Tabletop Fun

[Nunavut Pants]

More Terraforming Mars games, more losses. The last one was close--I was in the lead for the first half of the final "generation", but both the others passed me by the end of the turn.

Hosted a boardgame afternoon today. One table played American Mahjong, and one played Mexican Train Dominoes. The table I was at played TransAmerica, which I won. Then we moved on to Splendor, which I also won. Not that surprising, since one or both of the other players had never played before.

[Ceir]

Still working on cleaning up my copy of Richthofen's War. I'm about halfway done transcribing the rule sheet, and it's been an interesting way to read the rules for the first time. I-go-you-go actions; just fixed scenarios with no 'casual' point values in sight; a blend that feels weird where everything except altitude is measured in hexes, altitude/climbing/diving is measured in meters (where other WW1 plane games I own just have abstract 'levels'); outline-format rules...it's a bit of a trip. 'Old school' all the way, down to a font that I surprisingly have a facsimile of. And it's not like I'm unused to old and weird game mechanics either, I've been playing tabletop games for decades. After I finish up with the other side of the rules, it's just a matter of sorting out the plethora of counters and frobbing a couple d6 from my bag, and it'll be 'restored' to playable.

[Nunavut Pants]

Why are you transcribing the rule sheet? Making it easier to read/larger font/clearer wording?

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL: Rime of the Frostmaiden--

We're still technically in the endgame portion of this Adventurers League campaign, at Level 11, attempting to recover a magical codicil for an allied mage, and in the midst of the fortress of the titular evil winter goddess, Auril the Frostmaiden. However, the codicil is in the fortress vault, and in order to open it, one must pass four trials to show that one understands and embodies the "virtues" of Auril: Preservation, Endurance, Isolation, and Cruelty. The DM advised us that some of the tests would take days to complete (correctly guessing that Endurance and Isolation would be the ones in question) so we opted to start with the shorter ones and went for Cruelty first.

We were transported to a remote tribal village, which was having to deal with the fact that they were starving. The party were all designated as "emissaries" of the Frostmaiden, and were asked to help. The tribe had decided that, in order to ensure the majority of the tribe could live, they would effectively sacrifice four willing elders to serve as food for the rest. Their traditions forbade killing one another, and they asked us to help them. This prompted some debate among the party and players. Boron the ranger had access to a spell called Goodberry that could provide nourishment for everyone, but that wouldn't help long term unless we stayed there. Axe the monk wanted to give the elders an honorable death by challenging them to combat before killing them. But the rest of us realized that the cruel thing to do, would be to just walk away without killing them. None of us were happy with the choice, but that's what we ended up doing.

When we were transported back to the fortress, however, we were confronted by Auril herself, and so began the combat encounter that took up most of the session. She could summon ice mephits (elemental creatures) and also brought back the Abominable Yeti (albeit in a weakened undead state) at one point, could remove herself from the battlefield (probably some kind of plane-shift spell or similar) so she couldn't be targeted, and otherwise could deal some nasty damage. But we were putting up big numbers too. Rhoric, my sorcerer, hit her with a 5th-level Blight spell to inflict some damage, but later, when she had been reduced to a smaller, crystal-like owl shape, she summoned up a blizzard in her vicinity, making her heavily obscured and thus harder to directly target. I had an option, though, and hesitated because two party members were right next to Auril. Their players told me to go ahead and do it, so I cast a 4th-level Fireball.

We eventually managed to put her down, destroying her avatar, but as she was banished, she declared, "This changes nothing." She would recover and return, more powerful than before, so long as any of her worshippers remained. But it gave the Icewind Dale at least a little reprieve.

Very little. The DM rolled to see how long until she returned, and came up with just 23 days.

We looted the fortress, and then decided to continue the trials to unlock the vault. The Preservation trial involved making sure the last survivor of a massacred tribe could survive until help came. This survivor was a "child of midsummer" who wasn't affected by the winter cold, and after taking out a rival tribe's hunter that was coming to finish him off, we soon left the child with an awakened wolf (a wolf that could talk - we'd encountered it a few times already) that would care for him.

