Gaming Stories, Video and Tabletop

AM.

 

Welcome aboard, kiddos.

 

Duly noted and reposted. I'd delete the one in this thread, but it's already picked up a like.

 

Yes. That puts you on even footing with two thirds of my current playerbase, and about 90% of my overall playerbase.

If you're willing to deal with learning a system that's got enough errata to outweight the core rulebook, and interested in learning a setting filled with the weird and wonderful, then I'm happy to help.

That said, I value the feelings of my players. I cannot say yes for them. Only myself.

 

Completely willing. I just need to know what I need to read.

 

I am interested as well, however right now I'm out of the US, so the time difference would be 8 hours. How long do sessions usually run?

 

Three, four hours. I'm a resident of the UK, so they generally start around 6PM on my end.

Core, possibly a few of the splatbooks, and there'd be a good bit of talking to me during Chargen.

 

Which edition? And is there an online PDF (and if so, do you have a link?) Or will I need to buy it?

 

Second edition with a number of houserules. You won't need the rulebooks, as I have almost all of the edition in both physical and digital form.

This isn't really the thread, though, so better to arrange things by PM. Also, I'll restate that it's not entirely my call.

 

After a bit of a break, we had a great Exalted session again. And a long one, almost five hours.

As some of you may recall, the three of us had set out to acquire some extremely good alcohol from Lady Tomoe Gozen's aunt, a skilled brewmaster. It turned out that she had entered an orchard sometime ago and not come out since. Entering, Gozen almost immediately got drunk off the alcoholic vapors coming off the ripe fruit hanging off every branch. Prince Yaohua was forced to keep her on track and suffer through her extremely loud, extremely enthusiastic shouts for her auntie. Eventually, we found her, after Gozen got considerably more drunk off of the fumes. She(Kushi) was sleeping in mid-air, hanging upside down with a vine wrapped around her ankle. Gozen thought it was a good idea to put everything she had into a shout to wake her aunt up.

She was so loud her shout shattered the tree I was in, leveling a good section of the glade (I wasn't even touched by fruit juice, I'm so good at dodging). That didn't wake Kushi. Me shooting the vine holding her up and her falling down into Yaohua's arms didn't wake her up. What did wake her up?

On the way back, Gozen said that she'd describe her first time with her shapeshifting lover (who mostly spends his time as a horse) if Kushi woke up. When that didn't work Gozen threatened that if she didn't wake and (mostly) sober up, not only would no alcohol be served at the wedding of Gozen and her lover, Kushi also wouldn't be invited to try the two of them out. That got Kushi sober enough to mostly stand on her feet, and then try to grope me.

That of course, wasn't happening. I wasn't going to get groped by a stranger, even a MILF who was a kin to my companion. After grabbing her hands just made her try to kiss me, I got a bit more active. But we got to the bathhouse to clean up with nothing worse than a few dirt stains on Kushi.

At the baths, Gozen's lover (human this time) was already there, soaking up the heat. So was Yaohua's steed, sitting in the bath in that fantastically derpy way horses do. Yaohua joined the two of them, while I, Gozen and Kushi went into the female half of the bath.

After that, we started talking about how to get access to Kushi's special stock of booze. When the topic quickly turned to compensation, well:
‎[21:44] ‎<‎HeiReino‎>‎ "That depends. Do you want money or services? I am skilled in several areas that could be of great use to you."
‎[21:46] ‎<‎HeiReino‎>‎ <innocent>I was talking about my skills as a miko, of course </innocent>

I rolled a fantastic amount of success and she quickly accepted. Although random groping to satisfy a drunken woman wasn't happening, sex would if it got me something in return. After bringing her to an orgasm in the bath, to the shock, but not displeasure, of the other bathers, we got access to what we wanted.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable session.

 

Just to be sure, you are aware that Gozen is the family name?

 

I always get confused with the naming scheme she uses.

