Tabletop Fun

[Kit-Ginevra]

Pretty cool-so which one's you?
I'm looking for an online group/campaign after our LARP group sort of dissolved during COVID and never returned.
I excelled at that-my first mission was as part of a seafaring race who needed to dispose of their unwanted dead bodies. Well we couldn't just chuck them overboard, so when a passing merchant offered to buy them off us I happily accepted. How was I to know he was a necromancer who brought them back to life as part of an evil army?

[Jay 2K Winger]

Related to my main D&D group--

Mike, the previous DM, commissioned an artist to do a group portrait of the Stormbreakers, our party from the Mysteries of Albia campaign. He recently shared the line art of the piece with us, and it looks awesome. He's shared the artist's DeviantArt page, and based on this guy's previous work, it's going to look amazing when he's done. We're all looking forward to the finished product.

The artwork is done! Mike posted it to our Discord last night and we're all really happy with it.

Behold, the Stormbreakers.

ETA: From left to right, there's Stampede the raven, familiar to: Vash/Knives (kalashtar rogue/warlock, played by Eric); Joshua "Beckett" Freeman (human fighter/barbarian, played by Jesse); Charlie Tango (human gunslinger/rogue, played by Yours Truly); Annie Leagallow (halfling artificer/rogue, played by Camilla); Caradoc ap Gryffed (satyr druid, played by Bob)

[Nunavut Pants]

A bunch more on-line games of Terraforming Mars. A few I have been "not last" in, but that is sadly the minority. I think I'm up to over 50-50 on the solo games, though...

Hosted a boardgame afternoon today. Ticket to Ride was a very popular choice, so we wound up with two tables of it!

Ticket to Ride is a game about building railroad tracks and completing specific routes. At the beginning you get three "ticket" cards; you must keep at least two of them. Those have routes you are supposed to complete, and they give you Victory Points if you do and they cost you that same number if you don't complete them by the end of the game. Longer routes are worth more, of course. You also get points for claiming tracks in between cities, with more for longer tracks requiring more cards.

Anyway, I was able to complete seven different tickets, mostly because they were north-south routes in the eastern half of the continent. I didn't draw any tickets that were complete at the time I drew them, but after my first two they really only required one or two more track sections in order to complete them. (Seven is about as many as you'll see; many times the most tickets completed will be in the five or six range.) The points for that put me way out in the lead, and the points for individual track segments (and the bonus for longest contiguous non-repeating stretch of train) were not enough for them to catch me. I ended up with 133 points, with the next player having about 115.

[dalesys]

I was talking with #1 son (41) yesterday about his gaming days... He saw 3 D20 dies with a mold fault that left a lump on one face. One of them, if it landed on lumpy, usually came up "20".

He also had one friend that was certain that he could throw D6s to get what he needed... they logged 3000 throws, no violations of probability.

[Jay 2K Winger]

From D&D AL last night--

"How dare you! My mother is a saint! (Literally, I'm an aasimar.)"

Aasimar are part-celestial, in the same way tieflings are part-fiend.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Our present arc in the campaign has tasked us with making contact with a circle of knights in Southern Ergoth, as well as retrieving an artifact called the Sword-Sheath Scroll, which is a copy of an old treaty signed pre-Cataclysm between several of the Good-aligned kingdoms, from the Imperial Library in the currrently ogre-occupied former capital city of Daltigoth. So we first went to the city of Gwennyd (the capital-in-exile) to secure permission to travel to Southern Ergoth-- which is essentially in a state of war, and we don't want to be mistaken for enemy combatants-- and handle some other minor business.

Last week was when we handled said minor business, including securing travel to Southern Ergoth. With most of the ships in port being military vessels, the only one available was one captained by a swashbuckler called Angus Mackenzie. Runa, our barbarian and previously a sailor, went to speak with him, but when she did, he flirted outrageously with her, irritating her and eventually provoking her into attacking when he slapped her on the ass. This prompted a fight against him, but she wasn't able to land a single blow while he deftly used his rapier to undo one of the straps on her outfit. She stormed off, leaving Evrouin the Knight and Justinius the Wizard to have to come back to book passage on his ship, and then defend her honor. Angus still walloped both of them pretty well, but respected their moxie.

