Tabletop Fun

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL--

I played at a table a couple of weeks ago for an adventure that would be a two-parter. We were being hired by a displaced queen to infiltrate her captured capital and insinuate ourselves into the usurper's court. To do this, we would be snuck onto a pirate's ship-- with the captain's cooperation-- and take on a pirate persona.

There was a whole bit where the DM passed out handouts of some possible costume pieces to select, complete with haircut and tattoo options. We were also expected to come up with a pirate name.

I was playing Jito, my Kensei Monk, and after selecting all the options, I was asked what my pirate name would be. I replied with, "I am Yao." Anytime throughout the rest of the session, when Jito was asked his name by someone, I replied in the same way. (It took a couple of repetitions before one of the other players clocked the Mulan reference.)

We'll likely be doing part two of the adventure next month.


Dragonlance--

So the Misfits were riding out ahead of the Whitestone Forces as a vanguard force, scouting a bit, looking out for traps or ambushes that might be left by the BDA, but instead of that, we started seeing signs of some brief clashes with the BDA-- signs of dead Draconians, like scorch marks or broken statues (petrified dead Draconians)-- which weren't like protracted fights, but more like ambushes pulled on the BDA by some third party.

Our characters are now Level 11, so we're now getting into the part of a campaign when characters start getting really powerful. For instance, as we decided to have Catt scout around for signs of this third party, Justinius threw a Pass Without a Trace on her Stealth check to add an extra +10 to it. Between that, her proficiency and then a 19 on the die, she rolled 37 for Stealth. ("You're suddenly in Albia, our last campaign.") Between her scouting and some more done by Evrouin later, we located an apparently abandoned farmstead, and decided to scope it out, for signs about the lack of civilian presence we'd seen in the vicinity.

Well, Catt worked out that the place wasn't so abandoned as it looked-- she set off a bottle alarm (stacked inside the door jamb) and the interior was clean of dust (when the exterior showed signs of at least a month's neglect), so we set up a hide (thanks to a casting of Leomund's Tiny Hut) and kept an eye on it. It didn't take long before a group of about 20 civilians and one person wearing a Solamnic squire's armor approached the house, and noticed that someone else had been there. (Catt had left one of the windows' shutters open.) As they started fanning out, Evrouin and Catt stepped out of the hide to address them.

The squire, Beric Fletcher, was surprised to meet a Solamnic Knight. His own knight, Sir Errol Tallbow, had been killed in battle, and he, Beric, had been injured, but found by the civilians. They were subsistence farmers and hunters, and under his guidance, they'd been effectively hunting the Draconians. They hadn't heard of the WSF-- not unsurprising, since they'd only been a thing for less than two months-- but did like that someone was opposing the BDA.

We all went into the house to speak. Gavin's introduction as a cleric got confused looks-- clerics of the gods were only just starting to become a thing again-- but when he demonstrated his healing magic, it startled everyone, but it got him into a conversation with Kevin, their local healer of unusual size (dude was like 7 feet tall). Evrouin spoke with Beric, who it had been noted was practically a spitting image of Derek Crownguard, albeit with dark hair. Though Evro asked about it, Beric's bewildered remark about "local resemblances" was all we got about it, as we all agreed at the table that he was probably Derek's bastard son. Beric had been welcomed as a squire because his (supposed) father had been killed in battle, but he had no prospects of becoming an actual knight due to his (alleged) lack of noble blood.

Meanwhile, one of the villagers was a young woman (about 19 years old) named Tasha, who approached Justinius, asking how he knew he was a wizard. Tasha explained that she had weird dreams, and could do things (demonstrating the ability to change her hair color, and cast Fire Bolt) that she didn't really understand. Justinius spoke with her a bit, giving her his Wand of Faerie Fire, explaining about how wizards could use them to help focus their magic. He had her try it out, and she successfully cast the spell, causing everyone in the building to start glowing for a minute. Intrigued, he decided to have her attempt an Aspirant's Test of High Sorcery. This involved scribing "Ego Magus" (I am a Mage) onto a prepared spell scroll with the appropriate ink and quill, and if the aspirant had enough potential, the scroll would glow. He did this later that evening as everyone was bunking down for the night. It took her some time (she didn't really know all her letters) but after being shown what she needed to write, she focused and painstakingly scrawled it down.

And then the scroll lit up like the sun. (We made joke references to Phantom Menace about "not even Master Yoda" lighting up his scroll that bright. I quipped, "Her magi-chlorian count is off the scale.")

