Tabletop Fun

[Ghel]

In the latest session, I was playing my goblin warlock, Ninny, again. The main part of the adventure was pretty standard - go to a place, fight a yeti, travel back, get paid. But at the end of the session, we did some shopping, which was far more memorable. I’m playing my character as fairly naive. She doesn’t really understand what money is, and she didn’t even consider bartering to get a better deal on the sparkly magic hat she wanted. So the rest of the party was giving her advice on how not to get taken advantage of or stolen from. Then I described Ninny’s ratty armor and cloak with the sparkly hat, and everybody decided Ninny needed better armor and a new cloak. I felt so welcome. 😁

[Jay 2K Winger]

Mysteries of Albia--

This week was largely a series of combat encounters in a cave I nicknamed the "Mouth of Evil" since it had a pervasive evil aura about it, and the DM specifically described stalactites and stalagmites as resembling teeth in the mouth of the cave as we were entering it. We still put big DPS up in spite of a lack of our Fighter-Barbarian (who I've dubbed both IC and OOC as "Saint Beckett, Slayer of Monsters") (Jesse has been out of the country the last few weeks, and joined when he could via Discord, but wasn't able to connect this week) thanks to a few NPC allies on side.

Among the encounters was a young white dragon and its undead kobold minions ("zombolds" I immediately dubbed them), but Caradoc the Druid cast a Wall of Fire around the dragon, scorching it every round and preventing it from getting involved-- it tried climbing the walls and looking over the wall, but we were all staying out of range of its breath weapon. In the last round, I landed with a critical hit from a flaming bullet, and the wall of fire burned it to death on its turn. I asked, for flavor, if it could be my shot that was the killing blow, and everyone seemed to agree.

Then we came to the source of all the evil permeating the landscape in fantasy!Nunavut-- a coven of hags, which had been kept sealed in the Mouth of Evil courtesy of the macguffin we were looking for. (Turns out the macguffin, a reliquary of a historical figure in-setting, isn't akin to the Hand of Vecna, but is in fact a Good-aligned artifact.) Only, the hags had just broken the seal courtesy of a willing sacrifice-- another Lightning Guild/Dragon Cult member, and the accomplice of the changeling we'd captured the previous session-- and taunted the party. Even offered out forecasts of the future for three of the party, but failed to charm them.

We got swarmed by zombies the hags summoned up, but that was okay, because Caradoc the Druid fell back on old reliable-- using his Summon Creature spell to summon a herd of elks to stampede all over them. He nicknamed the herd "the Elkridge Boys," but this week flavored it (since we were in fantasy!Canada) that they were caribou instead. ("Caribou Crew" I dubbed them) Between our NPC allies holding the line against the zombies, and Caradoc going ham with his Wildshape to turn into a big bristled saber-toothed panther (a moorbounder), we held our own. My gunslinger got the kill on the last hag standing with his flaming bullet again.

And now the Hand of Franklin artifact is speaking in Vash the Rogue's head, telling her to "touch, and remember" -- and that's where we'll pick up next time.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jay's Home Game--

Given how trying to prep has been tricky for me with our Waterdeep campaign, I told my roommates that we'd be instead switching to one-shot adventures, so we can keep things moving along, and get a mix of RP and combat and so on. I also sweetened the pot by telling them I'd bump them to Level 4, give them a magic item (either a +1 weapon or a +1 shield, or a class-specific item), and some gold for good measure. (Our cleric and paladin both were disappointed they didn't have enough gold to buy plate armor yet.)

I wanted it to be a fun, possibly silly, little game, so I chose one of the adventures I'd done with D&D Adventurers League, "The Peculiar Case of the Selptan Felines." I admit I wasn't expecting the cleric to suddenly be more bloodthirsty than the rogue, though I managed to dissuade them from just smashing any and all cats on sight.

It was a good call to run the adventure. They all had fun, and they agreed that the vaguely-interconnected one-shots idea is probably better. I'll have to provide a little advice to a few of them about spell choices, or how to properly use some of their class features. The druid didn't use her Wildshape ability very much, and the rogue completely forgot about Sneak Attack-- though using that would have required being able to land an actual attack. (The dice were not kind to him.)

