Tabletop Fun

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL--

I was playing at a Tier 1 (levels 1-4) table this week, again with a new player who had just signed up with our chapter the week before. They'd just moved to the area, and hadn't played D&D in person in years, and didn't have a character prepared, so they used one of the pregens, a halfling rogue. They borrowed a set of dice from one of the other players, but the d20 from that set did not like them. That d20 never rolled above single digits the entire session. I ended up lending them one of my spare d20s, which at least rolled better, and even gave them a crit, so they got to double up on their Sneak Attack dice too. (I lent them some of my d6s for that too.)

I was playing with my Kensei Monk, Jito, generally doing well with it, but I got a few confused questions from some of the other players. A popular monk build is to use the Warrior of the Elements (or Way of the Astral Self) subclass, since those subclasses give extra reach, allowing the monk to hit from 10 ft with their unarmed strikes instead of 5 ft, among other benefits. I, however, stated I was going for a specific build with the character. A couple of them asked what the build was, so I simply showed them the character profile pic, which is of a character from the anime/manga Jujutsu Kaisen, Toji Fushiguro. Both players, the moment they saw the picture, immediately understood.

Toji, in JJK, is a crazy deadly fighter and assassin, one who doesn't register to the magical senses of the jujutsu sorcerers of the setting, and whose speed and strength is superhuman. I specifically looked up a build for Toji in D&D and have been following it in building up Jito. (Whose name, of course, is a syllable reverse of Toji's.)

[Nunavut Pants]

Frustrated with my current Terraforming Mars playthrough. One of the other players likes to take one action then end turn, instead of taking two actions. That way, if everyone else just takes all of their actions, they run out of things to do and she can just play unopposed. She will also do things like "sell one card then end turn". Which is annoying, but fairly understandable. The really frustrating part is that she'll do that and then be AFK for anywhere from a few hours to the rest of the day.

This is the main reason that the other table will finish anywhere from 4-10 games in the time it takes for her table to finish one.

I'm now doing the "one thing and then end turn" myself. In large part because I don't want her to have free rein after everyone else has passed. And I'm better at it than she is at this point; I have lots of cards I can use once per turn and I have tons of cards in my hand. (I'm the corporation that pays very little to buy cards into hand.) We'll see if she just gives up and plays normally...

We're on our final generation now (Mars has been successfully terraformed!) but who knows how many more days we'll be playing? Hopefully we'll be done early next week instead of late next week.

I do have a real chance at winning this one, though!

[Ceir]

My FLGS got in the new Final Girl module, Bad Times at Buddyland - the nigh-obligatory Five Nights riff. Sat down with it over the last couple of days, and finally pulled out a win with one of the two protagonists after four or five runs. As a module it's back to what I consider the sweet spot of complexity in the killer and map gimmicks, which is great after the couple in season 3 that I found a little more on the 'annoyingly complicated' side than 'fun think-y shenangians'.

As a self-contained module, it's pretty much what you'd expect out of the haunted Chuck E Cheese spoof. Suitably themed items and events, possessed robot and his buddies, a power system gimmick, all that good stuff. So I started channeling my inner Markiplier - keeping the bots off me with camera flashes, sniping minions with thrown skeeballs, shoving idiot victims out the door while deactivating batteries...I finally pulled off the win by lashing good ol' Billy Bear to scrap with an extension cord in front of the prize claim counter.

Now I get to try it again with the other protagonist, and I already have a couple cross-set combos I want to try with Billy on other maps and other killers in the Buddyland map.

Most obscure reference I spotted: one item you can get is a security bot that totally isn't the robot(s) from the B-movie Chopping Mall.

[Jay 2K Winger]

No Dragonlance Week So Let's Do A One Shot--

Mike, who plays Sir Evrouin (Lord Evrouin, now) at our Dragonlance table, was in Japan last week (and this week), so we couldn't continue the campaign, not with us on the cusp of our first major military engagement. So Bob ran a Level 6 one-shot for the rest of us (minus Jesse, who was in Seattle for work). Simple enough mission-- there's been a series of kidnappings of children from villages around Neverwinter, coinciding with an uptick in Infernal activity around a disused fortress called Hellgate Keep, which used to be owned by a family of devil-worshippers until they were put down by the Harpers and Church of Selune.

