Tabletop Fun

[Nunavut Pants]

FINALLY got to another in-person game session! Had to cut it short, though, because SOMEONE made plans for us for an early dinner... Just because it's her birthday weekend, grumble grumble grumble...

We played Harmonies which I had never heard of before. One of the other players described it as "Like Cascadia, but fun!" (Apparently he doesn't enjoy Cascadia much; I liked it the one time I played it a while ago.)

In Cascadia, your turn consists of picking a set of three terrain chits (from six sets of three) and placing them on your board, plus optionally picking up an animal card from the five on the tableau. You can have up to four active animal cards at a time. Each one has from two to four (five?) cubes that start on it, and a depiction of a terrain arrangement needed to place one of the cubes on the board, removing it from the card. At the end of the game, you score points for the highest empty space on the card. If you manage to place all of the animals that start on the card, you turn that card over and free up one of your four active card spaces. At the end of your turn, the chits you took are replaced from a bag, and the card (if any) replaced from the deck. End-game points are also scored for various terrain arrangements as well.

We ran into a situation where none of the cards worked with what we already had on our boards, so they did not get picked, so they never got replaced... Something of a vicious cycle. I bet someone comes up with a house rule for that situation at some point, because I think that could be a common occurrence with this game.

I was able to fully clear three of my animal cards, and made decent inroads on the three I had left. It didn't feel like I got super lucky with terrain, but did a little bit with the animals early on. I never wound up building up my mountain terrain (you can stack up to three high) or building forests, which require wood and then greenery on top of them. I did build four houses (stone/wood/brick with a brick on top) and several separate meadows, which are the way to score them.

I won, 99 to 88 to 77 points.

Interesting game, would play again. Not sure I enjoy it more than Cascadia.

[Nunavut Pants]

Posted twice by mistake.

[Ceir]

Meta story time. There's a gent at my usual board game night, Brad. Dice hate Brad. Any game, any kind of dice, if it has rollable RNG, his luck is shyte. Case in point, we were playing a round of SJG's Frag last session; the d6-based analog FPS. The rest of us were having what seemed like average swings of luck. Brad? Couldn't roll above a 3 on 1d6. A 5 on 2d6. He might get a 9 on 3d6. 4d6 wasn't a safe bet, he never rolled above 10. And usually lower. The entire damn game. And we were all rolling the same tray of dice.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Meta story time. There's a gent at my usual board game night, Brad. Dice hate Brad.

Syed in my current Curse of Strahd game is like that. The dice gods do not like him. He has continuously rolled shit in every social interaction his character gets into.

Now, to Syed's credit, he takes it on the chin and commits to his character's ineptitude. Even when it would make sense for Oliver (his PC) to not do something, Syed will have him double-down on it.

Every now and then, he rolls crazy well, but by and large, so many bad rolls.

But the Wheaton Curse has struck many a person.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Curse of Strahd '26 (sorta)--

The discussions of our future Dragonlance pirate campaign continue. Everyone's excited to get into it, even if we're still in the midst of our Strahd campaign.

We've been discussing intended characters. I've got a character pretty well mapped out, Ciaran Seabairne, a sea elf Hollow Warden Ranger.

Mark, chaos gremlin that he is, is planning to play a kobold druid that likes to wildshape into dinosaurs.

And at the table this week, we joked about a Valley Girl Cleric. ("Ohmygods, let me cast Cure Wounds.") A cleric of "The Girls." (Though I later joked that clearly Valley Girl should be a cleric of a sun god, like, obvi.) Syed thought it was hilarious, and suggested he might do that as his character.

[Nunavut Pants]

Had three days of gaming fun last weekend! (Stretching the definition of "weekend", I know.)

Saturday, we had a game of Six Nimmt as a "player summoning" game. I did OK. Then I was talked into playing Terraforming Mars in person. With one of the people who is in the on-line TM group. (She's a total TM addict!) I managed to pull off the win, just barely. The third player, who looked like they were far behind, turned out to catch almost all the way up at the end of the game--but not enough to catch the other two. I think I won by one point!

