Tabletop Fun

[Jay 2K Winger]

Curse of Strahd--

Sooo... after the werewolf thing, we had to abandon Vallaki and go deal with some evil druids at the local vineyard (cuz we need to get into the next town, which is closed to outsiders, but the town will let in the regular deliveries from the vineyard, which are behind because of aforementioned druids), but after doing so, the Vallaki innkeeper and his family arrived, with their 11yo son dead. This kid had been regularly shadowing us across Barovia (they're wereravens) and Sorcerer had gotten kind of close with him. So we're all upset to see this, Sorcerer is distraught (found out later that she had been the sole survivor of a dragon attack that wiped out her military unit which had been protecting an orphanage) and then suddenly Warlock gets a message from her patron. She thinks about it, and then suddenly casts Raise Dead on the kid-- a spell that's a much higher level than she should be able to cast.

Kid's alive now, but Warlock's arm now suddenly looks rotted and zombie-like, though still feels normal to her. And the poor kid is now afflicted with a kind of madness, and has this haunted look in his eyes, very different from the sweet kid he'd been before. Which just further upsets Sorcerer.

Our next mission involves stopping a druid ritual at a nearby hill, and while the situation is serious (Strahd himself is there), table circumstances just made it way more fun than dramatic. The wereraven father was with us and in hybrid form during combat, and when Sorcerer-player tried to do his hybrid form voice, it came out sounding like Hulk Hogan instead. So we started riffing on that ("Lemme tell you something, brother!") and then it sort of morphed from Hogan into Macho Man Randy Savage instead, leading to more riffing.

Ranger, who didn't really actively dislike Strahd like the rest of the team, hates running up the hill and tries to provoke Strahd into getting closer (and thus in bow range) by saying something like, "Are you just going to sit there and let us come to you?" And gets Strahd just bluntly saying, "Yes!" And this finally gets Ranger to dislike Strahd. We all joked at the table that Ranger hates him now because he made him do cardio. ("Nobody makes me breathe my own air!")

On top of all this, while everyone else in the team is dashing up the hill, so is my Paladin, but as a dwarf, he has a lesser walking speed, so he's slower getting up the hill while everyone else, with their ranged abilities, is attacking the druids and their berserker guards. Paladin finally gets there just as things are starting to wrap up, but he does manage to kill a couple of berserkers more or less single-handed. But for the whole thing, while they're attacking the enemies, I'm there just roleplaying like Paladin is just still running and like "Just wait till I get up there...!"

[Jay 2K Winger]

Curse of Strahd--

We fought werewolves. They didn't really stand a chance against our silvered weapons and magic. But our Warlock did get bit and contract lycanthropy. We all could see her player seriously considering whether she should tell our Cleric (who has Remove Curse and could cure her), or to keep it to herself. I joked that this would be the start of her villain arc (first teased/joked about earlier during the Death House), but we all pointed out that he is a Cleric of Selune, who notoriously hates lycanthropes, and hence so does he.

Warlock was smart, and told Cleric, who removed the curse and cured her.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Instead of Curse of Strahd, this past week we did a Level 20 one-shot, since one of the players was gone for a wedding. Nothing like rolling up a Level 20 Paladin-Sorcerer with a Holy Avenger Longsword and a Belt of Giant Strength (rolled with Hill Giant, traded for Storm Giant in-game) to be a damage-dealing tank. Especially since we were fighting undead storm giants, giving me extra damage with both the sword and my Divine Smite.

[Jay 2K Winger]

No context quote from Spelljammer yesterday--

"We all take 1d6 math damage."

[Jay 2K Winger]

Our Curse of Strahd campaign got back together, after a three-week hiatus. Our adventuring party finally decided on a name, dubbing ourselves the SWAT Team. (Smiting Whatever Asshole Talks) This came after, in some table-talk, comparing ourselves to a SWAT team after smiting three hags in short order.

There were quite a few jokes being thrown around, which was probably because it had built up after three weeks' break, until our sorceress' player was joke-complaining that he could barely breathe. One of the jokes that set him off was, while hearing some lore about a temple that contained fragments of Dark Powers, that Strahd had slaughtered the temple guardians, when I commented, "Well, now we know we shouldn't mess with Strahd, if he took out some temple guards. We remember how badass those guys were from Legends of the Hidden Temple."

I made another meta joke that got us some Inspiration--

Someone Else: (IC) "It's just been a long day."
Me: (IC) "Yeah. Today felt like it lasted three weeks."
DM: (pause, smirk, awards Inspo)

[Jay 2K Winger]

Yes, we still used D&D 5e for the game. The DM gave us each a sheet of paper with what amounted to a homebrewed NPC stat block on it, detailing all of our abilities, spells, stats, etc. (Since it's a one-shot, it makes sense we wouldn't be using a full character sheet.) One player ended up playing both the Mad Scientist (whom he named Vinnie-- "It's not short for anything!") and the Patchwork Abomination ("Harold") and it worked out for him since the two were designed to synergize with their abilities.