The Endurance trial involved guiding another tribe from one place to another, traversing through a blizzard, and having to pass increasingly difficult CON saves to avoid exhaustion. Our rogue almost died, as he took 5 levels of exhaustion from repeated failures.

The Isolation trial involved protecting a tribe's village while the majority of the tribe set out to go hunting for game. As we remained over several days, one by one members of our party disappeared-- finding themselves alone in a flat blizzard-swept plain-- despite all precautions to prevent it. By sheer happenstance (the DM was rolling to determine who vanished), it ended up with Rhoric left alone with Boron. The table was quite amused by this, and I leaned into it by having Rhoric muttering, "This is hell. I'm in hell." and then, "I could just slit his throat. No one would know. 'I dunno what happened, I just woke up and found him like this.'" The tribe's hunters returned, and brought our missing party members with, but the DM had them roll on the Indefinite Madness table to determine what sort of madness afflicted them after their isolation.

For the lulz, the DM decided that the cleric, who had rolled a 99 on his d100 Indefinite Madness roll-- rather than take the madness from the table-- now believed that everything that Boron said was 100% true and accurate. The cleric's player leaned into it, professing his newfound truths, and the whole table burst out laughing when I sighed and cast Greater Restoration on him to clear the madness from him. (By contrast, two of the other party members each got the same madness, believing that they (singularly) were the strongest, fastest, toughest, smartest, wisest, and most attractive member of the party.)

Talking of Boron, the DM continued the running gag of having Boron's player roll an Insight check, and regardless of the result, declaring that Boron-- after much thought and deliberation-- had realized the truth about Rhoric and what class he was. To remind you, Boron initially believed (this was the player's initial joke) that Rhoric was a warlock. Then the DM had an NPC "correct" him by saying he's a bard. Then a different NPC corrected him again-- he's a zealot barbarian. This time, it was that Rhoric was clearly a druid. Only to then, later in the session, issue another new correction-- Rhoric was clearly a wizard.

The DM is running out of classes to use, and I fully expect by the end of the entire campaign, we'll probably end up having him finally learn the actual truth.

Everyone is enjoying the banter and antics that Boron ends up causing, and Rhoric's increasing exasperation at Boron's stupidity. Though as a player, I had some fun before the session started, as we were quipping around the table about Boron's gullibility. Someone put forth the idea that nothing was real, that everyone and everything was just imaginary. Then I slipped in later with the line, "Boron, listen to me: You're just a figment of your imagination." His player took a moment to parse what I'd said before a look of existential confusion, bewilderment, and terror came across his face.

Next time, we're probably gonna have to deal with a pissed-off winter goddess coming to clap our ass.

[Ceir]

Why are you transcribing the rule sheet? Making it easier to read/larger font/clearer wording?

Readability, and it's a folded-up poster that unfolding and refolding is just gonna destroy - it's not in great shape already. Still, enjoying the project!

[Nunavut Pants]

Oh, I hadn't thought of that reason! Good on you for preserving it!!

Several more games of Terraforming Mars, no victories. Two games ago, one player had a 57-point final generation! That was more than half of his final score! Sadly, I was never in contention for that one.

In the immediately-previous game, I was able to claw to a lead through the second half of the game. However, in the final generation, that same player put in enough points to put me into second place. At least I was NOT LAST.

[dalesys]

... NOT LAST.

I finished second. They were next to last.

[Nunavut Pants]

Actually, I was both. It was a three-player game.

We had a replay, though a different board setup and such. I pulled off a victory in that one! 90 to 85 to 83. I had a small lead in mid-game which disappeared pretty quickly, leaving things pretty close until near the end. One player started pulling away just a tiny bit, and he's the one who had the 57-point turn a couple of games ago, so I was very worried. But his progress ebbed a bit right at the end, and I was able to make several plays that put me over his total. I also was able to stall in that last generation so that I took a number of actions after everyone else had passed, which kind of let me do what I wanted to, unopposed.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Camilla, one of our players who portrays our group's kender, was out sick this week. She lamented in our Discord that fate keeps conspiring to keep her away from the game. But there wasn't too much combat this week that needed another hand in, but she missed out on some roleplay, which I imagine DM Bob will address next time.