Fast forward to this week, we board Angus's ship, and he's not letting up on his behavior, including sending Runa ("the redheaded tart") a "gift" of some lingerie "to help her feel more comfortable." We briefly convinced her to hold off beating his ass until we make port, but he provoked her again during the first day's travel. Once again, he was very deft with his rapiers, undoing straps with the points, and then slicing a calligraphic "A.M." into her cheek, but then Runa landed a Nat-20 on one of her attacks-- decapitating him.

...except then his head spun around and said, "There's the Runa I was told about!" His body picked up his head and put it back on, casually healed the initials he'd carved on her face, and invited us into his quarters for a private discussion. We were all immediately wary of him, because first of all, he essentially no-sold his head coming off (suggesting he was undead), and secondly, he was using healing magic, which presently wasn't a thing. Healing magic, in DM Bob's Dragonlance, comes from divine magic, which presently doesn't work as the gods departed the material plane and haven't been in touch with mortals since the Cataclysm.

His quarters turned out to be far larger than they should have been for the size of the ship (and I for sure referenced the TARDIS by having Cogburn, my gnome artificer, give the expected bewildered reaction, complete with "It's bigger on the inside!") and we were leery about accepting drinks from him, until Angus sighed and fixed Cogburn and Catt the Kender with a Look as he said, "I expected better of my people." This immediately made me sit up and look shocked-- both IC and OOC-- as I made the mental connection. Angus was actually an avatar of Reorx, the God of Crafting, who is credited with the creation of the dwarf, gnome, and kender races. Angus confirmed this, and then apologized for his previous behavior toward Runa, but he needed to test our character.

Angus/Reorx explained the cosmic balance was getting out of whack-- something that, as a Neutral god, he disliked-- due to the Evil gods not adhering to the agreement they'd all had to stay out of mortal affairs. To that end, he asked our help in "bringing the gods back." Specifically, restoring the faith in them. Sir Evrouin, specifically, was told that the Knighthood had strayed from what it was meant to be, and was tasked with helping right its course, with a guidance of "Follow the White Stag." We at the table knew what this meant from the Session 0 History Lesson-- a White Stag had twice been connected with heroes of the Knighthood, guiding them to their quest or a major event in their histories.

We all remarked at how bringing back the gods was a big ask. Cogburn especially said, "It's a tall task you're asking, I wouldn't even know where to begin, I'm having a hard enough time trying to figure out how to get to the moon!" Angus told him, "You're closer than you think. You're on the right path." (A later conversation with Angus had him declining to offer any more specific guidance on Cogburn's life quest, "As that would take away the discovery of it, but I'll say this-- you'll know it when you see it.")

Once we made it to Southern Ergoth, we got underway the next day on the road toward Daltigoth, but we were accosted in the middle of a forest by more of the black cloaked baddies from the Dragon Armies, and this group was again being led by the mage we know as Waylon, formerly a friend of Catt's. Despite our Perception checks alerting us to the impending ambush, we still got hit hard by Waylon's opening Fireball attack, which knocked out Cogburn immediately. Fortunately, he got fed a potion of healing to get him back up, and his new contraption helped even the odds a bit. One of his artificer features lets him combine two spell effects into one device, allowing him to effectively cast two spells at the same time (there is a 20% chance the contraption explodes with each use), and in this case the "Fiery Catapult" combines Firebolt with Catapult, allowing me to deal 3d6+1d10 damage (combined bludgeoning and fire) which technically isn't magical. Which is handy, since the black cloaks are resistant to magical damage.