[Jay 2K Winger]

Forgot to add a bit from Mysteries of Albia last week--

The changeling (when he was still disguised, but captured) was set up to be a little too freaky for Vash to intimidate with threats of violence, sounding more excited than anything when she threatened to break his feet. I remarked on this above the table--

Me: "He's too much of a freak for threats."
DM: (smiles, nodding) "Yup."
Bob: "He's into that kind of thing."
Eric: "Oh no."
Me: "He 100% is on the list with Ashley Madison."
(table breaks down laughing)
Bob: "And he likes foot stuff."
Me: "Oh definitely."

Even Mike the DM had to laugh at that one.

[Nunavut Pants]

Just picked up a copy of Dominion (the Big Box set). Hoping I can find someone who will play it with me.

Still doing the play-by-mail-ish Splendor on BGA. It's kind of tedious; each player gets up to 2 days to make their move...

Still playing real-time Six Nimmt. Still doing poorly at it.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Mysteries of Albia--

The current case our band of investigators are handling is less a mystery and more "you guys get things done" and "you prevented a major assassination attempt," so we've been sent to accompany this ironclad out to determine what happened to the HMS Terror, which had returned to fantasy!England a year prior, with all hands missing but for the captain, Sir Francis Crozier. In our setting, Crozier had family ties that went all the way back to the founding of fantasy!England, and there was this sort of reliquary that had belonged to the family forebearer, but which turns out to be more or less our equivalent to the infamous Hand of Vecna, a D&D artifact of massive evil power, severed from the archlich and minor divinity Vecna himself.

The past few sessions, we've been traversing rivers and lakes and such in fantasy!Canada. There's been some big roleplay moments. One of the more significant ones came when our psychic rogue/warlock Vash tried to offer some comforting words to the frustrated and angry church-raised fighter Beckett. Vash had previously gone dream-walking through the party's dreamscapes, including Beckett's, seeing some dream-memory of a younger Beckett and a young girl, and tried to assure Beckett that he'd see "her" again. Only for Beckett to reveal to her (the rest of the party isn't aware yet) that while he does love "her," he must sever all connection to her for her sake. I think "she" is supposed to be his sister, because Beckett told Vash that his deadbeat parents had sold him to the church, and he willingly gave up major memories of his childhood to forget about them. It was a huge lore drop that none of us saw coming. It also explained the anger Beckett seemed to be feeling, as his faith in the church (though not the gods it worships) has wavered some, and he weaponized it when he revealed that he'd multiclassed into barbarian, allowing him to use the Rage ability to further increase his damage output.

This week's session saw no combat, but a mystery to solve as someone had sabotaged the ship's engine with a bomb and we needed to work out who was responsible. Fortunately, my gunslinger has access to a spell called Clue which highlights footprints and fingerprints, and colorizes each to a different individual, allowing us to rule out most of the crew. Only, we still got conflicting information, as several clues (including the spell) pointed to the ship's craftsman (carpenter), but who had an alibi. And after clearing him, other evidence pointed at a different crewman. We finally narrowed it down to specific crewmate, but when Vash/Knives confronted him in a one-on-one interrogation, that crewmate suddenly turned out to be a changeling, a member of the Lightning Guild (a thieves'/assassins' guild behind several of our cases), and a cultist of an evil dragon god. And then the changeling bit down on a cyanide capsule in his tooth to kill himself.

Good plan, except our Irish fey druid has the Revivify spell that can bring someone back from the dead. Which we did, and then the druid had the changeling hauled off to the Feywild for "extraordinary rendition" in some prison run by the Unseelie Court, where they would eventually break him. Except one of the things the changeling revealed before being dragged off was the new head of the Guild (called the Thunderlord) is Vash's biological father, much to her shock. She admitted to being adopted, but had always believed her bio-father was dead.

Toward the end of the session, Vash admitted to feeling conflicted about her father, implying some kind of obligation to him. Charlie (me) and Caradoc (the druid) both put the kibosh on that, saying that he hadn't raised her or been involved in her life. "He might be your father, but he wasn't your Dad." (Mike the DM, after this line got dropped, just nodded and said, "There it is." He knew someone would go for it.)

But then the topic got on to our satyr Caradoc, who was exiled from the Feywild some 3000+ years ago, and has been serving as the Seelie Court's deniable quasi-diplomatic asset in the material plane. We knew he's been cursed so he can't get drunk-- he doesn't get to experience the fun side of drinking, as he would put it-- so we assumed that he had drank the wrong person's expensive/valuable liquor or something...