After routing the Red Dragon Army, our ragtag bunch of Misfits had some choices to make regarding our next move. We still needed to rescue the metallic dragons' eggs from the imperial capital of Neraka, but we suspected the place would be crawling with dragons, and powerful ones at that. Ember had made it clear just how outclassed we were. We figured we'd need dragonlances to stand a chance, but even if we crossed the world to get back to the region with the dragonmetal ore that we'd need, it would take months to forge enough to equip an army, and even then, they're meant to be used from dragonback, so we'd still need to rescue the eggs first. A real catch-22 situation. Can't get friendly dragons on side without the eggs, can't get the eggs without the lances, can't use the lances without friendly dragons to ride.

So we figured we should keep building the coalition to fight back against the Chromatic Dragon Armies. We were on good terms with the Solamnic Knights, the Ergothian Empire, and now the Dwarves of Thorbardin, so the next logical step should be getting the Elves on side. The nearest elven kingdom was Silvanesti-- a notoriously insular and almost xenophobic bunch-- and the rumors we'd been hearing were that the Green Dragon Army was besieging it.

So we headed that way, passing through the charred ruins of the town of Solace, but along the way Runa the Barbarian started experiencing nightmares. Seeing a pulsing red light, hearing chanting in old languages, and hearing the cracking of eggs and the shrieking of lizard-like creatures. We were able to figure out that the dreams were coming about because she'd had red dragon teeth implanted into her swords' hilts, and that the dreams were visions related to a ritual being performed to corrupt the dragon eggs. There was nothing for it but to continue onward.

The forest around Silvanesti, however, was becoming twisted, drained of hope and emanating despair. We ran across some zombified elven warriors, but Gavin the Cleric (me) was able to destroy them all with a single use of his Turn Undead ability. Some trees attacked later, but they weren't too much of a problem. But when we approached the city of Silvanost, we were confronted by a spectral army of elven warriors and banshees. (We all made the requisite LOTR references. "The way is shut...") We were able to parley with them, however, and the ghosts explained that there was no Green Dragon Army here, but that the same rumors had reached them, and so their King Lorac had evacuated the city of its civilians, claiming he had some power that would protect the city. Only, something went wrong and now there's an unending scream coming from the royal tower.

So we entered the city, and everyone failed a WIS save. We all found ourselves separated, trapped in our own personal nightmares.

• Gavin found himself in a burning city, surrounded by slain silver dragons that he knew-- including the bodies of his children-- and then saw his wife Gwyneth killed by a red dragon before getting incinerated himself.
• Sir Evrouin saw his family's castle sacked by the enemy, with his parents' bodies hanging from gibbets, and confronted the notorious Death Knight, Lord Soth, before getting struck down.
• Runa found herself back in the midst of her tribe's doomed battle against the Red Dragon Army, including seeing her mother getting slaughtered by Ember. When she tried to fight Ember, the dragon disintegrated her.

Justinius the Wizard was the only one who didn't find himself in a complete nightmare, just an empty city. But he rode on to the royal tower, where King Lorac was screaming, clutching a Dragon Orb (a powerful artifact that can control dragons, if one has a strong enough will and the intellect to do so), while a huge Green Dragon, Sayen Bloodbane, laughed at his misfortune. Justinius tried to bluff his way into convincing Sayen to leave, and even tried using some of his magic to banish him, but Sayen just shrugged all of it off. We could tell that Jesse (Justinius' player) was getting a bit frustrated at not finding a non-violent solution-- Sayen was explicitly said to be on Ember's level in terms of power-- until the rest of us suggested he try using the Dragon Orb.

Justinius did so, and had to make a WIS and an INT save. He evidently rolled well enough that it came down to a straight roll-vs-roll between him and the DM. DM Bob rolled a 17... but Jesse rolled a Natural 20.

Justinius ordered Sayen to leave, "and don't come back until you're ready to die." The dragon did so, freeing everyone from their nightmares and ending the plague of despair over the region. King Lorac was able to whisper to Justinius to find his daughter before passing away, and now we've got a new task ahead of us, to go find her.