[Greyhawk] The Best Laid Plans

Stories about games that you run and/or have played in.

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Prak
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Post by Prak »

Oh hey, I forgot to update the log last week. So, double log today-

The Demon's Sewers Session 6

We pick back up just as the party has gone through a door and been greeted with a mass of dretches and manes swarming up from large pits on either side. The wall of flesh squeezes into the corridor clawing and biting at the party, but is actually pretty easily put down, even with portals in either pit pouring out new demons--which are slowly rebuilding the mass of demons to attack.

With some leading ...and the realization that Arturus' player was talking about Consecrate, just saying the wrong thing but actually catching onto what I was saying, Arturus imbued a couple arrows with Consecrate and fired them into each portal, sealing them and ending the pouring of demons.

--I did realize at this point that a combat to start the session actually made the players get into a lot sooner, so I'm going to try to fit them into my sessions more frequently.

With the horde of minor demons dealt with, the party continued barreling down the catwalk and corridor through the next door.

They find the babau standing before a widening portal, from which many tentacles writhe. Oh, and they can see this beyond it-
Image

Fortunately, the babau is concentrating and they get a surprise round, so Stormblade gets to iaijutsu psychic psionic strike the babau cutting through close to two thirds of it's hp. The babau turns and pops darkness, giving a hidden "Oh Crap" look as Stormblade's bright glow cuts through a sizable portion of it, though not quite enough to reveal the babau itself. It is only a matter of a couple turns before the babau is sliced in twain and it's threat ended, the Gate it was working on closing up, with no one having gotten close enough to be tentacled.

With the party's job done, they go back through to scour for treasure, finding a giant library, at the far wall of which is a large, purple scale bound tome with copper clasp and corner caps on a podium, a painting of said book on the wall above it. Another painting and a mosaic adorn the walls to either side. With the discovery of the book, the party pretty much converges around the book. Ryuk starts looking through, finding a couple of the first five otherwise blank pages have shadowy india ink illustrations of a large demonic spider, and horse with flaming mane, smoking nostrils, and horns and spikes coming from it's brow--which actually move. A bebilith and Half-fiend nightmare are bound into the pages of the book, and there's room for another three fiends to be bound with them. Offering a mug of celestial's blood as payment, Ryuk extracts a promise of one service from the bebilith as he sits in the pages, to be called upon at a later date.

That pretty well wraps things up and leaving the temple and sewers is handwaved, though I make sure they're taking the paintings which are the majority of the reward for the adventure.

Sitting outside the sewer waiting for them is basically this guy, sitting on a barrel, paging through a tome:
Image

He hops down as they climb out of the sewer and holds out four ivory parchment envelopes, each baring one of their names embossed and gold-filigreed. He says they are from Archmage Nailesh, in thanks for their services, and that each invitation has a glyph at the bottom, which they can tap to RSVP. Each envelope is scented differently, elven wines and forest nights for Hrethric, fine meads and tobaccos for Arturus, sweet ashes and oiled leather for Ryuk, and petrichor for Stormblade. Each envelope is sealed with wax, with a signet that combines a well known generic arcane sigil and the elven letter "N."

The invitations inside are verdant green, with glowing purple ink, and smell of fine roasted meats, wines and fruit. They invite the party as guests of honor to a celebration of his son's recovery from his harrowing adventures into the demon-invaded sewers, scheduled three days hence.

Right as soon as the student courier leaves, Stormblade just notices a small semi-precious crystal talisman strike the ground before a large translucent green monster springs up out of nowhere next to Ryuk in the alley. It's roughly arthropoidal, with two large striking limbs hanging from it's mass, and a third arching from it's back. It immediately sets to trying to take out everyone but Stormblade so it can pick him up and carry him off, but, well, it's cut down in just a few turns, its fast healing not able to keep up with its wounds. They drop that thought pretty quickly, however, and split up to sell the loot and start buying stuff for the party. I love shopping sessions. You could have a gaming group entirely composed of the gruffest biker thugs in the world, and they would still turn into teenage girls at the mall given money and a town to shop in. Arturus puts together a simple outfit and otherwise spends his next few days in the company of two of the finest women Greyhawk has to offer. Stormblade goes off to find a fine pair of sandals, and after asking around is directed to a tiny shop in an alley off of a street off of a street off a street off the main road. Inside it is filled with cords of soft and hard wood, coils of fine rope, silk wall hangings and copious cushions, with many paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling, a wizened, hunched man with a hawklike nose greets him and measures his feet on cardboard quickly, then calls in his beautiful daughter who washes Stormblade's feet while the man works, carving mahogany into fine sandals for the half giant, then magically shaping them perfectly fit every curve of his feet. Hrethric goes and just gets his clothes cleaned and magically mended, and buys a couple of beard clasps. Ryuk goes all out, getting a black stealth suit and basilisk hide knife corset from her guild and fancy boots and a basilisk hide hood and so on and so forth.

