Tabletop Fun

[Nunavut Pants]

Nice...

Went to a Board Game Cafe with a friend last night. A group of us played "Poetry for Neanderthals" as a "player-summoning game" to start the evening. It's a guess-the-word team game, but all clues given have to be one-syllable words. And, of course, you can't say the word (or part of the word) that you are giving clues for. If you break those rules, you get bopped by an inflatable "caveman club". You can string together sentences, as long as all of the words are only one syllable. Each card has a short word and either a longer word containing that word or a two-word phrase containing that first word.

My turn as the clue-giver, my team did very well. Some of my teammates were very good guessers, and I was able to use the sentence rule after some initial stumbling. After trying "flat" and "food", I was finally able to use "flat as a", and a couple of people called out "Pancake!" Which was the right answer. For the longer one, I said "not red fruit", and someone picked up on "blueberry pancakes" right away. It's a fun social game that is simple to learn.

After that, the group split into individual games. I wound up in a group playing "Wingspan", which I had heard of but never played. All five of us had also never played, but one of the store's employees had, so she taught us.

It's an "engine-building" game, where you use resources to purchase the ability to get more resources, and pick up victory points along the way. There is also a "hidden VP" mechanic where you can get a modest amount of VPs for meeting specific conditions, and the end of each of the four rounds has VP scoring for having the most X (in our case, one of them was "number of eggs in a specific kind of nest") with lesser rewards for 2nd/3rd/4th/5th place.

In Wingspan, you start with nine actions per turn. Each person takes one action, then the next takes, one, and so on. Each round, you get one fewer actions. Your actions include playing a bird card from your hand to the board, getting food from a set available in a dice tower, getting eggs, and getting more bird cards. Each bird card you play goes into one of three environments (forest, prairie, wetland, each one row on your tableau) and has a cost in food to buy. There are six columns in each environment, and you fill them from left to right. Each environment is associated with an action except for the Play a Bird action, and if you take the action associated with Forest, you go through each bird you have in the Forest and use its special "activation" ability--if it has one. Some birds have a "when you play this" action, and others have an action that is triggered by other players.

We stopped the game after three of the four rounds, as it was getting late and the cafe was going to close. I was able to put together enough birds and enough end-of-the-turn points to take victory, which is always nice. But as I said, none of us had played before.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL: Descent into Avernus--

I've playfully tried to roleplay a rivalry between my Aasimar Celestial Warlock and another player's Dragonborn Fiend Warlock, because of their "opposing" patrons. He has always flatly turned it down, and I finally shrugged and stopped trying, respecting his wishes.

Then, this week, my Aasimar tried to read our map of Avernus, which always requires a WIS save, or the person suffers a short-term madness. I failed the save, rolled a d100, and was told by the DM that my character was Frightened of the map for the next 100 minutes. Cue Dragonborn's player declaring that he would "torment" my character during the drive across Avernus to our next destination by pulling childish "hey look over here!"/"stop it!" antics.

The DM then realized he'd read the wrong madness off the table and retconned it that my character was basically catatonic, between bouts of screaming and sobbing. Dragonborn's player was disappointed...

Me: "I've been trying to play up a rivalry between your guy and mine for weeks, and NOW you're finally down for it?"
Him: "I wanted the imbalance of power in place before I would commit."
Me: "...y'know what, that's fair."

I respect that character choice, cuz it fits with his warlock's schtick.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Mysteries of Albia--

This week, Camilla, our fifth player, was back! ...for just the one week. She's finished her schooling and she has a few weeks before her new job will start paying her. Explanation for her PC's appearance was that her ongoing investigation into the leaks within the detective agency had led her to the same town, and a quick communication to the agency had her hook up with us for our case.

From the session:
* Reginald Porter. Ambassador. Ex-Detective. Master of Disguise.
* Crystalpunk World's Fair Expo, brought to you by Fantasy Christoph Waltz.
* The Gang Takes Part in Not Even The Olympics
* A Bizarre Philosophical Discussion About Napkins?
* Wait, Our Rogue Dipped into Warlock Multiclass?
* Prepare for the Crystal Maze!

[Jay 2K Winger]

One Night in Waterdeep--

Did a little one-shot with a new group and a new DM (to me), and for like the first third-to-half of the session, we were all rolling pretty badly. But it all came together in the final encounter, when our rogues got a string of critical hits on the boss. Including an honest-to-god DOUBLE NAT-20. The DM decided that for that 1-in-400 chance, the player could either roll triple the damage dice, or he could decree something else would happen from the attack (which would still get double damage dice) which would impose a temp penalty on the boss. The player decided to blind the boss, was told to roll a d4 to determine how long the boss would be blinded. It was only for one round-- but since the Double Crit happened during the surprise round, it meant that the boss never got a chance to attack before the remaining crits depleted all of their health. (That's what happens when you have two Rogue Assassins in the party, along with a pretty tanky paladin, and a warlock.)