Sunday we played a few rounds of Just One, which was fun as always. I then wound up in a Power Grid game, against a couple of people who play it A WHOLE LOT, and a couple of people who don't. We played the Scandinavia and the Baltics map. I came in second. If I had not made a big move in the penultimate round, I might (maybe!!) have been able to tie for first (don't know if I would have won or lost on tiebreakers) but second place is as good as I've ever gotten in PG.

Monday's after-dinner game was Gravwell, which is a race game where the cards you play will move you toward or away from the closest object (other player or one of two "debris" markers) or sometimes move other players toward or away from you. The cards have element names on them (mostly real, a couple of fictional ones) and are resolved in alphabetical order. This results in some chaos in a similar way to the play in Six Nimmt, which also has everyone chose and simultaneously show cards, and they resolve in numeric order. Anyway, I managed second place in this one as well. Most of us had never seen the game before, so that wasn't bad.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Well, tonight was the finale of our campaign. After 58 sessions over nearly two years, the loss of two players (Jesse and Camilla both dropped out around the same time-- he because he was just not vibing with the campaign anymore, and Camilla because of medical reasons), three PC deaths, our ragtag band of Misfits have prevailed.

In the last three sessions, we took down the Knights of the Tears-- four archmages that served the evil Emperor Ariakas-- and then had to devise a way to fulfill our bargain with Zeboim while also still defeating the bad guys-- and also work out what to do about Takhisis, since if we killed her, it would destabilize reality unless someone was ready to step in and replace her, or unless Paladine (her opposite number in the Good Pantheon) stepped down as a divinity. We ended up making a deal with Raistlin Majere, whose ambitions were indeed to become a god, and he provided us with the knowledge to craft an artifact to contain Ariakan (the son of the Emperor and sea goddess Zeboim).

And then tonight was the finale. Evoruin gave the equivalent of the St Crispian's Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V, and we went to fight Ember-- the Great Red Wyrm and the one responsible for killing her mother and most of her tribe-- and Ariakan. The early parts of the fight were built around getting Runa to throw the artifact to remove Ariakan from the fight (we literally described it like a Pokeball), and then enduring Ember's attacks until Runa could land that decapitating critical hit.

We had to take a quick short rest before effectively teleporting into Neraka at the Foundation Stone (during which Zeboim showed up to claim the pokeball with her son, and then dragged him off to her plane), but Ariakas was waiting for us. He-- like Ariakan-- was exceptionally dangerous (Bob the DM described them both as roughly being Level 60 characters-- since they were both demigods, with all sorts of buffs and nasty tricks) and he managed to kill Evrouin, because his sword was also vorpal and could decapitate off a critical hit. But that just allowed Runa to get the vorpal crit back on him.

While Gavin got to work resurrecting Evro, Berem the Everman-- an unfortunate mortal cursed with immortality-- went to the Foundation Stone of Neraka. Some 350 years earlier, he'd been driven by greed to try to pry gemstones out of the Stone, been rebuked by his sister, and he'd shoved her back, causing her to smash her head on the stone and die. He'd been horrified by this, gotten cursed for it, and had spent the last 350 years just running away, unable to die, endlessly pursued by the forces of evil, since he had the gemstone he'd tried to steal embedded in his chest, and they needed it to free Takhisis from the Abyss. We got to see him and his sister's spirit reunite, as she forgave him, and they went together into the hereafter-- causing the Foundation Stone to crumble to pieces, and for the entirely of Neraka to start rumbling.

As that happened, we got briefly transported to another plane, where the entire pantheon (including the evil gods not named Takhisis) waited for us. We confirmed our course of action, and the gods responded by giving us our final level up to Level 20, the benefit of a Long Rest, as well as a divine boon that gave us an additional +1 to our Proficiency Bonuses, elevating everyone above the standard +6 cap to +7 (apart from Gavin, whose signature item already gave him a +1, putting him at +8 with this boon), and then transported us back to finish our quest.

That's when Raistlin helped teleport the party to the Abyss to fight Takhisis. We had a brief couple rounds of consternation that she was immune or resistant to everything we threw at her-- until we remembered that our weapons/items have the Dragonbane property, allowing their attacks to bypass that. Sylphara had been given a set of arrows that provided the offensive abilities of a Greater Dragonlance-- she dealt a flat damage amount equivalent to her max HP, and a flat 2500 damage with a crit. She was putting up big damage, but neither Runa nor Evro were being ineffective, especially as Runa's vorpal crits took off two of Takhisis's heads. Raistlin spent his turns working on burning down Takhisis's legendary resistances, until he was finally able to trap her in a Force Cage for us to dump damage in.

