Sharn Watch Game

[Josh_Kablack]

Session Zero: Chargen is Hard and I am old.

Yes, this is the game for which setup was being discussed here.

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=51452

So I show up like way early, because I thought things started at 12, but really they started at 2. Or would have if DragonChild had been able to print stuff out on time.

He shows up late and flustered, but with enough copies of handouts for his custom game. However nobody brought like a 3.anything PHB or other reference aside from the PDFs on my laptop. These are all gamers - but pretty much aside from DragonChild and myself they're not familiar with 3rd ed in any form. I'm told some have played 4th, but at the end of the club meeting, there is a mass pilgrimmage up to Phantom of the Attic so a couple of the girls and at least one of the guys can buy their own sets of polyhedral dice.

Plus there're like a billion players. Even after people very pointedly fail to mention this game when Jake is demanding to know who's running RPGs this semester. ( Not it! )

It's a Tome-Lite game, in that the various classes available have been pulled out of supplements, the Tomes and the D&D wiki but it's not full out Tome as he's going for more of a Rogue balance than a SpecWiz balance - we'll see how that works out. DC has also wisely massively simplified available feats (list of 37) and skills (list of 12) - although later he does realize that he had forgot to include Diplomacy and we just decide to go with the list anyways - it's rationalized that members of the Sharn watch are universally suspect and therefore must either Bluff or Intimidate people into talking with them.

DC has printouts of all the available tome and wiki classes ready, as well as his condensed skill and feat lists and a couple copies of a racial sheet.

But the girl who chooses the warlock needs to get the rule info off my netbook. Not a big deal, aside from the fact that nobody else has books and I have grown spoiled with the ability to you know TYPE notes at games since I got the device.

DC gives a brief and flustered description of each class and race and the setting, interrupted by the usual Comic Book, Anime, Scott Pilgrim and Zombie jokes. (This makes me feel both old and yet proud - I have lived to see the day when a group can generated D&D characters without a single quote from Monty Python :geezer: )

After like 2-3 hours of confusion over things like attack bonuses, base saves and such and DC giving me vague directions to "help them out, while I help her with the Warlock" I'm a lot of no help, as it's been like 3 years since I've actually played 3e, and I had a different houserule set then and like everyone else I didn't bring books along. But despite the interruptions from other people desperate to drag folks into various boardgames, and Jake slamming the door like he was mad somebody didn't tell him we eventually end up with a set of "close-enough-to-go characters"

Since someone else takes the marshal, I don't even have to make a choice and go with the White Mage (of quantumboost's design elsewhere on this forum)

and otherwise we end up with

halfling thief-acrobat mobster's daughter
half-orc homicidial hippy fire mage
half-elf marshal
a elf or half-elf snowscaper
a warlock
I think a jester
I think an assassin

and from those descriptions you should also be able to tell who was sitting at my end of the table, and who was on the far far away end.

[DragonChild]

You have the player list slightly off! The actual PCs are:

Halfling warlock mobster's daughter
Half-orc homicidal hippy fire mage (god help me)
Human former war-vet marshal
Shifter thief-acrobat
Half-elf snowscaper
Elven assassin
The White Mage (Josh).

Apologies about the vague "help them out". I figured the two near you would only have specific questions on what bonuses to add to what, as your side had the only people who had played 3e before.

Also: Totally bringing a PHB next time. I intended to, but forgot.

[Josh_Kablack]

For names, I suggest just using any fantasy random name generator online, there are a bunch - just avoid over using the apostrophes, please.

Alas, there goes my only chance to play ''''''-'''''', '''''' the 3rd.

[Josh_Kablack]

Session One: We Promise Not to Burn Down the City.