(paraphrased)
Caradoc: "I got exiled for doin' what a satyr does."
Charlie: "Ah, you fucked up and drank the wrong person's booze?"
Caradoc: "No, you had the first part right."
Charlie: "You.. fucked... up?"
Vash: "Wait--"
Charlie & Vash: "You fucked Titania?"
Caradoc: "Yeah. I cucked Oberon."
Charlie: "Oh."
Caradoc: "The King of the Unseelie Court."
Vash: "Oh."
Charlie & Vash: "Oh no."

So Caradoc's exile was less because he'd pissed off his queen, and more a political move, because if Oberon were to find out, and Caradoc had still been around in the Seelie Court, Titania would have had to make an example of him.

Still, finding out your party's druid once cucked Oberon was both hilarious ("So that's why he's always depicted with the antlers!") and terrifying.

[Ghel]

I played in a one-shot last weekend that will hopefully become an ongoing campaign. Our DM has been having trouble scheduling games, so she came up with this mercenary-type group that takes on jobs in the game. With that setup, players can be gone a session and it’s no big deal. Players can swap out characters, too, if one isn’t working out for any reason.

I played my goblin warlock (pact of the chain). She has a quasit familiar that stayed invisible most of the time. During our only real battle that session, I had my familiar attack one of the enemies. The other PCs had softened up the enemy already, so my familiar’s claws took it out. I described it hanging on to the creature’s tail with one clawed hand while it dug in with the other, becoming visible as it attacked, doing enough damage to kill it. One of the other PCs goes, “what was that!?” As my familiar disappears again. LOL

[Nunavut Pants]

I got into a four-player game of Settlers on BGA. I wound up starting with settlements on both of the 6 spaces, so naturally 6 didn't roll for the first third of the game. One of my settlements was on three wheat fields, a 6, a 3, and an 11. The others were rolled at least once before the 6 ever was... I was able to use some port trades to pick up necessary resources, as well as trades (usually unfavorable, two of my goods for one of theirs) with my opponents.

I picked up two dev cards, one early and one late. Both were VP cards. I was able to upgrade one settlement into a city at the point that I only had three settlements. I was able to expand, and eventually got to an 8 space. After about halfway through the game, 6es started rolling at a decent rate and I was raking in the resources. I had a 3:1 port and expanded to a 2:1 for one of the things I made a lot of. The battle for Longest Road was somewhat intense; it bounced between three people for a while. I got it once but lost it very quickly after that.

I was finally able to leverage my 2:1 port for enough resources to build 2 more roads in one turn--and it was the turn after I had drawn that second VP card, making my (hidden) total 8. Add two more for Longest Road, and I won my first try at on-line Settlers!!

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL Waterdeep Dragon Heist--

The continuing adventures of my Shadar-kai Twilight Cleric, who may be a cleric, but is decidedly not a nice person. The DM and I both agree that while he might not be Evil, he's definitely not Good.

Previous session, we came across a bunch of skeletons that attacked us. This session, we ran into a couple of kenku thugs from the Xanathar Guild, who had taken a man in wizard robes hostage, having stolen the macguffin from him. They slice his throat and one escapes, while Pell (my cleric) used Healing Word to keep the wizard from dying. The other thug is killed and the rest of the party chases after the one who got away. I stayed behind to stabilize the wizard, and question him briefly, but found the wizard knew nothing about the macguffin, there was nothing to learn from him. Which led to this exchange--

Pell: "Those skeletons... were those yours?"
Wizard: (a necromancer) "...Yes?"
Pell: (casts Inflict Wounds)
Wizard: (dies)

The rest of the table was a bit surprised, but I pointed out, "Shadar-kai are blessed by the Raven Queen [the goddess of death], who notoriously hates the undead."

Later, as we caught up on the kenku who escaped, we were jumped by a bunch of Xanathar Guild thugs, who decided to taunt us while attacking one of our downed allies. Which led to me getting back-to-back one-liners.

Thug 1: "The Xanathar sends its regards."
Pell: (casts Spiritual Weapon)
Thug 1: (gets head knocked off)
Pell: "Run along back to the Xanathar."
Thug 2: "...The Xanathar--"
Monk: (punches Thug 2's jaw off)
Pell: "Never mind. We'll bring our regards to the Xanathar ourselves."

[Nunavut Pants]

Ah, the old double-post...

[Nunavut Pants]

Signed up for Boardgame Arena recently. Played a bunch of games of 6 Nimmt, and now on my 2nd of Azul. The interfaces are a bit clunky, but not terrible. Certainly a lot easier than playing in person, particularly while I've got this cold...