With just a bit of time left in the session, and everyone pretty well set for their fancy party, we skip ahead to the night before the party. Of course, the party is spread apart in three different places--Stormblade and Hrethric in one tavern, Arturus in another, and Ryuk in a room in her guild. Fortunately, Stormblade and Hrethric at least have adjoining rooms, so when Stormblade wakes up with a spider web entangling him, Hrethric can actually hear his name called. Stormblade is sitting up in bed with three large monstrous spiders dangling above him, and Hrethric charges in with only his urgrosh. Fortunately, Stormblade's armour is psychic. Of course that just means he glows and is protected, he's still standing there in a waist cloth. Of course, it's better than being a naked dwarf.

The spiders are a pain in the ass, what with continually throwing webbing nets at Stormblade, but they're not actually hard to take down, what with the two characters' fort saves being pretty high, and Hrethric's damage output being pretty decent.

We ended it there, but at least I've got a couple of the seeds planted, and more time to work on the party.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
Miryafa
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Post by Miryafa »

Neat story so far. It sounds like the players are getting into it.

If your players still aren't RPing much, I'd say what you're doing is this:
Prak_Anima wrote:Archer starts talking about how he's sitting their eating his gruel, to which I say "and everyone looks at you and wonders where the hell you got gruel from as they're eating biscuits and eggs and sausage gravy."
And this:
Archer offers to help the staff, who basically look at him and say "you'll just slow us down"
Regardless of it being the Archer or someone else, it sounds like they tried to RP a bit and you slammed them. For the first one, I probably would've said "sure, but it's biscuits and gravy instead of gruel, because they're rich." and for the second maybe something like "The staff look uncomfortable at the idea of you helping them out, since you're an outsider" or whatever, then if he still wanted to to just said "sure, roll for how well you help out." No effect on gameplay (unless he wanted to gather info too), but he's happy and it only takes 1 minute.

With the dryad, stonewalling diplomacy has that effect on people too. It's the same thing as when a player says "my character's motivation is to not do the adventure" - it's not good roleplaying, it's just a pain. And you can change the dryad's motivation if you wanted, or maybe just use that DM voice more (sounds like they don't mind it) and say "btw you could do a K:Religion check to learn something here" and then go on about the dryad's demon master, etc. It seems to me that your rules-heavy background comes through to the players, and makes them focus on the rules instead of the roleplaying a bit more too. At least that's sortof what happened to me running a previous campaign.

Having said that, I definitely don't think I'm a better DM than you either - I've never made as good adventures as the ones you've run sound like. That's just the way it seems to me. And it sounds like your players are getting a lot more into the plot now.

Also this:
Exactly how dickish will it be when I have a feral barbarian call him out and wreck his shit?
Pretty dickish. Showing the players they're bad at optimization doesn't make the game fun for them.

Anyway, I hope to read more of this. I wouldn't mind having you for a DM either.
Last edited by Miryafa on Tue Jun 03, 2014 2:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Prak
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Post by Prak »

Well, I've found that I'm more descriptive when I'm typing. Probably just because I can take my time, and have an easier time writing than speaking off the top of my head.

Fortunately, the druid player is no longer part of the game.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Prak
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Post by Prak »

Wow, so it's been a good while since I updated.

Well, part of that was due to a number of weeks of interruption. This would be an extra long post, but, well, honestly, not a ton happened. Which is really sad, because it was mostly a huge party, and a better DM than I could have done a lot more with that. I am horrible at social interactions, and with (corralling the group into a single interaction/switching from one player's encounter to another)

The Party of Lord Nailesh

In celebration of the safe return of Grey College Headmaster Lord Nailesh's son, the elven lord opens his home and purse to put on a large party. Two large parties, really. The city itself has the lovely privilege of a powerful wizard footing the bill for festival games and bar tabs for a couple days. Meanwhile, the lord's manor is the party for powerful adventurers, students of the college, and the special guests.

Stormblade, the 7+' tall, shy soulknife who specifically hide his powers finds himself the center of a new fan group of attractive college students who are all dying to know more about him, the bard finds "Thrice Cursed" Tom O'Malley, the rogue essentially instantly disappears, and the party basically gets a bunch of people watching rail roading, because their DM is a horrible shut in who doesn't know how interacting with people works.

