describe how they finally dispatched a zombie progressively came to represent this as the later finishing moves involved decapitations or a kick out a window to clear them off the end of their weapon. Good times, for sure.

After winning the fight, the party tracked the family into the tool shed where they found the trap door...and didn't check before opening it. The rogue barely avoided getting hit by a hand-crossbow bolt that would have done extra damage on a bad roll by me. The father immediately professed it was an honest mistake as he didn't know it wasn't a zombie opening the door, but they picked up on his deception and began to interrogate him thoroughly. They got the story out of him with some effort: That he had came through Dustwich and by chance discovered the Mallus Deus, recognizing it for what it is due to his being a collector of such things; that he managed to slip the real one away from the pawn shop and leave them their counterfeit; that they didn't feel comfortable staying the night in the village with such a valuable item and left too late to make it far, so they stopped at the farm and asked to stay the night; that Fox couldn't resist opening the book and read a cursed passage in it that set of the horrible events they knew about which only included what was occurring around the farm; but that they should work together to get away as no one needed to get hurt. The artificer in the party had chosen to work on the piano which I had turned into a mechanically magical player piano that was missing key parts that might allow it to play itself so no one need stay behind. She rolled high enough that I ruled with time she would be able to fix it, which she worked on while the interrogation was underway. The party told the "son" he should make an attempt to get away as a test while it played, and the session ended with him running into the darkness down the path away from the farm. I ended the session here because it was getting late, and they were working out what to do next, so it made for a low-stakes cliffhanger.

We won't play again until after the holidays but once again, it was a great time. I'm enjoying the dynamic at the table a lot.
Father Francis
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by Father Francis »

honorentheos wrote:
Sun Dec 04, 2022 5:14 am
Hi Bret -
Bret Ripley wrote:
Fri Dec 02, 2022 3:39 am
They seem like a fun group -- it'll be interesting to see how things play out.
They are, and it's been a fun add to the gaming hobby. It's interesting to have this low-level, beginner game going on while the other campaign I'm running is at level 11 and running over 2 years now. Both are very different which makes for different kinds of fun in each. Last night's game for the long running campaign once again involved a ton of unintended comedy. A few months back I'd explained the old divide between mirror shades and pink mohawk approaches. I think they have been trying to be more mirror shades which has had the opposite result as inevitably someone does something that blows the plan, and the game goes where it will. As with everything, it helps to have a couple of the players who are all in on the rolling with it when it goes down. Good times.
Heh. Wait, that works?
Oh, yeah! Time to get nerdy! The jackalwere stat block describes their immunity as:
Damage Immunities Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from Nonmagical Attacks that aren't Silvered
So they can be hit with a non-magical or silvered weapon, just immune to the damage the weapon causes which is one of the three main physical types.

A paladin's smite ability reads:
Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon’s damage.

The ruling in 5e is anything that uses a spell slot is treated as magic but not a spell, and jackalweres aren't immune to radiant damage. So when the paladin hit them with his longsword, he wasn't able to do damage with the blade directly, but the use of the spell slot to use a smite was able to do the 2d8 of radiant (magic) damage. The one he managed to kill had been injured by the bard using spells in previous rounds and he did almost max damage.
If he's worried about things making sense now, perhaps it's just as well they didn't end up on the story arc that involved waking up in a rehab facility in Albuquerque.
Lol. There's a chance they end up going that way before heading back to the village so it's not entirely off the table. I'm hoping they do. The confusion during play testing with the long term group was delicious. I have a strong feeling this group would freak out. It would be a ton of fun. But then again, I presented that area as clearly something to avoid due to the cloud of trapped insects so who knows. If players always did the smart thing they wouldn't go that way. So, they'll go that way. :)
How's your painting project coming along?
I haven't started the ancient black dragon yet, and am thinking it will be my vacation project over the holidays. I've been busy painting minis for the games I'm running. That included painting up an small army of archers and shield/sword soldiers plus a few single creature minis for the higher level campaign. Here's a pic of a few of them including the Allip that just showed up in that campaign at the end of last night's session.

IMG_20221203_220014.jpgIMG_20221203_220152.jpg
You ever play WHFB or 40K by chance?
honorentheos
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

Father Francis wrote:
Wed Dec 07, 2022 7:03 am

You ever play WHFB or 40K by chance?
One of my friends in high school bought a set of 40k space marines and orcs that he painted up, we played one weekend using their living room as the field, and then never played again. It was fun but took a bit of effort. We had a lot of other interests and, while he wanted to play much more, I didn't catch the bug. It was fun enough, but we had other wargames we could pull out like Battletech or the Renegade Legion games from FASA that we all enjoyed and didn't need to spend money on models to play.