The one-shot was basically How We Saved Christmas, as the Clauses had been kidnapped by Santa's sister Eldara, who had made some pact with Coldthulu. (Actually the name, from the module.)

Some of the bad rolls at the start of the session resulted in my warlock being drunk for the first third, rolling with disadvantage on everything.

drunk!Warlock: "Hey, you make the best worst decisions when you're not entirely sober. (Ask me how I know.)"
Rogue: "Also, the worst best decisions."
drunk!Warlock: "That's true!"

While investigating the crashed sleigh, the rogues found Santa's sack of gifts, but it had been corrupted by Eldara's magic, so opening it blasted out cold air that froze things, and it only gave people frozen coal. My warlock hadn't been paying attention while they were investigating it, so when he turned around to see it, they told him it was a bag of coal. But then one of them decided to try to up-end the bag and shake it out, resulting in the cold blast freezing part of the ground. Which led to ...

drunk!Warlock: "I thought you said it was a bag of coal, not a bag of cold."

[Jay 2K Winger]

Mysteries of Albia--

It's Murder on the Trans Channel Express!

* The Iron Monger Shot In The Back!
* The Widow Who Spiked His Drink!
* The Illegitimate Son With A Grievance!
* A Jilted Lover And Her New Paramour!
* The Former Business Partner With A Grudge!
* The Femme Fatale With An Agenda!
* The Mechanical Man Enraged With Grief!
* A Secret Weapon Silenced And Stolen!
* Who Among This Cast of Characters Has a Connection To The Mysterious Lightning Guild?
* ...Not To Mention the Cult of the Dragon!

All this, and The Gang Decides To Do Some Industrial Espionage.

[EricKei]

I normally summarize my game for my players on our discord, as we meet weekly. While I usually go into some detail, I was tired this week. Thus, entirely out of context:

Summary of this week's game:
- Moist.
- Giant turtles (good). Dwarves (good). VeloAtrociraptors (bad).

[Jay 2K Winger]

From Mysteries of Albia--

A basic run-down of what happened this week...
* Roleplay! Shopping episode!
* A frank discussion about why the cockney neighborhood Charlie's from stays poor. (Basically, no one will hire cockneys for the higher paying jobs.)
* The Gang Gets Involved In Politics Whether They Like It Or Not
* A railway magnate makes a Titanic-esque "new era/man triumphs over nature" speech before his new train's maiden voyage across an channel-spanning bridge.
* An Irish Druid goes into a bar and drinks it.
* Murder on the Trans Channel Express!
* Who could have seen this coming?!
* Everyone. Everyone saw this coming.

[Nunavut Pants]

Gaming happened this past Saturday. I missed it; Da Boss and I came down with a cold or some such and were stuck at home, mostly napping.

2/5 stars, do not recommend.

[Jay 2K Winger]

So Mysteries of Albia took a week off, since DM Mike needed more time to prep our next case. So Bob DM'ed a Level 18 one-shot for us.

My favorite line from the session came from my bard--

"I'll sing the song of your bravery-- I mean, foolishness-- I mean, bravery. No, I mean, foolishness."

[Jay 2K Winger]

Mysteries of Albia--

We wrapped up the pro wrestling case this week. Turns out the culprit was not, as we had all suspected, the Kane pastiche ("Texas Red") with the fire magic, but it was in fact ... THE UNDERTAKER!

He had a long monologue/motive rant before the boss fight, all about the hate he had for his adoptive father (the victim of our case) and for his "disloyal brother," the deal he made with an archdevil for magic power of his own, etc. When it was all concluded, Eric and I (the two big wrestling fans at our table) both noted, "That's more than even the real Undertaker ever said."

First proper boss battle of our campaign. Legendary actions and resistances (game mechanics which allow high-level NPCs/opponents to act out of turn and to no-sell some effects/attacks) and lair actions.

It was very satisfying for Beckett, our church-raised Fighter, to get the kill with a Scroll of Banishing Smite, which combined with a Nat-20 gave him 12d10 to roll for a whopping 61 points of damage, to smack the soul right out of Taker's body and into another realm. Further adding to the legend of "Saint Beckett, Slayer of Monsters."