To start out, the new recruits

• Northland Darkbane - Former elven mercenary
  Adiel Lyrandar - Half-Elven. She of the background drowned out by crowd noise. Not her fault, there was an honest to goodness game of Calvinball being played by six year olds in the Cafeteria at the time.
  Andras Reynerdine - Forgotten heir of an exiled noble house of the now destroyed nation of Cyre
  Laren Boromir - Disowned halfling daughter of the Boromir crime family
  Simone - Shifter child of the streets who found she was good enough at larceny that she can now pursue it for merely for thrills and challenge
  Sigusmund Steckdroth - Scarred human veteran of the Last War
  Samara - Burly androgynous half-orcish fire sorceress

are called into to Captain Donovan, who explains that

• He is here as a demotion, and is not happy about it
• He has no faith in us not to screw up even simple tasks
• We should locate and apprehend the pickpocket Garret, there are multiple complaints against him. Here's a sketch and some leads. GO!

After some boisterousness and rules confusion, we eventyually set out to investigate:


But I'm outtatime, so the rest is all just outline format for now, might want to wait until I finish it to read it

lead 1: The Blush and Cover
*forthcoming*

lead 2: Toms' Groceries
(you can tell by the apostrophe)
*forthcoming*

lead 3: Last Known Address
*forthcoming*

lead 4: Brandon, Garret's former partner-in-crime
Doors, the real enemy
we invent surgery
Fredrick becomes our Mascot

lead 4a: the restaurant scouting
*forthcoming*

Edward, the twitchy waiter

4b the restaurant stakeout

THE PLOT THICKENS

lead 5: the Garbage stakeout

Tailing Garret to his new hideout

Into the darkness

Through the rabbit hole

Outtyoughs in the sewers

Showdown atop the drainage cliff

Doing the perp walk

Confusing the captain

Media Relations.

[DragonChild]

Adiel Lyrandar - Half-Elven. She of the background drowned out by crowd noise. Not her fault, there was an honest to goodness game of Calvinball being played by six year olds in the Cafeteria at the time.

Her background is that the Lyrandar family is the dragonmark of storm - the ones who control the weather, and runs the boats and airships. She's also totally unable to make any weather besides snow.

I've already contacted the club president about a reserved room, so hopefully that will be good. The noise really was an issue.

[Josh_Kablack]

Session Two: "You pretty much have Liar right in your name"

what you were expecting a summary? Ain't happenen tonight. Here's an outline with some pithy quotes though. I'll try to clean the pith off tuesday or weds.

I. Briefing

II. To Crystal Bridge

III. "He's like the Fonz of the halflings"

IV. Birdcalls don't work when only one person in the party has "Knowledge: Nature:

V. How dare you accuse us of taking bribes!! (without offering anything)

VI. Ye Olde Methee Labbe

VII. "Look, they're doing Jazz Hands with their daggers!"
"You cannot bypass my shielding magics and none of us can roll above a 4, so howbout you come quietly."

[DragonChild]

VII. "Look, they're doing Jazz Hands with their daggers!"

http://www.vesivus.com/eBay/dndminis/DE ... _Rogue.jpg

Note: This is not nearly as bad as the one time when all the girls at the table were complimenting the nightwalker's ass.

[DragonChild]

So as to bump this so others can see it hopefully after you get some stuff up:

Josh, are there any magical items you would like for your character specifically? And no, I'm not giving you any further boosts to AC.

[Josh_Kablack]

Bad News: Updates not happening today nor tomorrow

Good News: This is due to a job opening falling into my lap and required interview on short notice. I guess this recession might actually be over.

[Josh_Kablack]

Well this project has fallen by the wayside, but D_C did have an awesome, if unintentional pun in todays "Season Finale- Part I" session.

We're investigating the murder of our Captain, Donovan. He was killed by being pushed from one of Sharn's mid-level bridges, while the protective Feather Fall magics had been negated or dispelled.

In the course of the investigation, his estranged son emerges as the prime suspect. The conversation where we find this out includes the following groaner exchange:

PC: "I didn't even know he had a son, he never talked about a family"
NPC" Well that's probably because he and his son had a bit of a falling out"

[DragonChild]

Totally unintentional.

[Josh_Kablack]

This session was awesome in a way that was totally not what D_C had intended.