One part of the fight that was amusing was there was one big black cloak (I've dubbed this type as "Bigguns" in my notes) who grappled Sir Evrouin in its tail, but rather than try to break free, he just kept trying to wail on the thing. However, Mike's bad rolls meant he kept not connecting, but neither was the Biggun to him. So we had this mental image of two big dudes just continually hitting one another's shields or getting blocked without landing any hits.

Waylon had apparently been specifically trying to target Catt ("I do so hate loose ends") but teleported away when he lost enough health, and we camped for the night. Evrouin decided to pray to Kiri-Jolith, the God of Righteous War, for guidance on the quest he'd been given by Angus, believing himself to be unworthy of the task of redeeming the knighthood. After he finished, he saw a glimpse of the White Stag running off in the forest, and started to follow it, but the DM noted that the rest of us didn't see it. We still followed after him, as the dark and foreboding forest around us became less so, until it was brightly lit by moonlight. I half-sarcastically asked the DM, "Which moon?" (Krynn has three moons) and he seriously answered, "You only see one."

That's when Evrouin found himself approaching a man on horseback, a man a head taller than he was, wearing a very familiar set of armor-- his own armor, in fact. The man lifted his helmet as he looked back, and remarked, "I used to have a hammer just like that!" At which point Evrouin blurted out, "Uncle Evro?!" This was his apparently dead namesake uncle.

And that's where DM Bob ended the session.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D Adventurer's League--

So the 2024 version of the D&D rulebooks are now the required resource for character building and whatnot. If you had a version of your AL character made under previous editions, you had to remake them under the 2024 rules. So Seb, my first AL character, a half-orc Path of the Totem Warrior Barbarian, had to get retooled using the 2024 version of that subclass, a Path of the Wild Heart Barbarian. Nothing too serious, I basically get the same benefits as before.

But AL also changed up their rulings about the number of magic items you're allowed to bring, and now I can have more than one rare magic item. Which means I can have both my Belt of Hill Giant Strength (which boosts Seb's STR score to 21, giving me a +5 STR bonus) and my Greatsword of Wounding (which does an extra 2d6 necrotic damage and potentially prevents the target from regaining their health for an hour), making me more effective in combat.

Especially when I looked at my barbarian features. A classic feature is Reckless Attack, which lets a barbarian in their Rage make an attack at advantage (roll 2d20 and take the higher roll) with the caveat that all attacks against the barbarian are at advantage until their next turn. But I now have a feature called Brutal Strike, which lets me forego advantage with Reckless Attack to do an extra 1d10 damage if my attack is successful. Landing a Brutal Strike does some extra stuff (such as pushing the victim away 10ft or reducing their movement speed) as well, but this wasn't as important for me this week.

Since my Level 10 Proficiency Bonus and my boosted STR score gives me a +9 to hit with the Greatsword of Wounding, that makes it much more likely for me to hit, there's less need to take advantage with Reckless Attack and just go for the Brutal Strike instead. Additionally, I have a feature called Great Weapon Master, which lets me add an additional 4 damage on a hit with a weapon with the "heavy" property (which a greatsword does), as well as one called Hew which lets me use my Bonus Action to attack an enemy if I landed a critical hit or reduced an enemy to 0 HP. Which means with a successful hit, I'm rolling 4d6+1d10+8+4 for damage. (2d6+8 base weapon damage + 2d6 necrotic from Wounding + 1d10 from Brutal + 4 from Great Weapon Master) And at Level 10, I have 2 Attacks per Action, so I can do that twice.

And this week, Seb got to really shine thanks to some great rolls.

First encounter, we get attacked by some ghosts and shadow-wolves, and Seb killed one of the ghosts on his turn, only to get possessed by the other. Fortunately, the other tank in the party grappled him, preventing Seb from attacking, and the others used any ability they could to rattle the ghost's possession to try to let me do another WIS save to free myself. They killed the ghost before I passed the save, which led to a fun bit of RP after the fight, as Angel (the other tank) maintained the "hug" to keep Seb grappled. I jokingly suggested a contested Athletic check (another barbarian feature lets me do these at advantage) which Dave (Angel's player) agreed to.