Oh. Stormblade also finds a dark skinned man with tattoos and crystals and a mind flayer standing around munching on hors d'oeurves and sends the mind flayer a mental message that they need to talk after the party.

They decide to check out the festival part a bit. Arty plays "The Tree Game" (prizes are hung in a tree and contestants get to knock them out with blunted arrows), they all take part in an archery competition with four horrible 1st level npcs, and do a run at Dragon's Gold (a game where some guys in a parade dragon costume defends a pile of "treasure." Given that a wizard is footing the bill, the treasure is actually treasure, even if the gold is all transmuted straw to make up the mass which is made permanent after each play. As they're doing the run, Stormblade and Hrethric manage to grab a sword and a couple shields to better ward off the "you're out" attacks of the "dragon," and catch the attention of Ternock, the college's librarian... ...who happens to be a Steel Dragon. He challenges the party to a run against a real dragon, which they accept for a prize of "as much as they can carry from the horde."

It's a tough fight, but they do well, and Stormblade is egged on by the crowd chanting "STORMBLADE THE DRAGONSLAYER!"

Once they've finished, of course... they're immediately attacked again.

A couple of people from the crowd are noticed whispering and pointing at Stormblade, wearing heavy cloaks. As they notice they've been made, they whip off their cloaks, revealing glowing red eyes, membranous skin-fold wings, and large feather like blades of mental force, and charge at Stormblade. They're two level three guys and are quickly fucking cut down, but it got people's attention. ...and Stormblade just used his mindblades in the full view of the crowd, and is immediately mobbed again by his growing fan club. So he takes them drinking, gets them drunk, and slips away to the giant mansion on Mage's Row that Nailesh awarded the party at the party.

Meeting with the Psion and the Mind Flayer, he gets some questions answered about his creation. Mind Flayers infiltrated the Suel Imperium in millenniums past, subtly shaping it, and indirectly causing the human-centric arrogance of the suloise and the Scarlet Brotherhood.

He also told Stormblade that soulknives were created by the mind flayers by implanting psiblade (basically psionic brilliant energy weapons from the War of Flesh) hilts in warriors' forearms. There was a lot of speculation as to who created Stormblade, but the mind flayer said that it was quite likely the Scarlet Brotherhood.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
radthemad4
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Post by radthemad4 »

Prak_Anima wrote: Which is really sad, because it was mostly a huge party, and a better DM than I could have done a lot more with that. I am horrible at social interactions, and with (corralling the group into a single interaction/switching from one player's encounter to another)
...
the party basically gets a bunch of people watching rail roading, because their DM is a horrible shut in who doesn't know how interacting with people works.
Well, you did it which is pretty commendable. What parts did the players seem to enjoy the most? I could definitely do with some social interaction advice.
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Prak
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Post by Prak »

I think they really wanted to talk to people more, but I'm horrible with improving conversations. I've now learned this about myself, and can cope by doing something like scripted NPC dialogue that leaves room for tangeants and some improv, so that helps. I think just doing it more will also help, which I realized thinking about something from last night that I forgot to mention-

So, the way I handled Dragon's Gold was by making a set of charts that I could roll on to see what people found.

The way the game worked, which they definitely enjoyed, was there was a large ~50' radius horde, with a parade dragon troupe dancing about on it. They started ~20' from the pile, and turns were handled like combat. Any hit from the dragon knocked a player out, but attacks from the dragon were also big, telegraphed things that provoked AoOs which, if they hit, prevented the attack. Once on the pile, the player could spend a standard action just grabbing a bunch of gold (I think I did something like 2d4x10), or they could make a spot check to try to find a piece of treasure, 20 for large/not well hidden items (read shields, armour, comparatively cheap trade stuff), 25 for weapons which are generally easier to miss in a giant pile of loot, and 35 for small or well hidden (read valuable) items. A move action search check applied a +5 to spot, and they could grab whatever they spotted as a free action then, since their hands were in the gold already.

I made a series of charts in an excel spreadsheet that allowed me to generate what they spotted, so that I wouldn't have to create this entire horde and figure out where everything was, etc. Weapons and armour and all that had a d20 roll to determine magical/not magical, and then if magical, another d20 to determine whether there were any special qualities (light emitting, clue to function, intelligent).

I'd originally rolled for that when I determined what they found, but of course didn't make notes... so I rolled again last night.

And worried all my players as a huge grin broke out and I started rolling a bunch more stuff. Hrethric's shield turned out to be intelligent. It then turned out to be LG, devoted to defeating and slaying Arcane casters, and basically a dwarven paladin in a shield. With an ego of 30. IT was torn between asking to be given to a better dwarf, and making it it's duty to redeem Hrethric.

I am going to have so much fun with this...
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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