Our team were going to be sent in to 1) locate and neutralize the source of the Infernal problem, 2) determine if the Infernals are connected to the kidnappings, and 3) rescue said children if so. Priorities in that order. And our team is called... the Helldivers.

Our team was going to be literally sent in via air-ship, jumping out with Potions of Feather Fall (Hellpods dropping), loaded with three potions that give the benefits of short or long rests (stims), we had been given the benefits of Rary's Telepathic Bond (squad comms), an item to cast Sending up to the skyship, and an item that would trigger a beacon to signal the skyship (evac/strategem). We'd also been told that we could call in "the nuke" if need be with the code phrase "broken arrow." (Hellbomb)

I rolled up with a Level 6 version of my human Kensei Monk, Camilla with a tiefling Circle of Stars Druid, and Eric with an aasimar Life Domain Cleric. Eric's character being an aasimar (part celestial) let me make the pun as we dropped face-first into hell from the skyship of it being a "literal halo jump."

We fought our way past various devils and cultists, and yeah, my monk being the tank meant I was taking a lot of hits, but we were able to keep things moving. Just... not quite fast enough to save the kids, as it turned out. DM Bob said we'd taken a bit too long, so by the time we reached the center of the Infernal presence, the cultists had sacrificed the children to open a big hell portal... out of which came a Marilith. This is a CR 16 creature, which can attack 7 times in a round, with a +9 to hit, and which he hinted could swap out one of its melee attacks with a spell. It could move faster than most of the party (my monk excepted) and could also teleport 120 feet in a round. This was an enemy we were in no way prepared to face.

So, since the children were already lost, we pulled out the Sending item, popped our beacon, and said, "Devil threat confirmed. Kidnapped children located, all dead. Marilith on site. Broken Arrow. Send it."

And so the sight got "nuked" -- a bunch of archmages on the skyship just unloading with 9th-level spells to level the site from orbit. While my monk raised a fist in the Helldiver salute and said, with tears rolling down his face, "For the children."

When Jesse asked on our Discord how the one-shot went, I replied, "If I had a nickel for every time we ended with one-shot with a nuke, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened more than once."

[Nunavut Pants]

Some Klahd skeeving off from the Jahks?

Yet another response that make me wish this forum had a "like" or "love" button!!

[dalesys]

... the client wanted an important trophy stolen before it could be awarded as part of a game tournament...

Some Klahd skeeving off from the Jahks?

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D Adventurers League--

Back at one of DM David's tables for a Tier 1 game, an adventure I've participated in before, with a different character. I was a bit constrained with which to bring, because I have a smaller amount of Tier 1 characters now and didn't want to roll up with a level 1 new character. So I brought along Jito, a level 4 Kensei Monk. (Kensei Monks are essentially weapon specialists.)

There were three level 1 characters at the table-- one of them admitted she hadn't played D&D since the pandemic, and was using a pre-gen druid-- but all of the players were leaning into the roleplay side of things where they could, and one of them actually angling to make his character backstory work for him when making some History checks and similar.

The adventure was a casino heist-- the client wanted an important trophy stolen before it could be awarded as part of a game tournament, as well as 5000gp that the casino's owner had stolen from her-- and while things got a bit scuffed, we were generally able to pull it off with minimal chaotic problems.

David was surprised when I revealed part of my character build in combat. Jito has the Fey-touched feat, which allows me access to the Misty Step spell (basically a short-range teleport) and one other 1st-level spell of my choice. I chose Hunter's Mark, which lets me mark a target, letting me track them and deal extra damage. On the initial turn with that spell, I still only get my single attack option (casting Hunter's Mark uses a bonus action), but on subsequent turns, if I'm melee attacking, I'm going in with bare-fisted unarmed strikes (I have a +1 dragonhide belt that gives me a bonus to hit with my unarmed strikes), while holding a dagger in my off-hand to allow me to parry (adding +2 to my AC), and on my bonus action use Flurry of Blows to make two more unarmed strikes. Effectively three attacks as a level 4 character (most martial classes don't get an extra attack until level 5), and all of those attacks have an extra 1d6 worth of damage because of Hunter's Mark.