And then I rolled two Nat-20s.

It was the most pointless thing to "waste" a double crit on, but it was hilarious.

We ended up in several more combats against ghosts and shadow-dogs and such, and in the second encounter, I landed two separate Nat-20s-- which let me double the dice being rolled, meaning I was rolling 8d6+2d10+12 for damage. On the first, I dropped one ghost, Hewed to the next and attacked once, then used my second attack action to severely wound the next.

The last encounter started against a pseudo-possessed priestess until we dispelled the curse she was under, then turned into a fight against two cultist assassins and a pack of shadow-dogs. One of the assassins used a spell called Spider Climb to get up on the wall and fire at people with a poisoned crossbow, out of range of melee. Seb was surrounded by shadow-dogs, and thanks to his Wild Heart Barbarian feats, he was resistant to most damage coming his way. (Reducing damage taken by half.) The party's rogue got up from where he'd been knocked prone by a dog, used a Ring of Jumping to leap over people's heads, off the back of our druid and hit the assassin on the wall, knocking him to the floor and then killing him after landing.

It was my turn next (the dogs were just failing to hit Seb thanks to bad rolls from the DM) and had three dogs surrounding me. So I went for the first, killed it with my first attack, Hewed to the second and killed it, then turned to the third and killed it with my second attack. I rolled some very high rolls on the damage to make it even possible, and the rogue's player jokingly turned it into a bit of RP--

Rogue: "Hey, Seb, did you see how I took that assassin off the wall--?"
Seb: (becomes a whirling dervish of death and kills three enemies in one fell swoop)

I felt very accomplished and feel like I'm grasping a lot of the game mechanics in ways I never really did before.

[Nunavut Pants]

Last week, I hosted a board game afternoon. This is with a group of fairly light-weight gamers, so nothing really deep or crunchy or long.

For the first round, I was part of a foursome playing "Love Letter". This is a card game with the pasted-on theme of us all trying to get a letter to the princess, and various other members of the court helping or hindering us. Each player has a "hand" of one card. When it's their turn, a player draws one card and then plays one, either the one just drawn or the one that was their hand. Cards have different effects, and a common one is to knock a player out of the round. If the cards run out with more than one player still in the round, the value of each player's hand is compared, and the highest one wins. I tied for last place.

Then I moved on to what this group considers a heavyweight game, "Ticket to Ride". Three of us already knew how to play, while one was just learning. She came in last by a good ways, while I was third. I waited a little too long to play a long route, and one of the opponents claimed it instead. I didn't have enough train cars left to complete that one ticket, so it counted against me. Scores were close enough that if I had gotten that I would have won--but I didn't.

I've been continuing to play the on-line Terraforming Mars games. I have a few instances of "not last", but no more victories. And many last-place finishes. A couple of games ago, I thought I had a good shot by concentrating on cards with victory points on them, but the first place player was able to pour on the points in the last turn and finished well ahead of me. I've also had games where I made large mistakes and was never able to get things going. Like the last one, where I misread one of my starting cards and bought the wrong things to go with it. Oops. Live and learn, right?

[Jay 2K Winger]

Related to my main D&D group--

Mike, the previous DM, commissioned an artist to do a group portrait of the Stormbreakers, our party from the Mysteries of Albia campaign. He recently shared the line art of the piece with us, and it looks awesome. He's shared the artist's DeviantArt page, and based on this guy's previous work, it's going to look amazing when he's done. We're all looking forward to the finished product.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

After finishing up in Hylo, we got back on the road for Gwennyd, which is the capital-in-exile for the remnants of the Ergothian Empire. We're basically heading for Gwennyd because our ultimate goal is the erstwhile Ergothian capital in Southern Ergoth, Daltigoth. Problem is Daltigoth and most of S.Ergoth has been conquered by ogres, though the Empire still claims that territory as theirs. As we'd be going into a warzone, we feel it's best to visit the current capital first, get permission to go into S.Ergoth and Daltigoth, so we don't get misconstrued as "enemy combatants."