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL Waterdeep Dragon Heist--

Our party of adventure capitalists spent most of this session following various leads from place to place and kept running afoul of bandits or thugs in the employ of the Xanathar Guild. The DM tried to tie us down with some combats against large numbers of enemies, but she'd forgotten she gave us access to a Necklace of Fireballs with two charges left. Our Warlock used them to great effect. First in one combat when the initial gang of five bandits were joined by like eight more, but Warlock just dropped a fireball on five of them.

Then later, as we're leaving a mausoleum where we found a macguffin, four duergar thugs ambushed us, getting a surprise round, but then Warlock hucked his last fireball at them. Three out of the four were wiped out immediately. The fourth took a ton of damage anyway. And then it was my Twilight Cleric's turn, so I used a spell called Toll the Dead, which hits them with necrotic damage if they fail the save. If they're missing any health, it's 1d12 damage instead of 1d8. And I rolled max damage on that 1d12. Which was enough to kill him.

The DM asked me, "How do you take him out?" I said my Cleric glared at him, pointed a finger, and declared, "Join your friends." And then the last duergar just bled out from every orifice before dropping dead.

As I quoted from Honor Harrington, "Why is it that people like you always think you're more ruthless than people like me?"

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Mysteries of Albia--

So we got to roleplay out some downtime stuff between cases for our party. A good chunk of that was put into three of the party's getting their coffee shop off the ground. But I also got to have the one-on-one conversation between my character, Charlie, and Eric's character, Vash; a convo that Eric had admitted that Vash wasn't looking forward to. When I brought up that Charlie was going to go find Vash, Eric said "Vash is hiding from him." The DM asked for a Stealth check against my Investigation check, and Eric rolled badly.

The key focus of the convo was that Charlie had noticed, despite her attempts to hide it, that Vash had been using magic. It had begun when she'd used Eldritch Blast in the sharpshooting competition, and then in our most recent case he'd seen her using magic. It was enough to rouse his suspicions. He did bring up that there was a spell called Finger Guns (included in our campaign from the same supplement that supplied the Gunslinger class I was using), which she tried to claim she'd been using.

But I'd anticipated this, and since no one else in the party used the Finger Guns spell, I was able to flavor it appropriately by having Charlie explain he'd been taught the spell while in the Army, and that mastering the spell required knowing everything about how a gun worked, mechanically and chemically. And given he'd seen Vash looking completely lost at how a gun worked in that same recent case, he knew the spell she'd used wasn't Finger Guns. The DM was impressed with my Columbo-esque observations and awarded Inspiration for it.

The basic gist of the conversation from there was Charlie asking Vash if she'd made some kind of deal with one of the various fiends that we'd encountered, or if it was in fact just from her fiendish-half Knives. Knives confirmed it was the latter, and Charlie just warned her, "If you get her too deep in debt, then I'll drop you where you stand."

[Nunavut Pants]

Hosted gaming this month with the lightweight Friends Network crowd. Three games were played; one table of Mahjong, one table of Rummikub, and one table of TransAmerica.

I may push for one of my other games next time, possibly Splendor.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL Waterdeep Dragon Heist--

As predicted, Matt the Newbie was bewildered to hear that we'd acquired a tavern, but his contributions this week were minimal. He was very tired and mentally checked out, spending most of the session on his phone. He was apologetic about it, which gives him a pass in my book for this week.

No actual combat this session, since it was all to do with our getting the Trollskull Manor Tavern back up to operational status. Persuading the ghost haunting the place that we intended to keep the manor open as a tavern, and thus acquiring a ghostly bartender. (My Cleric admittedly did mildly threaten to exorcise him if he made trouble.) We had to decide on the decor/vibe for the tavern, and settled on "gothic Applebee's," then hire appropriately perky staff. ("We're wanna have a staff full of Abby's from NCIS.")

Then came the courting from various different factions, who'd heard about our clearing out the Xanathar Guild hideout, and who wanted to get us on side. We heard them all out, of course. Or, as it went--

Ranger: "We're business owners now, we're open to further opportunities!"
Me: "Right. We're adventure capitalists!"