Combine this with my Kensei Monk feature Kensei Shot, and Hunter's Mark makes my attacks with my longbow that much more damaging, since that's an additional 1d4 worth of damage with Kensei Shot.

After successfully bugging out with our client's loot, we were given a bunch new loot ourselves. Among which were a +1 weapon (I chose a longbow so my ranged attacks have equal bonus to hit as my unarmed strikes) and our choice of several magic items. I chose Slippers of Spider Climbing, so Jito gets a climbing speed equal to his walking speed-- and he's already pretty damn fast as a monk. Now Jito can literally wall-run to make it that much harder to get away from him.

[Nunavut Pants]

Something has clicked for me in Terraforming Mars. I've had two "NOT LAST" games in a row now. I was ahead in the last game, but peaked one generation (turn) too soon. Another player managed to pull off a *30* point final gen!!! I started that gen 10 up on him, and made 10 more points, so obviously he won.

He had *three* cards with "1 VP per Jovian tag" and EIGHT Jovian tags!! That's a whole lotta points...

I've started concentrating more on my Terraforming Rating early on, rather than on income and on fulfilling Milestones. Each TR is one victory point, and also one monetary income per turn. So it makes sense to maximize it--but generally what gives you TR are things that advance the game state toward the end of the game, so there is a bit of a trade-off. Also, if everyone does the same thing at the same time it does get messy. So I had been trying to do other stuff, but obviously that didn't work that well. Now I'm doing better by trying to get more TR early on.

[Ceir]

After playing it a couple times at my weekly meetups, I picked up a copy of Apiary and its expansion.

It's a midweight worker-placement base builder, which I'm usually kind of iffy on 'cause so many of them just become multiplayer solitaire. Apiary has a couple mechanics to encourage player interaction, and I think the themeing is neat enough to balance it the rest of the way out - in the far future, humanity is a non factor (elsewhere, gone, whatever), and instead bees have evolved into sapience and gotten busy exploring the galaxy. The faction names are derived from the species names of actual honeybees, and astoundingly there are no bee puns in the rules. (We make plenty at the table anyway.)

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL--

So Brian H. recently became one of the rotating DMs for our chapter of Adventurers' League. He's the guy who likes to come up with backstories for his AL characters, even when said backstories are by and large irrelevant. He's the guy who was playing the idiotic elven ranger Boron in the Frostmaiden campaign. While Brian's DM'd a couple of games for the chapter, it was on weeks when I either in a higher-tier game (I'd been itching to play in a Tier 3+ game, all of which had been on Frostmaiden weeks) or was unable to sign up in time before all seats filled up. But this week I was able to sign up in time.

Brian's already made himself stand out from other DMs by being generous with Heroic Inspiration (basically a free re-roll of a d20), giving everyone one to start with and handing them out when someone makes a good joke or otherwise helped out other players with their play. This was good this week, since we had a new AL player at the table. In fact, at one point, as the player sat next to me was consulting the Player's Handbook, he and I found out a nice factor about Heroic Inspiration: if you're awarded it and already have it, you can pass it to another player who doesn't have it. When we brought this up at the table, Brian immediately tossed me one of the coins he uses to represent Inspiration, and I then immediately went, "Anyone need some Inspiration? Cuz I still have mine."

Brian also liked to frame his narration as if he were describing the action in a cinematic style, even leaning on that by describing the VFX and/or captions identifying the town of Saltmarsh, etc.

I was playing a somewhat disused tier-1 character of mine, Lucent the Cleric. So when our party is invited in to speak to the town councilman who hired us, Brian starts out by saying (IC), "I'd like to hire you to find my thing. My thing is gone, and I really need it back." Half-loaded with innuendo. (Maybe that should be "half-cocked?" Haaa.) We were all quick to pick up on it, with me interjecting, "I don't know what you've heard, but I'm not that sort of cleric, I don't have that kind of healing magic..." But we were rolling with the vibes at the table, everyone was doing optimal stuff, by and large, and if they weren't, they were still acting 100% as their character would.

The gist of the job was the councilman had invested a great deal of money, and this was being transported back to him on a ship that had vanished at sea before re-emerging, looking quite the worse for wear. We were to sail out to meet the now-derelict vessel and get the box with his money back. Brian did describe the box was going to be tricky to maneuver-- just big enough to be difficult for one person to carry, just small enough that it would be awkward for two to carry, and just heavy enough to impede movement.