Anyway, on the road to Gwennyd, we pass various old burial mounds, and end up camping near one of them, where a strange compulsion kept trying to take hold of the party-- and succeeded in getting Cogburn, and later Runa the Barbarian-- to try to enter the mound.

This was pretty much our "puzzle-solving" session, compared to prior roleplay or combat sessions, as each door in the mound was locked by a different riddle. DM Bob wrote a couple of them himself, and otherwise grabbed a few riddles off the internet. There were other puzzles to figure out, which did get us some loot-- including 5 greater healing potions (a great find, since healing magic is currently 'lost' with the absence of the gods, and healing potions are very rare), a magic wand and 3 spell scrolls. (These weren't identified until after we were done the session.)

There was also a wizard's spellbook, an evil one, titled The Spellbook of Fistandantilus, Volume 1. Fistandantilus is an infamous figure in Dragonlance lore, basically the Evil Wizard. His name had been mentioned in DM Bob's history lessons in Session 0. So when his name was dropped, I'll admit I gawked a bit, scrambled to confirm his name was in my notes from Session 0. Our wizard, Justinius, always looking for more magic spells for his own spellbook, recognized the name and stuck this one into his bag of holding.

But one of the doors/rooms caused the party to get separated into separate blank white rooms. Except for Justinius the Wizard and Evrouin the Knight.

Justinius found himself transported to a familiar looking cold study. During his prologue vignette, as Justinius was applying to become a Wizard, he seemed to be on the verge of failure, only to find himself transported to a study of a black-robed wizard. Black-robed wizards are evil wizards, and this one (who did not identify himself during the prologue) offered Justinius a guarantee of success, in exchange for a cost and a favor. Accepting would have meant Justinius would become a red-robed wizard (neutral) instead of a white-robe (good), and while Justinius was tempted, he ultimately turned the Black Robe down. Well, present day, he finds himself back in that study, where the Black Robe dryly commented, "I believe you have something of mine." It was Fistandantilus himself. He extended a similar offer to Justinius, who again seemed tempted, but ultimately turned him down again.

Evrouin, meanwhile, found himself walking through a forest like the one in his homeland of Sancrist, and met a huge minotaur carrying a big double-headed axe and wearing armor, including symbol of the Solamnic Order of Knights. When he asked the minotaur about this, the minotaur replied that he'd been a boon companion of Huma Dragonbane, one of the greatest heroes in history, and named Kaziganthi (or Kaz for short). Stunned, Evrouin admitted he'd never heard of Kaz before. To Kaz, this was some aspect of the afterlife, and if Evrouin was here, he was meant to be tested. There followed a brief combat, showing how outmatched the knight was against Kaz, unable to land a blow and unable to defend against him. (Kaz's first attack roll was a 32, more than enough to beat Evro's defense.) Kaz impressed upon him that courage was all well and good, but humility was also important, such as knowing when you were outmatched. Evro stood down, promising to take his words to heart.

The finale of the dungeon was a fight against a wraith, a twisted spirit of a Solamnic Knight. After it was defeated, the corruption was dispelled, and the spirit-- now back in its noble aspect-- identified itself as Andras Solamnus, the grandson of the founder of the Solamnic Order.

So in all, a fun session with riddles and puzzles and lore, plus some character development.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Finally, after almost a month and a half, my D&D group finally returned to our main campaign. When we'd left off, we'd arrived in our kender's home village, and were awakened the following morning by someone going on about "Uncle Trapspringer is missing!" Since we're adventurers, and Catt Cleverjump (our kender) wanted to go after him to help rescue him, we geared up and set out to rescue him. Uncle had been taking some younglings out to go mushroom picking, but suddenly told them to run back home while he took off in the other direction. When we caught up, Uncle was springing around between the trees like he was Yoda fighting Palpatine, taunting them and flinging rocks with his hoopak (a kender weapon that is part spear, part lacrosse stick) at a pack of goblins. We took out the rest, but Uncle could smell more baddies approaching.