And finally he reduced her out of her draconic form into a humanoid shape-- this was after we'd well passed over 10,000 damage to her-- for Evrouin to land one final blow... and appropriately enough, it was off a Nat-20. Killing the evil dragon goddess, ascending Raistlin to divinity in the process.

He upheld his bargain to free Justinius's soul, allowing Runa to give him a final goodbye, after which he was swept off to the afterlife by Cog and Catt for more adventures.

In the immediate aftermath, Raistlin gave ownership/mastery over the Palanthas Tower of High Sorcery over to our wizard Thalenis, and after our victory, Evrouin was elected to become the head of one of the knightly orders.

Next week, we'll have our traditional post-campaign dinner where we'll discuss everything, and give a little "five years later" epilogue to the party...

And Eric's going to take over DM duties for our fourth campaign, which will be set in an AU of Critical Role's Exandria setting.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Curse of Strahd '26--

Our party reached the Amber Temple this session. This is a key location in the campaign for a variety of reasons, though its relevance largely depends on a variety of factors, dependent on how your DM is telling the story. Often times, one or more of the plot-relevant items/people may be found there. In our case, we need to get a shard of amber from the temple to trap either the "Dark One" that Strahd made his vampiric bargain with, or to trap Strahd himself. (Or, as we've reckoned, "both? both. both is good.")

The Amber Temple is also a very dangerous place. There are some dangerous enemies in it, and it's often a place where a TPK can happen, frequently shortly after entering the temple.

In our case, we didn't go too far into the temple after arriving, but took a short rest just inside, standing watch and everything. There was some RP that happened, and then as the short rest went off, Phil the DM handed everyone a folded piece of index card, asked us to read them to ourselves, and then hand them back. We were all suspicious, and then I read what was on my card--

"You are not a doppelganger."

I read it, then looked at Phil. "You son of a bitch."

This is not something common to Curse of Strahd, but it is a trick that DMs can pull in D&D adventures, to stir up some drama and suspicion at the table. To get players looking at one another warily and with distrust, by suggesting that one of the PCs has been replaced, waiting for the right moment to stab them in the back. Frequently, one (or more) of the players is given a card saying "You have been replaced by a doppelganger. Maintain your cover and play your character as normal." (Or something along those lines.) And then part of the adventure may come down to needing to find and rescue the PC that got swapped out.

It's also just as common for every player's card to tell them "You are not a doppelganger" but just stir up the suspicion.

I am not sure which angle Phil is going for, but ... (shakes fist)

[Jay 2K Winger]

Exandria Campaign Sorta Session Zero--

As has become custom for our group, we got together for dinner at a restaurant for our post-campaign wrap. Talked epilogues for our characters, thanked Bob for running the campaign, and inevitably, talk turned to our upcoming campaign.

As noted, Eric has taken over DM duty, and he's running a campaign set in Exandria, the world from Critical Role's first three campaigns, though ours will be set some 15 years before the Vox Machina campaign. We've already settled somewhat into what builds we're bringing, and talk went to figuring out party roles. How we all specifically met up and whatnot, we still need to hammer out, but we've already figured a lot out.

- I'm bringing Boar, a bugbear monk (drunken master), a wandering adventurer seeing the world, discriminated against in the Dwendalian Empire for being a bugbear. He's a frontline combatant.
- Mike will be bringing Zetico Urisicio Notte, a drow sorcerer/warlock (clockwork soul/hexblade), on the run from his crime syndicate in Tal'Dorei. He'll be a sort of DPS role.
- Chris is bringing Gnarz, a kobold sorcerer (draconic bloodline), not clear on what their backstory is, but likely in trouble with the law for being from Xhorhas. He's our "nuke" caster.
- Patrick is bringing Pip, a halfling fighter (battle master), recently departed from some criminal organization where he'd been the bookkeeper. He's another frontline combatant.
- Bob is bringing Harold Arthur Peter Charles Poole, a human bard (college of lore), a lawyer from a wealthy family who may or may not be a secret agent. He's our backline support caster.