There were a few jokes being made about Harold too. When we noted that one of the zombie minis had a beard, the Scientist's player spoke up, IC, "Save that! I'll want to use him for parts! Give Harold a beard." And the Witch Queen's player quipped, "So you're going to give him a soul patch?" Which got her an extra Inspiration from the DM.

Sadly, he didn't give me one later when, during some table talk, Harold's player played into a joke someone made--

Another Player: (IC) "How many times have you rebuilt Harold?"
Harold's Player: (IC) "Shh! Not where Harold can hear!" (IC sotto voce) "We don't talk about how many there've been."
Someone Else: "There's just a whole graveyard with gravestones..."
Me: "Yeah. 'Version 1' 'Version 2'--"
Harold's Player: "No, they all just say 'Harold.' Maybe some details about him--"
Me: "So would those be his patch notes?"

I just got groans for it. No Inspo. Alas.

[Ghel]

Was your Halloween one-shot still a D&D game? Because there's several Powered by the Apocalypse games that seem like they would work for that, too. Including Monsterhearts. I've wanted to play something like Frankenstein's monster in a system like that for a long time.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Did a fun Halloween-themed one-shot run by one of the game store employees last weekend. PCs were all inspired by classic movie monsters (the Anguished Soul, the Patchwork Abomination, its creator the Mad Scientist, the Vampire Lord, the Witch Queen, the Werewolf Lord, the Swamp Leviathan) and were trying to take out the monster hunter Cade. Lotta fun, plenty of jokes being made.

With Spelljammer this past week, we had to improvise a way to get our ship moving after it was disabled last session. Cue some space-whales moving nearby, we get their attention by mimicking the flashing bioluminescence (not without a few Finding Nemo references with us joking about "speaking whale"), then use them to get moving.

The way we decided to do it, we would tie ourselves to the tails of them and get towed behind them. "Like a [Star Wars] podracer," one of the players pointed out. And I pointed out, "It's literally pod-racing!"

After going through the checks and challenges to accomplish this-- involving having our ship's living tree throwing our artificer over to one whale-- our githyanki points out, "...He knows I can fly, right?" Which broke all of us, because we'd all forgotten. But we get our ship tied to the space-whales, they start moving off and pulling us behind them, and then the DM, in-character as our ship's owner, crows out, "Now this is spelljamming!"

The Finding Nemo references continued later when we got to our destination and found it covered in birds (lots of seagull "Mine! Mine!" references), and then came the Jaws references when we got roped into hunting down a nearby void skavver (space-shark) called Big Mama, involving us hopping in what amounted to a rowboat ("we're gonna need a bigger boat") to do so.

Next session, we're dealing with "vampirates" (space pirate vampires).

I. Love. Dungeons and Dragons.

[Jay 2K Winger]

No context quote from my Paladin from the Curse of Strahd campaign--

"Am I going to have to smite this pie?!"

[Nunavut Pants]

Been playing a whole lot of Mahjongg lately. No, not the solitaire tile-matching thing. (Well, I've been playing that too!) But the Chinese Gin-Rummy-With-Tiles game. A neighbor introduced us to it and we've got a whole group of people playing a couple of times a week!

[Jay 2K Winger]

Random Adventurers League session--

Different table/DM than usual, cuz our regular DM had a work thing and had to cancel. So I'm playing my Level 6 Inquisitive Rogue for this. Minmaxer is back from his trip and is playing at the table as well. We're joined by this father and his hyperactive not-yet-teenage son. (While I can't fault their enthusiasm, I've decided I don't really want to play with them. The son wants to be the one rolling every skill check, even if someone else is the one doing the talking/RPing or has the higher score, and he just can't sit still. It was fine the first time we played, but started to wear on me and this time it just got to be a little too much.)

Still a fun session. It involved trying to find some treasure in a crypt hidden in Waterdeep's cemetery, the City of the Dead. However, we were all getting distracted by table talk and banter, even the DM, until the DM kept having to interrupt to try to start the session by going, "THE CITY OF THE DEAD!" Which just got us laughing, distracted again, and he'd have to try to get us un-derailed again. Became a running gag through the session, whenever we'd veer off too much-- someone would declare, "THE CITY OF THE DEAD!"

We find this one crypt in the cemetery that looked like the one we were searching for. As the Rogue, I start trying to pick the locks, but I roll low. So some patrolling guards spot us. This led to some fun roleplay as we tried to bluff our way through, but the guards saw through it and kicked us out. Stuff happened, and we eventually got let back in to the cemetery and led to the correct crypt, and we find the dungeon beneath it.