The derelict, as one might expect, was full of monsters. Mostly spiders or spider-adjacent creatures like ettercaps (humanoids with spider-like bodies) and a druid that served Lolth the Spider Queen. During the fight against the ettercaps, the first one was killed when the party's wizard hit it with Toll the Dead, and Brian described the monster clutching its head and writhing as it fell over dead. And then, with every subsequent kill, Brian described "cinematically" as the monster died in the exact same manner, regardless of the method of death. Explicitly comparing it to a recycled animation due to a low budget. Almost everything got the same death animation.

The finale of the adventure ended up getting trivialized due to a couple of factors. We were in the bottom deck of the ship, a half-flooded cargo hold which had some ghouls in it. While most of the martial characters fought them, our rogue-- who had backed out of melee range for better aim with his bow-- was encouraged to find the macguffin, since we needed to get off the ship pronto-- there had been a loud Godzilla-like roar, and the ship had already been rocked by something big hitting it. Not only did the rogue find the box, but he rolled a Nat-20 on his Athletics check to pick it up.

Secondly, the ghouls were incapacitated thanks to my cleric using his Turn Undead feature, rendering them frightened and incapacitated, and easy pickings for our party, keeping them from tying us down with multiple rounds of combat.

Thirdly, the party's wizard had-- against all expectation-- prepared a great utility spell called Tenser's Floating Disk. This disk can hold up to 500 pounds, lasts for an hour without requiring concentration (meaning the spell just lasts until it expires or is dismissed), and would follow the wizard wherever he went. The DM was aghast at this, because it negated the awkward maneuvering of the box by the party, allowing us to rapidly escape the ship before it sank under the kraken's attack.

(No, we didn't try to fight the kraken. We were all levels 1-4, in no way equipped or prepared to engage a gargantuan sea creature like that.)

After the session, Brian asked me how well he did, and I told him he did a great job. He admitted he hadn't actually read the module before that night, and I assured him I couldn't tell. Which was encouraging for him to hear.

[Nunavut Pants]

More Terraforming Mars--

Had a game where I built a pretty good VP-generating engine. Got into the lead in the mid-game, was leading going into the last generation. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough, and as often happens this one player pulled off a stupefying last generation and got a ton of points, putting me back into second place.

Still, it wasn't last!

The next game, I was able to buy a number of cards that let me draw cards. I also got a bunch of science tags by mid-game, which allowed me to play the "spend 6 energy for 2 VP" card. Plus I had pretty good energy production. I also bought a card that once per turn gave me 1 money for every science tag I had; and I had quite a few! I had also played the "tardigrades" card, which you can play early but takes a lot of activations to make points. (1 "microbe" per activation, 1 VP per 4 "microbes".) I had played a couple of cards that let me just add microbes to any card, plus had one that added one per science tag I had--which again, was a lot by the end of the game. So I had a bunch of card draws, a bunch of income, and some discounts. I was able to use that to fund two Awards (I missed all of the Milestones) and placed first in those and second in one funded by an opponent.

It all turned out to be just enough to win by a single VP!

The following game, I came in 2nd. Then I was back in last again. We'll see how this current game goes...

[Jay 2K Winger]

Artists are running the Library?

Aesthetics generally would mean artistic principles.

Ascetics are people who generally are isolated from society and try not to do anything enjoyable.

That... makes more sense, I did mess that up. In my defense, I've only seen the word "ascetics" like three times previously, it hasn't properly secured itself in my brain for regular usage yet.

[Kit-Ginevra]

Orangutans are running the Library!

Fixed that for ya....

[dalesys]

...

Oops, looks like I forgot to turn off the "smartass" setting this morning! Sorry!

Well paddle my bum!

[Nunavut Pants]

The aesthetics who run the Library...

Artists are running the Library?

Aesthetics generally would mean artistic principles.

Ascetics are people who generally are isolated from society and try not to do anything enjoyable.

Acetics are vinegars.

Aestheticians are make-up artists or hair-dressers.


...

Oops, looks like I forgot to turn off the "smartass" setting this morning! Sorry!