We've all basically agreed that our party is "four criminals and their lawyer," with heavy "Better Call Saul" vibes. I've suggested we dub our party The Accused until and unless we come up with something better.

[Nunavut Pants]

So, two Terraforming Mars games in this report! They took place in quick succession, with only one game in between them.

In the first game, my Corp had two powers: It allowed me to draw two extra Prelude cards and play one of them, and I paid two less for any cards with a Science tag on them. My three Preludes (two regular plus one bonus) were: Increase income in steel and titanium and money; get some free money plus draw seven cards and keep two of them; increase plant production and play a card while ignoring board conditions needed to play it (e.g., there must be at least 5% oxygen). I used that last to play Algae, which gave me two more plant production and normally would need five oceans on the board. I also had a couple of attack cards which were cheap to play, so I used one on each of my opponents.

I had complained in the chat about how awful my initial cards were. I still didn't see how I was going to make progress with them, but it was still early on.

In the second generation, I played another plant-production card, which gave me enough plant/animal/microbe tags to claim the Ecologist milestone, so I did. (An opponent had already claimed the Plutocrat one, which was gotten by having lots of money.) In the third gen, my main action was to play an Ice Asteroid card that let me place a couple of oceans, and due to an earlier card gave me some plant resources. In the fourth gen, I played Giant Ice Asteroid, which not only let me place two more ocean tiles, but also raised the temperature scale two steps and let me take plant resources away from one opponent. It was an Event card, as was the previous Asteroid, and the two attack cards from earlier, and one I didn't mention, so that let me claim the Legend milestone for playing five Event cards.

That was ten points for Milestones, which is pretty strong for this game!

In the next gen, I placed a City tile. This is an expensive action, but it gives you bonus points for every Forest tile adjacent to it, so it can be very worthwhile! I placed it next to some of the Forests I had played earlier, and I played another one next to it to finish up my actions in this generation. In the next gen, I played Natural Preserve and Mining Area, which
were good for a victory point and a monetary income, and for a titanium production, respectively. The seventh gen I mostly spent planting forests, but I also played Interplanetary Trade which boosted my monetary income significantly.

In the eighth gen, I placed another City tile, another Forest tile, and increased my titanium income and my monetary income with other cards.

The ninth generation was the last, and as is so often the case it was the busiest one. I placed a couple more Forest tiles and we collectively raised the O2 and Temperature to the "end the game" value, leaving us only two Ocean tiles short of finishing. I used the somewhat-expensive "place an Ocean" action twice to make sure the game ended there. I placed another Forest, then I was done. My two opponents did more to finish out their turns, and then we placed some final greenery at the very end.

The final score was 74 to 70 to 64. I joked in chat that I should complain about my cards more often...


Two games later, I had another good run!

This one was longer--it took 11 generations instead of 9! The scores were higher as well. I was able to grab one Milestone and couldn't quite get the final card played to get a second one; one opponent took the other two and so blocked me out of claiming a second one for myself. I concentrated on monetary production, and got good cards for it. I finded the Banker award (points for having the most money left over at the end of the game) and one opponent funded Zoologist (most plant and microbe resources). I noticed that I wound up with a lot of steel resources that I wasn't able to make much use of, and funded the Industrialist award (most steel plus energy at the end).

The one opponent who had gotten the second Milestone before I could wound up increasing his energy production a couple of times right at the end of the game to pull ahead of me in that. I could have placed my final greenery to get me two more steel but for some reason I was thinking the award only counted production so I didn't bother. If I had played there, I would have taken first place in the Industrialist award back.

Which would have won it for me. As it was, my opponent pipped me 91 to 90 with the third trailing at 79. Once we realized I could have actually retaken Industrialist, I was awarded a "moral victory". Which I'll take, dammit!!

[Jay 2K Winger]

The Price of Dawn (Exandria Campaign)--

We ended up running two players down, as Chris & Patrick individually had things come up that prevented their making it. (We think Chris was still sick, while Patrick had some family thing come up with his sister.) It was fine, we could still run things two players down, and there didn't end up being any combat anyway.