At this point, my Rogue-- despite having a high perception bonus-- is toward the middle/back of the marching order (the son's Warlock is out in front), when we come across another set of doors. Before any trap-checks can be done, Warlock pushes at the doors, which swing open on well-oiled hinges. This caught us all by surprise, for a moment. Then I, jokingly, dipped into my character voice and said, "There ya go! I'm just that good!"

This got some laughs, which got louder when Minmaxer looked at me slyly and went, "Insight check!" and rolled his d20. But he rolled a Nat-1. This got more laughs, and Minmaxer just went, totally serious, "And I believe you." Then the son decided to do an Insight check as well-- and also rolled low. Another player, who was running an Artificer, decided to join in the Insight check, and also rolled low.

Laughter and banter continued for a minute or so, until the DM (who had taken the interim to start drawing some maps on his battlemat) cleared his throat. I immediately stopped with the banter: "So anyway-- THE CITY OF THE DEAD!"

Still good fun, but looking forward to resuming Spelljammer next week.

ETA: Minmaxer and I shared some fun with puns and other jokes during some of the banter. At one point, he made a bad pun that had me pointing at the door and going "Get out." But he got me back when we were discussing Spelljammer, and I commented--

J2K: It didn't come up last week, which is a shame, cuz I had an excuse for why Snirk (Minmaxer's bugbear fighter) wasn't present for the fighting.
Minmaxer: Oh yeah?
J2K: Yeah. There's this malady that affects some people on their first trip to wildspace, it's an affliction of the joints. Common name for it is Dizza Knee.
Minmaxer: (groans) (points to the door) Get out!

[Jay 2K Winger]

Curse of Strahd--

We're exploring the Death House in Barovia Town, come across this chamber with a bunch of little tchotchkes and suchlike that were clearly used for some kind of ritual. Naturally our sorcerer and warlock start looting a few of them. The warlock (who previously had found a top hat in one of the closets in the house) finds this crown of dark vines and immediately yoinks it. She spent some time trying to figure out whether to wear the hat or the crown (or use the crown as a hatband for the hat), before just putting the crown away and saying, "I'll keep this for my villain arc."

Classic warlock.

And meanwhile the sorcerer is constantly worrying about money (standard response to any request for help is "how much?"), getting annoyed by our ranger's rogue-like behavior, and is fast to use anyone else as a meat shield when things get combat-y. (The character has PTSD after her military unit was wiped out in a dragon attack.) She also immediately wanted to sacrifice a dog when some eerie chanting in the Death House demanded, "One must die!" The paladin (me) and cleric immediately gave her this Look of Disapproval. We've (cleric & paladin) also been annoying her by our gung-ho attitude to going in to smite the evil, as opposed to exploring further. (Cleric-player and I will frequently start chanting "DEUS VULT" when we want to go get our smite on.)

I like this group.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Spelljammer continued this week, minus one player (the minmaxer is at Disney World right now), but we pressed on. Our galleon was getting chased by this starmoth ship (literally shaped like a moth with crystalline wings or something), so we just mounted up to our ballistae (basically like giant crossbows) and started taking shots as soon as they were in range. While taking few hits ourselves (only one hit did any serious damage, and that took out one ballista), we took out all of their weapons.

And our party-- with the help of our wizard and artificer-- enchanted one of our last bolts by casting Enlarge and Darkness as it was firing, so this massive ballista bolt hit their ship for massive damage, while also trapping it in a big sphere of magical darkness. Oh, and our ranger's drake animal companion infused the shot with fire breath, so it did fire damage too. The DM had us roll an Intimidation check, which got a Nat-20. The DM described the starmoth's crew-- led by astral elves, but manned by hadozee (monkey-people)-- as suddenly freaking out, a cacophony of screeching monkeys reaching us.

The starmoth fled the battle at that point, and in true Sinistar fashion, I used Minor Illusion on my voice to bellow out a deep "RUN, COWARDS!" as they did so.

We ended up stopping play two hours early, because we'd blitzed through the encounter and the DM hadn't prepared far enough ahead for it.

Additional fun, when we took out the starmoth's first ballista, the DM described the weapon as basically exploding and sending its bolt flying up in the air. The wizard's player, just for funsies, rolled a d100, and said "If I get the 0/00, I want it to hit one of Scurvy's limes." The DM burst out laughing, and agreed. It didn't roll for it, alas, but we all agreed it would keep going and eventually hit something, someday. I paraphrased Mass Effect 2 by quipping, "And that's why Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in Wildspace!" sending the DM into fresh peals of laughter.