...and immediately afterward, the Archdevil that had empowered the Undertaker turned up to reclaim the macguffin that was the source of the deals/power. Jesse (Beckett's player) did want to try to smack the macguffin out of her hand by attacking her, but everyone at the table (DM included) told him that attacking an Archdevil (one of the rulers of one of the Nine Hells) while at Level 5, would be a monumentally bad idea, so he backed down.

Though we did find out from the Archdevil's appearance-- and her interaction with her-- that Vash's alter Knives, isn't actually an alter. Vash had intimated as such at the end of our previous case, that Knives had previously been part of the "Thunder Lord" (the leader of a vicious assassin/thieves' guild that Vash used to belong to) before joining with her. But the Archdevil recognized Knives and said, "Long time, no see!"

So we've now got things to follow up on at our next session. First, how to word our official report. When we reported that a ghost was responsible for the murders in a previous case, it caused a great deal of problems, leading to changes in church doctrine, and political unrest courtesy of a nasty MP that has some kind of agenda. If acknowledging ghosts can cause that sort of issue, we need to be careful about how to phrase our report to leave out talk of devils and devil artifacts. Second, what to do about Knives, since while she seems to be generally on our side, we now know she has some sort of fiendish ties, and had been quite keen to get her hand on the macguffin.

On a more humorous/also alarming note, Caradoc-- our Irish fey druid-- has been making plans. It's no secret among the team that he's opposed to many things Albia does-- not least the magic crystal-powered tech-- and he's all for taking down said things. But his player's noted that he's recruiting people to the cause where he can, and he's also now rallying animals to it as well. He's amassed a "great pigeon army" by feeding them and instructing them to harass the aforementioned Nasty MP by shitting on him from a great height whenever he ventures outdoors. Now he's also doing the same with rats. His player's sworn to move up to cats, then dogs, then horses in his campaign to ruin the man.

In his words, "I'm building Steve Irwin's I.R.A." Fckin genius.

[Nunavut Pants]

On Sunday, I played "Potion Explosion" with one of the groups I'm in. It had a fairly unique way of distributing resources that involved a pachinko-like apparatus and a bunch of marbles. The quality of those components could have been better; I suspect the marbles in that copy of the game will be replaced with actual glass marbles (that are round!) in the near future. You pick a single marble from one column of the apparatus, and if that causes an "uphill" marble and "downhill" marble of the same color as each other to collide, you get those marbles as well. And if that causes another same-color collision... I think someone got seven marbles with one pick on one occasion!

The marbles are used to complete potions, which can later be used for various special effects. Things like grab one extra marble but you can't collect extras from collisions--which we would use to set up collisions which we could get a bunch of marbles from. Or treat three leftover marbles as any color. Or remove all marbles of one color from a given column.

I wound up able to leverage my potions pretty well, and tied for the win with one of the other players. The other two in the game were far behind us in score, but only one apart from each other!

To finish off, we played "Just One" again, which we all enjoyed.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Mysteries of Albia--

This was the beginning of the "pro wrestling" case, as the DM had warned about. The team was investigating the death of a wrestling promoter, and there were references aplenty to classic wrestling characters. The promoter was a combination of Vince McMahon and Paul Bearer (to the point that his 'gimmick name' was Doug Graves), and adoptive father to two brothers who portrayed characters called the 'Cowboys from Hell,' and were basically Undertaker & Kane.

While investigating the burned manor of the promoter, we found that something had been stolen from a hidden panel, and that it had likely been taken by a rather large person. We pointed out that wrestlers tend to be big fellas...

Me: (IC) "Yeah. Like Beckett here."
(pause)
Me: (IC) "Speaking of, you can account for your whereabouts this morning, can't you, Beckett?"
(everyone laughs)
Jesse: Even Beckett laughs at that.
Me: (IC) "See? I knew you had a sense of humor."

As I expected, we ended up having to participate in a wrestling match, in exchange for information from another promoter (who was basically Eric Bischoff). So we put forth Beckett (aforementioned Fighter who is 6'4" and ripped) and Caradoc (druid who likes to wildshape into a bear) to take on a pastiche tag team of Hulk Hogan & Randy Savage. In the pre-match promo, Jesse did a sort of knock-off Stone Cold Steve Austin voice, while "Bearadoc" just roared, growled and gesticulated. But there was a great line--

Interviewer: "Where are ya'll from?"
Jesse: (IC twice over) "We're from the Land of Whoopass, and we're here to give a seminar on our native culture!"

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D Adventurers League--

Megan, one of the DMs, was playing at the table this week, along with a couple of other people I've not played with before. Megan, bless her, was trying, but the dice gods kept cursing her with bad rolls for the first half of our session. Her table neighbor offered to roll one of her dice to see if her own better rolls would pass on to Megan, but sadly, this just meant the dice curse passed over to her instead.