Harry Poole-- lawyer of renown in the Dwendalian Empire, as well as member of a secretive Guild that works in the shadows to better the world and prevent another Calamity-- got a letter from said Guild dispatching him to head for Rexxentrum (imperial capital) to investigate something that's concerning them, and to gather allies in that respect. So he goes to the local courthouse lockup to pick up two clients-- Boar and Zetico-- who were in on charges of assault (Boar had been drinking, got accosted by regulars of the bar where he was, defended himself when attacked) and public nuisance (Zetico had just been doing some magic to clean up his clothes, which caused a commotion because he's drow-- most drow on the continent are from the Kryn Dynasty, who are not-yet-at-war with the empire). Harry talked these charges down to self-defense and misunderstanding, offering to get them out of town pronto.

Then, en route to Rexxentrum, their carriage stops when they come across a wrecked prisoner transport. After finding the soldiers guarding said prisoners and the prisoners to boot, things were a bit strange. One prisoner and one soldier were both dead, the prisoner apparently having stabbed the soldier with his own dagger after picking his cuffs-- but there was no way the prisoner should have been able to do it, much less have enough strength to shove the dagger through the soldier's armor. But then the party's driver was killed, and we found hidden compartments in both wagons, which had been ransacked and showed residue of powerful magic having been contained in both. One of the compartments was Guild-make, the other bore the symbol of the Cobalt Soul, a monastic order dedicated to the preservation of knowledge.

Leaving the soldiers and promising to send help to recover them and their prisoners, we moved on foot, running into a strange little girl who was unusually insightful and apparently had some kind of ancient entity protecting her-- and who mentioned a black-clad woman who had run past earlier that had stolen something "mean"-- then camped in the forest come nightfall. Some masked man was seen watching our camp, and we heard him go, "Only three? There's supposed to be five. ...It's not yet time." And then he vanished.

We reached the city, speaking briefly with a Captain Voss about the compartments and everything-- she turned out to have ties to both the Guild and the Cobalt Soul-- before hearing that Harry's father-- normally the head of the Guild-- had disappeared a few weeks ago, leaving Harry's "idiot brother" in charge. (There was some amusement when Boar mentioned a little old lady who had been one of the prisoners, prompting a terrified reaction from Voss and the guards, who rushed to head out to recapture her. Boar's answer to this was a shrug and, "Never mess with Baba.") We talked to a Brother Cael with the Cobalt Soul, who told us about the objects which had been stolen from the secret compartments-- fragments of some artifact known as the Concordance, which had the power to change the world. They'd been forced to transport them in this manner because magic was altered when cast around the shards. Rumors were there had been a skirmish near the border, resulting in both sides getting wiped out when a basic harmless spell ended up detonating. Additionally, there were reports of things changing, of people's behavior changing suddenly.

Harry took us to his chambers at an inn/law office, where he got a letter from his father-- a "contingency letter" dated two months previous. But when he opened it, it was empty, except under a Detect Magic spell, which showed a single word, not written in his father's hand. A name-- Seraphine. The magic that was picked up by the spell was of Dunamancy, a type of magic that dealt with probability and possibility, and could affect time and gravity. However, when Harry sent for any books mentioning Seraphine, he found that the Cobalt Soul had rounded them all up and refused to lend them out to anyone. Zetico recognized the name, however, from pre-Calamity legend, and was apparently some arch-wizard that had been researching dunamancy.

So we went to meet with a Guild contact at the local university of law, Lady Thorn, who related more about Harry's father, who had been looking into the reports of altered magic, and had gone to investigate the border skirmish. Talk of Seraphine and sharing of the contingency letter revealed that Thorn had a book on her shelf, one she'd acquired via the black market and smuggled in herself, which likewise appeared blank except under a Detect Magic spell-- it was the Diary of Seraphine Vale, detailing her research into the Concordance. Thorn said that Seraphine had vanished during her research and had followers even today, though probably not in the Kryn Dynasty, which cracked down on dunamantic research.

We were a little suspicious of Thorn when we left, which only got stronger when we met with a mysterious vendor in the market, who had information on the goings on. To prevent curious ears from hearing, the vendor cast a Time Stop spell, revealing that Harry had been in close proximity to a Concordance Shard recently, and that if all six pieces were recovered, it might restore the Concordance. He had no information on who had shattered it previously-- but was puzzled to see in his own books that the shattering had contradictorily happened both before and after the Calamity. He sent us on our way when he noticed someone else moving in the time stop-- which is when we found ourselves being followed by a black-clad figure on the rooftops, and who was being followed herself by a masked man.