 

Best way to have your first accidental TPK in call of Cthulhu: three PCs, one NPC and a eldritch tentacle bear on a small plane flying over the ocean.

 

You need to elaborate, man.

 

I was running one of the scenarios that come with the GM books, in which there are a set of notes that contain a bound demon...thing. The best description is a bear made out of Alex Mercer tentacles ala Prototype.

The creature had started manifesting on a semi-regular basis and the PCs were trying to figure out a way to get rid of the manuscript. One of the PCs is a pilot, and had put a lot of his points into flying aircraft, so not wanting to waste them, they put together the idea off flying out and dumping the papers into the ocean from his plane.

So all the players and an NPC copilot are flying out when the monster succeeded it’s manifestation role, and grew out. To put things in perspective; the monster had 50% chance to land a hit, and delt out minimum of 4 damage with an average damage of 12. It had 5 points of armour, 2 points of soak and 43 health. Only one of my players had above 30% hit chance, and he was flying the plane. This is balanced by the creature only being able to manifest for d4 turns at a time, so they only had to survive 2 rounds to be able to win.

The dice were not friendly.

First the NPC copilot crit failed his SAN check, and jumped out the plane. This essentially trapped the pilot, so he had to make fly checks each turn, and had penalty die if he shot.

All 3 PCs either missed, or failed to do any meaningful damage. Then the monster disembowelled the journalist in one hit...

As the PCs got their turns, the Professor ran up to the copilots seat, barely surviving a strike as he did so, and the pilot tossed a Molotov at the bear.

This is would have been fine, as the monster disappeared, apart from one thing the PCs didn’t know. If the Papers are destroyed, such as by fire, the monster is released for d6 turns, in an enraged state. It ended up with the PCs deciding to crash the plane to kill the monster, after the figures they couldn’t kill it before it killed them.

I may have their old PCs meet the Deep Ones, and make them a plot point in a follow up campaign; but at the least they will meet the insane copilot somewhere with their new PCs.

 

That at once is Hilarious, but also Badass. If I'm going down I'm taking you down with me thing, literally.

Though that also raises the question of why they didn't think to just burn the book in the first place,
was it just because they wanted to use that flying skill?

 

The flying skill starts at 1%. He had his at 50. He had been looking for an excuse to fly since we started; and it would’ve been a decent plan, if the monster hadn’t gotten out in time.

 

Well, shit luck met overcomplicated plan at the worst - and most amusing - time possible. Hell of a way to go, though.

 

I know how the NPC the copilot, so far as I understand Call of Cthulhu rules, basically went Mad from a bad roll and snapped.

But it'd be hilarious if he was just flying the plane thinking it's a normal day, then he looks in rear-view mirror to see a murder machine bear monsterity behind him and just went "Nope, Fuck that." And bailed out. He didn't go insane, he just wasn't getting paid enough for this shit and he was checking out early.

 

"If I had at least been given free dentist care, then maybe I would have stuck around."

 

In a DnD Homebrew on Roll20 I managed to get myself a mount.

It's a Dragon. A Demonically possessed Dragon. I achieved this by shoving a Demonically Possessed Vampire Rabbit that was bound to me and threw it down the Dragons throat.

I'm Level 3.

 

Please tell me you gave either the Dragon a name, or the Rabbit? Also the Vampire Rabbit thing reminds me of that old children's book, where a pet dog and cat are scared of the new pet rabbit they think is a vampire.

 

Bunnicula? ...God I haven't thought of that name in years.

 

Her name's Dalia. My character had a Homebrew trait called 'Spiritwalker' which allowed me to commune with Ghosts and Demons (I took this trait because my character is actually from another campaign that ended and he was possessed but, due to circumstances, lost the Demon (that was quite friendly, by the way) in a particularly violent manner) however my character was not aware that Spiritwalkers in this new world had a very short lifespan that he had already exceeded (He's 36, Spiritwalkers typically die at 25-27) and this was because of Demons haunting Spiritwalkers with the intent of devouring their souls.