At the start of the session we get a tip from the leader of an adventuring party who are currently serving kind of as our rivals. He tells us that an old friend of his, who has risen to commander of the Burnt Book (another unit of the Sharn Watch, they specialize in anti-magical tactics) is acting strangely, and he tries to shame us with "you should investigate, that's your job isn't it? Or do you just harrass adventurers?"

We have no shame, but decide to investigate anyways.

After a brief discussion of how to approach this subtly and whether we have any dangerous magical items in our bag of holding that we could take to them as a pretense (oversized coachroach corpse, the vampire's armor, feathers of a fallen angel, Vial of Dragon's Blood that we forgot to hand over, 2 & 2/3s top hats, etc ) we head off to their offices.

We get stalled at the desk, finding that their commander and 2nd are out on duty, but we stick around making small talk while our thief-acrobat sneaks into their offices and trips an Alarm spell on the commander's bookcase. After very narrowly deciding not to plant the Dragon's Blood on the bookcase - thereby "solving" the case in the first 10 minutes of the session ( "Your friend was acting strange because she was abusing a prohibited magical substance" ) - we make lame excuses for the klepto on our unit, get kicked out and head back to our own offices.

We make bad plans and wait to hear back from the 2nd of the Burnt Book, only to be ambushed in our own station by burrowing Gricks and some type of blinding blade spider. The Gricks get a lot of grappling off against Synmara, which following last-sessions mecha-krakwn episode triggers OoC speculation about just what sort of tentacle rape fetish D_C harbors amongst the girls in the group ( one of whom is his fiancee so I would hope that she already knows, but personally I'd rather not. )


Being a magical assault on a watch house, the 2nd from the Blackened Book shows up to investigate, but asks us a few suspicious questions about what case we were on. We come clean with him (well mostly), mentioning that dude from our rival adventuring party is suspiscious of his commander's change in behaviour - but we have the sense to give him the wrong inn room to find the guy.

We then run around chasing red herrings for like an hour or real time in which we find that.

• Gricks have not burrowed into other watch houses,
• Our "fail assassin" is a better thief than our thief acrobat
• We gave the 2nd the room number for Milhouse the Fire Mage - who is in fact the member of the rival party we despise the most.
• Alebeard the Dwarf (their healer) can drink beer for 15 hours straight without becoming drunk nor needing to get up to use the outhouse.
• Hiding under a bed for all morning and afternoon is dull and makes you hungry
• The bookshelf contained history books from Morgrave Library. History books are really dull, but the one that "fail assassin" swipes does cover a period that includes of the fall of a mage guild that is tied to other recent villiany.
• Despite our initial joy at uncovering at least some sort of crime here, said library book is not actually overdue.

Our all-day stakeout of the inn where the adventuring party is staying turns into an overnight stakeout. We actually get rooms. Synmara the half-orc fire mage puts on jammies over her chainmail and changes into her bunny slippers. New Recruit can now stop hiding underneath the bed.

Around 3 AM, there's a suspiscious movement outside, and Bill the Warforged (of adventuring party) throws a chair out the window to hit the Gauth (like a beholder but with darker clothing and more eyeshadow) and alert us to the intrusion. There's a missed crossbow bolt, our snowscaper manages to freeze it in place, and then new recruit continues to earn the pay we keep docking him by waking up, running through the hall crashing out of the other window (2nd story, but Sharn is magicmodern enough that it's glass) and grappling the floaty eye into submission.

Some marginally successful interroagtion rolls against the Gauth get us minimal information (gee that fallen mage guild is reformed and this critter works for them, they sent it merely to spy on us) but we then wake up the enchantress from the adventuring party, who manages to charm the critter into co-operativeness.

The critter still doesn't know human names, so we have no evidence to move on as the Watch,but, this thing clearly attacked adventurers staying in an inn in our fair city, so we'd just be doing our job if we escorted them in their attempt to deal with the troublemakers. Cue the alliance of rivals and the now 14-member strong party as we have the charmed eyeball lead us to the rendezvous point in the sewers. Cue DC :headesking: and then passing out an additional character sheet for each of the players to take control of.