I do watch a lot of YouTube painters who are almost exclusively about Warhammer, and I like the lore. I have been wanting to play Dark Heresy as a TTRPG but haven't found the group nor do I have the handle on the rules to run a game. But it all seems pretty fun. I pillage from the Warhammer Fantasy materials for my D&D games all the time, most notably and recently borrowing a section out of The Enemy Within.

You?

ETA: Most of the minis in the post you replied to are from CMON's Song of Ice and Fire tabletop war game. Love CMON's minis, but hardly ever play their games, rules as written. Their Zombicide Black Plague and Green Death minis were my main zombies in the game tonight.
Father Francis
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by Father Francis »

honorentheos wrote:
Wed Dec 07, 2022 7:12 am

One of my friends in high school bought a set of 40k space marines and orcs that he painted up, we played one weekend using their living room as the field, and then never played again. It was fun but took a bit of effort. We had a lot of other interests and, while he wanted to play much more, I didn't catch the bug. It was fun enough, but we had other wargames we could pull out like Battletech or the Renegade Legion games from FASA that we all enjoyed and didn't need to spend money on models to play.

I do watch a lot of YouTube painters who are almost exclusively about Warhammer, and I like the lore. I have been wanting to play Dark Heresy as a TTRPG but haven't found the group nor do I have the handle on the rules to run a game. But it all seems pretty fun. I pillage from the Warhammer Fantasy materials for my D&D games all the time, most notably and recently borrowing a section out of The Enemy Within.

You?

ETA: Most of the minis in the post you replied to are from CMON's Song of Ice and Fire tabletop war game. Love CMON's minis, but hardly ever play their games, rules as written. Their Zombicide Black Plague and Green Death minis were my main zombies in the game tonight.
I used to play WHFB and 40K many years ago. I had a Skaven and Chaos army. The Chaos army was gifted to me and came pre-painted. Nowadays I'm working on putting together a Necromunda game night. It isn't as expensive and takes less effort.
honorentheos
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

Father Francis wrote:
Wed Dec 07, 2022 3:08 pm

I used to play WHFB and 40K many years ago. I had a Skaven and Chaos army. The Chaos army was gifted to me and came pre-painted. Nowadays I'm working on putting together a Necromunda game night. It isn't as expensive and takes less effort.
Ah, cool! I've seen a few painting videos with minis from Necromunda and they have nice atmosphere.
honorentheos
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

A brief update: We visited family for the holidays and, prior to visiting, had organized a D&D one shot session with a few members. It was a blast, and we think it could become a tradition going forward. We also discovered other family members who play regularly who asked to be invited next time. Also discovered my sister's boyfriend I hadn't met before was a huge TTRPG and wargamer. Spent a chunk of an afternoon talking mini painting and game stuff.

All in all, a good way to end the year.
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by Res Ipsa »

Started a new RPG: Ironsworn: Starforged. Playing with a couple friends in Germany using Roll20. It’s the most extensive DMless game I’ve tried. We’ve created the setting and our characters, with play starting next session. The mechanics are based on “moves” like Dungeon World and its spin offs, except on steroids. It’s going to take some time playing to get used to seeing how the storytelling translates into the moves.

I also late pledged the PDF version of Old Gods of Appalachia from Kickstarter. If it’s anything like the quality of the podcast, I’ll buy it from my FLGS. Should be released sometime this year.

Then I got Fiasco as a gift, so Mr. Black, Mr. Pink, and Mr. Green may have an adventure soon.
he/him
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honorentheos
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Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

Post by honorentheos »

Res Ipsa wrote:
Sun Jan 01, 2023 8:38 pm
Started a new RPG: Ironsworn: Starforged. Playing with a couple friends in Germany using Roll20. It’s the most extensive DMless game I’ve tried. We’ve created the setting and our characters, with play starting next session. The mechanics are based on “moves” like Dungeon World and its spin offs, except on steroids. It’s going to take some time playing to get used to seeing how the storytelling translates into the moves.

I also late pledged the PDF version of Old Gods of Appalachia from Kickstarter. If it’s anything like the quality of the podcast, I’ll buy it from my FLGS. Should be released sometime this year.

Then I got Fiasco as a gift, so Mr. Black, Mr. Pink, and Mr. Green may have an adventure soon.
Ah, Fiasco...good times! I picked that up four years ago or so (pre-pandemic) after watching Will Weaton play it on a YouTube channel and had a blast playing it once I could get enough d6 together. One advantage of getting back into TTRPGs is not having enough dice isn't likely to happen again. I hope you have as good a time with it!

Old Gods is also on my late pledge list.

Haven't heard of Ironsworn: Starforged. I'm planning on checking it out now, too.
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