My Character, Anglo, at first thought this Demon was a Ghost until he ended up making a deal with the Demon. This deal was to give Anglo the knowledge of the language of the Sirens (quest related stuff) in exchange for a body for Dalia to inhabit, failure to do so would result in her taking Anglo's body. Needless to say I succeeded in fulfilling the deal after we got attacked by a few Vampiric bunnies. Couple of sessions later, we got ambushed by a Dragon and some Vampiric bunnies who seemed to be following the Dragon. Our party consisted of six people and five of us ended up becoming enthralled by the Bunnies, except me. So I decided to try and 1v1 the Dragon by putting a Demon in it.

 

......This is some stuff Worthy of an Anime. Entire party enthralled by enemy mooks, so die-hard hero decides putting a Demon in a Dragon, in one on one combat, just might work.

And Then it DOES. Kudos to you, valiant dragon Rider. Did Dalia like her new body compared to the vampire bunny?

 

Oh, she likes it a lot. She's also in a lot of debt to my character now.

Although my character is no hero, he's a Lawful Evil, amoral, (unwilling) dimension-jumping, fallen-noble-turned-mercenary.

 

So once upon a time I was DMing a game of Urealms (look it up at your own risk, it's a deep hole) for my younger cousins and uncle. They were a group of elves taking some prisoners to The Silvermine Mountains. Convinently for the plot the usual path to the mountain was blocked off by a mcguffin so they had to go through a gorge which happened to be infested with slime. Or that's what I had planned anyways.

The idiots got the idea in their heads to use fire spells as propulsion for the prison transport and drift along the walls of the gorge. Because I figured there is no way in the universe they'll get all the rolls needed for this plan to work I let the NPCs agree to the idea. Through a combination of exceptional rolls by them, terrible rolls by me, and a since nerfed paladin spell, they not only managed it but one of the characters managed to impress the daughter of one of the Elven council memebers (who was a damned importnant NPC) and they became a couple.

I was both impressed by their incredible rolling and annoyed they had skipped the encounter designed to teach them mechanics they would see later in the campaign. I got over it when they almost sunk the transport in a river and one player got chased in a circle for three turns by a snow wolf.

 

Not sure if this counts as a necro, as it’s a pretty big synopsis of when Call of Cthulhu goes wrong in the way you least expect- the PCs become too good.

To set the scene, I’ve had a lot of time free over summer and ran a 7th ed call of Cthulhu game for some friends. The grasped the rules pretty quickly and I ran their characters through some of the traditional one shots, such as the haunting, before starting on a full length campaign in New Orleans. This turned out to be something I should have done differently- each of the oneshots was designed as a one shot, so they were relatively liberal in how they handed out tomes. When they got a tome, I jotted down what it contained and how long it would take to learn, as well as how it would affect the character’s sanity score.

The way call of Cthulhu is usually run is short times where there is action (normally 1-2 weeks) with a few months in between to recover health, sanity and do research, and my campaign took place over about 2 years in game. Skills have a chance to increase every time you use them, increasing by up to d10 per session.

I had planned to end the campaign with a bang-a conflict between 2 cults, a anti-mythos group and the party over an ancient temple containing something that could one day become a great one. I expected noble last stands while they worked to destroy it. I hadn’t paid much attention to their character sheets.

To put this in perspective, their skills and knowledge made them into the lovechild of Harry Dresden and John Wick.

It was without doubt an awesome battle, just not in the way I expected- you don’t plan for if the journalist can send a hunting Horror after the cults leaders, the professor sinking 12 magic points into flesh ward and having over 40 points of armour and a Shotgun or the street tough responding to being stabbed by rotting his attackers arm off.

We still had to end there though. It’s just not call of Cthulhu when the PCs generally know more spells than the mad warlocks they work against.

 

Hm... well there was a time during a Flames of War game in North Africa where I saw Italian Askari kick all sorts of ass on the British. I mean shit, you would assume that Askari were bad soldiers...