Unsurprisingly, both the commander and the 2nd of the Blackened Book are there waiting for us with more gauths' gricks and bladespiders. Cue a massively messy combat the highlights of which include

• Synmara opening by fireballing all of them and, for once, none of us
• The adventuring party's elven archer out failing our elven "fail assassin" with sub-sub-par bowmanship
• My white mage getting crit by an eyebeam early. Except in our last loot set D_C gave me the "this is in theme but won't overpower your healing any worse than it already is " item that grants temporary HP of twice my level to all allies when I take a crit. Did I mention we had a double size party for this? So yeah I get taken down to single digit HP, but my team gets 182 more HP for the villains to chew through.
• Via luck-of-the-draw Synmara's player getting Alebeard and myself getting Milhouse. So our fire mage player now gets a white mage and our white mage player now gets a fire mage. The combination of having both offense and defense is frightening.
• The commander and 2nd of the Blackened book breaking out mind-flayer imbued psionic tentacle powers. Cue more tentacle rape discussion.
• Milhouse ending the fight with his big slow Pyroblast, and sponging the kill on the brains-replaced-with-glowing-green-goo commander of the Blackened Book. And then taunting the Watch members for being inferior and not "killing it with fire" correctly.

PS: Puzzle Strike is bossome.
PPS: WOW Pillow Fight has teh best comeback mechanic evar.

[Josh_Kablack]

This week highlights:

While taking sides in the feud between the ghosts and the lich in Undersharn in order to recover ancient texts about the Closed Circle Guild:

Adiel the Snowscaper gets ambushed by a sparkly true heart pony Spectral Unicorn.

Twice.

Since it's a unicorn, and sine it ignored everyone else, some discussion of Adiel's virginity ensues after the fight - it is pointed out that she is cold as ice. Synmarra the Fire Mage then goes on a rave about how she's the opposite of the snowscaper, and that means she's hot and a nympho. Someone points out that the new guy sure does like to grapple a lot - and then the new guy counters with "only monsters" there's a collective from the table as we realize that he meant it that way.

****

Later we proceed into the portal room and confront the ghostly head of the Starlight and Shadows guild on the catwalks above four portals to the realm of the shadows or the dead or something. He's too busy with important research on dimensional portals to worry about such weak magic as the Closed Circle Guild and when we don't leave he sics his four pet Shadow (?) Elementals on us. There's a lot of hosery in this fight, but the room is pretty precisely sized for Synmarra's fireball to be able to hit each of the elementals and just miss the party members. The ghost wizard starts between two of his elementals and rolls lower than me in initiative, so I get to follow the fireball with a DOUBLE RAINBOW laser attack which softens things up a bit. 3 or 4 rounds or hosery and PCs being set on darkfire and coldsparkle and temporary negative levels ensue. There's a beautiful end to it though, as he once again lines up with the elementals and I get to tell him that he's been too concerned with dimensional magics and abstract metaphysics that he's forgotten basic GEOMETRY!! With a repeat RAINBOW LAZER! I finish off the elementals, and as he starts ranting about "You fools, you've ruined all the preparations, you don't know what you've done" - Laren the halfling pulls out her Ring of the Ram and knocks his ass over the railing into the portal below.

*****

Then, to follow up the attack ponies, rainbow lasers, and character sexuality discussions, we went out of sushi and talked about giving Chickens levels in Dread Pirate.

[Josh_Kablack]

Quips from the session where we played The Watch's rival adventuring party:

We kick down the door to the laboratory where the Mind flayer is performing Abberational experiments on its captives.

PC: What are you doing here?
Mind Flayer: I was just about to ask you that.
PC: I know, I asked first to throw you off.

Later we pass through a great door that has been torn open to free the evil within, shortly thereafter confronting the Worm-What-Walks that has been behind most of this semester's villainy.

W-W-W: "I am the Closed Circle Guild"
PC1: "That can't be - it's wide open now."
PC2: "Yeah, so you should be like "the letter C" guild"
PC3: "No, they oughta be the letter U - since obviously they lost the top part"