So we set an ambush, complete with traps along the way, so instead of dealing with another pack of goblins and the baddies, we only had to deal with the baddies (more of these black cloaked mutant types). Catt recognized one of the baddies as being her former traveling companion Waylon, but let's just leave it that he was probably not the benign relic-hunter she thought he was. We managed to take out the baddies, and Waylon full on Death Eater Disapparated out of there, but at the beginning of the fight, he took down Uncle with a bolt of lightning, and Uncle died shortly after the fight ended, but not before passing his pouches to Catt. These were specifically named "Trapspringer's Pouches," and they weren't just useful pouches to keep things in, these are a badge of office. Every kender settlement has its Trapspringer. By accepting them and attuning to them (they do have a magical property to them), Catt effectively becomes "Catt Trapspringer" (or "Auntie Trapspringer" to the village) and gets some useful charisma bonuses when dealing with other kender.

The rest of the session was taking Uncle's body back home for burial, then warning the local kender capital about the bad guys in the area. We got an impromptu shopping episode in, bartering in the kender market for maps and such. We got some old, pre-cataclysm maps of a city we're going to later, which has some magical properties to identify locations in the city. When my gnome artificer was asked if he wanted anything, he sarcastically said, "A map to the moon?" Well, they did have star charts, which Cogburn was only too happy to take, but he didn't have anything he was willing to part with as barter. So he asked the older kender map-seller if there was anything he wanted that Cogburn could make (artificer and all), and the kender admitted he can't jump around like he used to with his old legs.

Which is when Cogburn basically invented some shoes that let him use the Jump spell, and the old fella was happily bouncing all over the place. Cog dubbed them "Moon Shoes."

[Nunavut Pants]

A few more Terraforming Mars games in. I had two where I was very happy to announce "NOT LAST"!

Now I can say, "I WON!!!"

My start cards basically allowed me to win.

My corporation was "Chateau sur la Mer", which gave me extra money for playing adjacent to water, and a free city to start. I think this is a fan-made corp. Anyway, the random milestone awards included a bonus for the most tiles played adjacent to water. My opponents all wound up with ocean-playing cards early, so there were lots of oceans from early on to play next to.

My "Prelude" cards were "gain lots of income at the cost of less money right now", and "repeat your other Prelude card". So I wound up starting off with 12 extra money income every turn. And one of the Achievement awards was "get 10 production of any resource", which I grabbed on the first or second turn!

So I had a big advantage off the bat, and the skillful play of my opponents couldn't pull ahead of that advantage. Though one came within one Victory Point at the end!


...

I WON I WON I WON!

[Nunavut Pants]

Another Terraforming Mars game down, another last place finish. In this last one, I was doing very well indeed up until the last couple of turns ("generations"). Then my own Victory Point generation slowed down, and one opponent really sped up massively. Then the end of game hit (and I thought it would be one turn later) and at the last minute, my other opponent pulled a huge mess of Victory Points out (21 in a turn is a lot!) to take 2nd handily. Relegating me to last place yet again.

If it weren't for my ability to win about 1 in 4 of the solo games, I would think I didn't know how to play this...

[Ironclad Alibi]

VPs Virulent Pox? Violet Pustules? Venomous Potion? Violent Puking? An engine that can do that would be...worrying...

Really Kit-Ginevra? You of all people should know that VP = Virgin Pals.

[Kit-Ginevra]

Three more last-place finishes. I'm getting to where I can mostly hang with the other players up to the midpoint of the game, but then things fall apart for me just as everyone else's "engines" start really producing VPs.

VPs Virulent Pox? Violet Pustules? Venomous Potion? Violent Puking? An engine that can do that would be...worrying...