We set up a baited trap, with Harry using a Mirror Image spell to give the black-clad woman multiple targets to track and allow Zetico to circle back and flank her. He caught her, and we tried to question her, but she refused to answer any questions. When Boar tried to get her name, "so we don't just keep calling you 'hey you,'" she just said, "I prefer being called Hey You." We did find out that she couldn't see the masked man who had been following her, but when we tried to take her hood and face-mask off, she slipped free, dropped a smoke bomb or something, and teleported away to run, and the masked man just warned us, "Don't," when we got ready to chase. Boar agreed that, while he could easily catch up to her, it was a bad look for a bugbear to chase a woman through the streets of the imperial capital.

With Voss now out of the city chasing down the little old woman, we just went back to Harry's chambers to rest, but he'd gotten a summons to deal with two more clients, which will be where we pick up next week.


When I was working out how I was going to play Boar, the accent/voice ended up being Slavic, which ended up being quite hilarious to Eric, who kept breaking because of the delivery of my lines. Mike and Bob compared it to Red Guardian from Thunderbolts, which may define more of how I play him. Heh.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Curse of Strahd '26--

So Potentia the Paladin (recently turned dhampir and new oathbreaker) revealed that the Sunsword-- a powerful legendary weapon from the CoS module-- hates her. The sword is sentient, and the DM established that it wants to destroy anything that is evil or undead or otherwise the product of foul magics, telepathically communicating with its wielder. Literally telling Potentia and Mort (who is a magically-created part-construct halfling) "F**k off, abomination!" when holding it. And Oliver (a gnome who is now part-plant due to his blight curse) wasn't being treated much better. It would not compromise and did not understand shades of gray. So that's great.

We entered Castle Ravenloft this past session, intent on rescuing allies and finding the last of the crystal "seeds" we need for a ritual to cleanse the fanes. We decide to check the dungeons first, leading to a few traps separating the party for a brief bit, before we found the corpse of one ally (RIP Father Lucien), and then found Rictavio in another. We also found Emil Toranescu, the former leader of the werewolf pack, who knew where the crystal was, so we let him out-- despite Rictavio's warnings. My rogue, Trig, put the kibosh on any fighting, stating they all just wanted to get out of the castle alive, put a hold on any fighting until we get out.

Also, remember this--?

Phil the DM handed everyone a folded piece of index card, asked us to read them to ourselves, and then hand them back. We were all suspicious, and then I read what was on my card--

"You are not a doppelganger."

I read it, then looked at Phil. "You son of a bitch."

This is not something common to Curse of Strahd, but it is a trick that DMs can pull in D&D adventures, to stir up some drama and suspicion at the table. To get players looking at one another warily and with distrust, by suggesting that one of the PCs has been replaced, waiting for the right moment to stab them in the back. Frequently, one (or more) of the players is given a card saying "You have been replaced by a doppelganger. Maintain your cover and play your character as normal." (Or something along those lines.) And then part of the adventure may come down to needing to find and rescue the PC that got swapped out.

It's also just as common for every player's card to tell them "You are not a doppelganger" but just stir up the suspicion.

I am not sure which angle Phil is going for, but ... (shakes fist)

I WAS RIGHT.

We found a torture chamber, with Willow the Druid chained up in one of the racks. When we saw this, we all went, "Oh, the f**king doppelganger!" I had Trig do an insight check, but got no information that our assumption (that Willow had been replaced) was wrong, so Trig released "Willow" from the rack-- at which point the newly-freed doppelganger attacked Trig as three more doppels showed up to attack the rest of the party.

Phil the DM confirmed after the session that every card that he'd handed out had read "You are not a doppelganger." His handing out the cards was specifically to sow some mistrust and to set up this specific encounter.

I f**king called it.

[Ceir]

More notes for the group: Andy, you are a compulsive optimizer/minmaxer. Not as bad as Chuck, but you are. Maybe rein it in a bit when you're trying to teach the rest of us a new one that none of us have ever touched before?