[Jay 2K Winger]

My D&D AL DM is doing a Spelljammer campaign now on alternating weeks, which I of course am participating in. I was tempted to play as a giff big game hunter with a blunderbuss, but opted not to because I wasn't sure what the AL rules would be about firearms. (For the record, the giff's name would have been Braxton Shale. I probably would have attempted an Aussie accent for him.) So I just brought back my now-level 5 hexblade warlock, rejoining our ranger, cannoneer artificer, and Wenbin the wizard from the Spelljammer Academy. (Scurvy's player brought back an older character of his, a githyanki warlock, because his character is from Wildspace.)

A new player joined us with a bugbear fighter with crossbow proficiency. I found out later that he was a competent min-maxer, but not an asshole about it. In the first round of combat at the start of the session, he rolled high on initiative (in part thanks to bonuses) and then-- thanks to crossbow proficiency and Action Surge and other bonuses-- fired his crossbow five times and wiped out two out of the six enemies on the field, and then seriously wounded a third. We did sort of jokingly say "Leave some for the rest of us!"

Partway into the adventure, as we're all hauling ass to get out of Neverwinter before the city falls apart due to Plot Reasons, this pack of thugs tried to block the way to the galleon, and their leader promptly got Telekinetic Shove'd by Wenbin off the dock. Ranger had told the DM he was holding action with a spell, and admitted afterward that if Wenbin had failed, he would have used Conjure Animals and summoned a herd of cows to drive them off. (My response: "That's some bullsh*t." The table gave some chuckles and groans in equal measure.) The thugs (boss included) were allowed onto the galleon as we escaped and took off. But Wenbin and my warlock both intimidated the thugs into behaving themselves with some well-chosen words (and a Minor Illusion by my warlock to make her eyes turn black), even roped some of the thugs into mucking out the donkey stables in the cargo deck.

(Side joke. After the donkey mucking stuff came up, the players started wondering why the captain had donkeys on her ship. I replied, "Clearly, the captain appreciates a nice piece of ass." To more groans.)

Yadda yadda yadda, things came up, like the fact the thugs knew what animals were in the stables without being told (Wenbin told them "there's some livestock in the hold" while recruiting them for mucking duties, but the thug boss told his cronies to "go clean up the donkey pens") and the galleon's captain expressly told us she didn't know them-- so we decide to interrogate them...

Warlock: "Right now, you're passengers. But it wouldn't take much to reclassify you as stowaways. And-- Captain, remind me, what do we do with stowaways on spelljammer vessels?"
Wizard: "Ooh, I know this one! They take a very long walk off a very short plank!"

It went very well, a lot of fun was had. With all of the sci-fi movie references we were throwing around, the min-maxer smiled and said, "I'm with my people!"

[Jay 2K Winger]

Forgot to post the end result of the Spelljammer Academy four-parter from two weeks ago!

So we get our Tyrant ship restocked and the helm installed so we can set out to go retrieve this adamantium meteor that landed on this beholder-controlled planet. We get there, with two NPCs manning the ship so the party can go find the meteor. It was taken from its impact site into this spindly spire of rock in the center of the disc-shaped planet. (Yes, I of course made the requisite Discworld reference when the DM described it, asking, "Is it sitting on the back of four giant elephants riding on the back of a giant turtle?") Anyway, we find the meteor in the middle of this room, in the center of a shaft of sunlight coming down from above, as two Spectators (lesser beholder-types) argue over who is guarding it.

We're all Level 4, and we do not want to get in a fight with these things. So our artificers fashion this chunk of scrap metal and put an enchantment on it to make it shine and gleam. Then our wizard, Wenbin the Magnificent, in a masterful piece of RP, steps in to arbitrate between the spectators. He first suggests a race between them, from the bottom of the spindle all the way to the top. He doesn't quite pass the persuasion check, so he keeps going, suggesting a test of strength, for the spectators to find the biggest, heaviest thing they can find, and carry it as high as they can. Still doesn't quite pass, so he keeps going, and this time successfully convinces them to race to the edge of the planet and around the underside. Soon as they're gone, we toss the meteor into the special bag of holding we'd been given, then haul ass back to our ship.

I turned to the wizard after we were safe and had to just go, "Wenbin, you magnificent bastard!" Everyone had some major compliments to pay to the player for that one, DM included, for some masterful roleplay.

The rest of the session involved us running into a damselfly ship crewed by pirates, the leader of whom confronted us and demanded we turn over an NPC-- one of the other students who had been sent back to the academy after the previous episode-- who turned out to be a traitor. We couldn't convince them we didn't have them, so a fight ensued between the githyanki pirate leader and their space-shark-narwhal thing that was their mount. We killed them, but their ship outmaneuvered us and got back to the academy first. By the time we got back, the fight was over, the academy had survived, but -- yadda yadda yadda, sequel hooks, we all graduate, get to level 5, et cetera.

The DM says he may run some Spelljammer adventures later-- the book just dropped two weeks ago-- and I may bring my warlock back for that.

Now I'm also joining up with another DM who wants to do a Curse of Strahd campaign, our session zero is this Sunday.