Meanwhile, the newest player at the table rolled no less than FIVE Nat-20's during the session. Openly, no bullsh*t, no weighted dice or anything. By the end of the night, after her fifth Nat-20, I declared, "You are the Anti-Megan!"

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D Adventurers League-- Descent Into Avernus--

So, we're in Hell. Trying to see if it's possible to save Elturel from further damnation, and to maybe stop Baldur's Gate from going the same route. Dave (who more or less runs our D&D AL group/discord) was playing with Minmaxer DM'ing our Avernus campaign, and Dave had brought out a character of his that I'd only ever heard about. An Assassin Rogue dressed somewhat like a harlequin (bells and all) called Jaunty.

As Dave put it, "Jaunty is here to break Minmaxer's campaign." Not least because he's a Level 10 character, the max level he can be for this tier of play. I don't know specifically HOW Dave managed to square some of the insane bonuses that he has, but Dave will absolutely follow the AL rules about character creation and whatnot. But Jaunty has +10 to his initiative, +9 on his attack rolls (which becomes +11 with his +2 rapier)... I suspect there's some feats and other features like Expertise that give some of these crazy bonuses, and there's all the magic items that Jaunty's acquired (some may have been traded to his character from some of Dave's other characters, something allowed in AL rules with certain conditions)...

When our first initiative kicked off, Dave then rolled a g'damn Nat-20. I looked up at Minmaxer at that point while Dave was still laughing.

Me: "So, yeah, Jaunty goes first."
DM: "There's no surprise round--"
Me: "Yeah, but Jaunty goes first."
DM: "Well, let's see what everyone else rolled--"
Me: "It won't matter."

But Jaunty's general weird crazy scariness did let me get a great moment in as we were clearing out some catacombs and looking for survivors. Came across a group of frightened civilians hiding in the tunnels.

Jaunty: (brightly) "Hi!"
DM: "They look terrified."
Suriel (Me): (firmly pulling Jaunty away) "Let's not greet them with the death jester."
DM: (laughing) "Yeah, you are currently covered in blood."
Jaunty: "Don't worry! It's not mine!"
Suriel: "That's not better!"
DM: (still laughing) "Make an Intimidation check! And since you're 'helping' him, do it with advantage."
Me: (laughing as well) "Sure. And you know what, because it's funny, I'll throw some Guidance on there, too."

We also got probably the worst waste of a great roll. In the final combat encounter of the session, one of our Warlocks was grappled by a giant crab. So the player decided to use Shocking Grasp. He asked if it would auto-succeed because of the grapple, but the DM gave him advantage (roll two D20's and take the higher result) instead. Player rolls-- TWO NATURAL 20's! Sadly, there's no additional bonus to a double crit like that allowed in AL play, just the standard Nat-20 bonus: double the damage dice. So instead of 2d8 (a Level 5 spellcaster adds 1d8 to the standard 1d8 roll) it was 4d8 and it ended up being 20-some damage. Well over the measily 2 HP the crab had left.

As the player put it, "Biggest waste of a double nat-20 I've ever seen."

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D Adventurers League at my usual store has been on hiatus for a couple of weeks. The store announced it was going to no longer handle the scheduling of AL games (they had taken over this and charged $5 a head to secure a seat at the table) and the DMs would take over scheduling again, but the DMs said they wanted to take a couple of weeks to reorganize and determine how to handle it.

Minmaxer, who had become a DM earlier this year, messaged us on Discord to explain the situation. The person who ran the AL schedule for the store was let go, and apparently there was drama involved. I did not ask for details (and Minmaxer did not want to get into it). But the basic gist was the DMs were planning to shift AL night to a different store, starting this week. But Minmaxer won't return to his Descent into Avernus AL campaign until next week, as he's out of town this week.

Which works out for me, since this week, the same night as AL, a different TTRPG group is hosting a "DMs' Pitch Night" event at the store where my other campaign plays. Basically, DMs will "pitch" their campaigns for folks and try to recruit new players. Since I'm down for playing with more groups, and even to try out other systems, I figured I'll check it out.

Mysteries of Albia--

Fun little interaction as we were leaving the museum after we concluded our case. All of our PCs are variously covered in blood (some of it our own), and my character Charlie is still clutching a heavy crossbow bolt that's lodged in his side. A newspaper reporter walks up to us--

Reporter: "Can we have a word from the Maculatum Society about what's just happened?"
Charlie: "You can 'ave two words-- Not. Now!"