This broke Ranger's player, which in turn broke most of the table, the DM and myself included. The DM even started leaning into that, and before long "Adventure Capitalists" became our party's name.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL Waterdeep Dragon Heist--

So between my AL Waterdeep campaign happening every two weeks and my home game Waterdeep campaign skipping a session because most of the players were sick or recovering from a nasty cold, the two campaigns are at nearly the same point in each. AL Waterdeep just cleared the sewer hideout, but we ended up having to face off against not just the half-orc wizard, but also the mind flayer's pet intellect devourer. The flayer itself had hidden itself nearby and did take actions on its turns, but once both the wizard and the devourer were dead, the flayer revealed itself, advised us not to fight it, and then just left.

The intellect devourer did hold true to its name, however, as it was able to hit our bard with its party trick and reduced her Intelligence score to zero, effectively rendering her catatonic. After rescuing the "client" and getting back topside, we learned from one of the people we rescued that Volo, who had hired us, probably wasn't good for the 700gp he'd promised us. We weren't happy to hear this, especially after coming face to face with a damned mind flayer, so we reacted accordingly when we got back to Volo at the Yawning Portal tavern. I got to have some fun with this. My character Pell may be the party's Cleric, but that doesn't mean that he's always nice.

Volo: So, er, I take then that Floon is--
Pell: Safe. Renaer is taking him to a healer as we speak.
Volo: Excellent! This calls for a celebration! Mozarella sticks all arou--
Pell: Wait, hold up, because the job spec never mentioned having to deal with a mind flayer.
Volo: A mind flayer?! (takes out notebook) Tell me everything.
Pell: No.

This did break the table for a moment, including the DM. We got back to talking about payment, etc., and Volo admitted he didn't have the money, as such.

Volo: I, er, don't have that much coin on me.
Mouse: We also accept gems.
Pell: Or magical items.
Volo: I, er, I don't have gems or magical items. But I can offer you something potentially even more valuable. Property!
Us: Property?
Volo: Have you ever dreamed of owning your own tavern?
Pell: No.

It comes down to that Volo has the deed to a disused tavern in the city, which he is willing to sign over to us, and even cover the transfer of ownership fees ("How generous of you."), which our characters still weren't completely wild about, but we as players knew was necessary for the next stage of the campaign. So we agree to this, and will meet up with Volo in the morning at a nearby back to do the paperwork with one of the magistrates.

However, the party now doesn't completely trust Volo not to skip town on us, and I'm personally wondering if I should snatch Volo's hat or something, when...

Mouse: (OOC) I start reaching out and pulling his notebook toward me.
Volo: Ah! Excuse me, that is--
Pell: Collateral.
Volo: Those are my notes for my next book!
Pell: And as soon as the deed is signed over to us, you can have them back.

Volo also offered to help us get Ned the Bard fixed, giving us the address of someone who can help who owes him a favor. One trip halfway across town later, we've met this higher level cleric, who casts a Greater Restoration spell on Ned, restoring their mind. Long rest, we meet up with Volo at the bank, sign the deed.

Volo: Excellent! I can give you a tour of your new property, if you'd like. But, I would like my notes back please.
Burnie: Hold on, let's tour this place first.
Volo: I, er, believe the terms of the agreement were that I would get my notes back once the property was signed over.
Pell: Hold on, guys, he makes an excellent point. That was the agreement, and as we are people of our word, here are your notes back, sir.

Of course, we get to the property, and it's in some disrepair, it's got some broken floorboards, some subsidence, neglect, leaky roof and ceiling... All told, we're looking at 1000gp to renovate the place, plus more if we want to make Trollskull Tavern operational again. One player questioned why we'd even run the tavern, until I pointed out, "Once all that stuff is done, it's basically passive income for us."

We did joke that Matt-- a new D&D player (this would have been his third-ever session of D&D) who had to leave early due to some emergency-- is going to come back in two weeks, hear the recap and go, "Wait, what? We own a tavern now?!"

[Jay 2K Winger]

Interesting little note--

Our Mysteries of Albia campaign is about 75% finished, per our DM, with about two or three more of our detective cases before we reach the endgame around Level 10. Bob, our most experienced player, will be taking over as DM for our next campaign, which he's said will be in the Dragonlance setting, with some of his own homebrewed changes. Enough that he's written a near 50-page supplement for it, and will need multiple Session 0's to prep us for it-- one to go over the setting and whatnot we need to know, then another to roll up our characters, and possibly a third to finish set-up of our party before Session 1.

It has me excited, but also frustrated, since I don't know enough about the setting (and that's before Bob's changes) to start pre-planning my character and backstory. Can't wait to learn more.