Justinius then spoke with Tasha's mother about this, saying he wanted to take her to the Tower of High Sorcery so she can be trained, if only so she can attain better control over her magic. Her mother appreciated his coming to her, but said it's Tasha's decision, as she's basically a grown woman. It seems Justinius has found his apprentice.

In the morning, we made contact with the WSF via Sending spells to inform them of local resistance bands (Beric's was one of several) and that they would be convening at a local spring, Goodwater Spring, in a couple of days' time, and for the WSF to send a representative force to meet with them. This was said to be the wing comprised of the Knights of the Rose, as most of them were local to the Vingaard Valley, and would be led by Darren Crownguard.

It hadn't occurred to me until the drive home, and then again when I typed up a recap for our Discord that we're about to have a problem on our hands. The Crownguards are the leaders of a faction of the Knighthood that is dedicated to the Measure-- a dozens of volumes-long set of rules and laws by which Knights of Solamnia are expected to comport themselves. Evrouin, by comparison, is from the opposing faction, which holds that a knight's Oath to uphold their virtues is more important than the Measure. Basically, Knights are of Lawful Good alignment, with the Measure faction holding Lawful being more important, and the Oath faction holding Good being more important. While Darren has some recent conflicts with the Measure (he has intrusive thoughts about slaughtering everyone, since his father died), he still holds to it.

And we're about to have him meet with local resistance fighters that are being led by a man who just might be physical proof that his father was unfaithful to his mother.

[Nunavut Pants]

After a number of losses and a smaller number of "NOT LAST" games, I won again at Terraforming Mars!

My Corporation was Recyclon, who can increase plant production for every other building tag they play. This turned out to be vital--two of the Milestones involved controlling spaces on Mars and having plant/animal/microbe tags. Plus one of the Awards was for having the most plant and animal resources, so I really wanted to get the plants going!

I was able to get 5 spaces on Mars controlled and 4 bio tags quickly, claiming those two Milestones. I then started trying for Awards as well as regular VPs and Terraforming Rating. My opponents were not making much progress on getting the last Milestone, and almost by accident I qualified for it! (Having played five cards with requirements for the state of the board on them.) So I wound up sweeping all three Milestones, which is very unusual!

I had a card that would let me decrease Energy production to get one Terraform Rating, which serves both as the basis for your per-turn income and as victory points. I played several cards to raise my Energy production, which one by one I turned into TR. I also played several cities and lots of forests because of my plant production, obviously right next to my cities to provide victory points at the end of the game. Most of them I played next to spaces that oceans could be played in. This was a good move because another Award was to have the most spaces owned next to oceans. I funded that Award, and the "most plant and animal" Award.

One of my opponents had played Predators, allowing him to steal an animal token each turn from me and add it to his card. With that, he was able to take first place for the "plant and animal" Award, but I easily held first for the "adjacent to oceans" Award.

At the end, I was able to hold out for the win; 90 to 84 to 79 points.

[Ceir]

Recently picked up a couple map expansions for Flash Point, and finally got around to dropping a solitaire game on the Duplex map from one of them. The gimmick on the Duplex is that it's essentially two half-maps completely divided by a (destroyable) wall; and the upper and lower edges are considered to be immediately-adjacent buildings - your fire truck and ambulance can only park on the left or right edges, and it costs double the number of actions to switch sides compared to a standard map.

I actually pulled out a high-scoring win, with 9/10 possible saves (7 is considered a win), but it was a very near thing. I almost ran out of building (if you place enough damage markers, the building collapses and you lose), and I absolutely did not have control of the fire at the end (60-ish % of the board was actively on fire when I scored rescue #9). But it was a nice "end of the TV show" finale, the kind where you have firefighters tossing people out the door and shouting "We gotta go, we gotta go!" before the building caves in behind them.

[Nunavut Pants]

She's a soon-to-retire teacher from Joisey (New Jersey) who shaves her head. Awesome lady! Very punk rock attitude, too.

[Kit-Ginevra]

Especially because one gal kept saying that she was going to use "Blowjob" as her clue every round...

This sounds like the sort of gal I need to be introduced to

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Last week's session was the first time in more than three months we had everyone present at the table. We'd been meeting for some official sessions, sort of working around the absences, but then at the end of August we had to put a hold on the campaign proper, because we'd bumped up against our first major military engagement-- one that would be using mass combat rules-- and DM Bob wanted to have everyone on hand for it. We did some one-shots off and on, while people were on overseas trips and similar, in the interim. For one reason or another, Jesse hadn't been at the table for two months. So there was a lot of catching up before we got started.

Eric: How do you play this game again?
Me: Math rocks go brrr.

When we'd left off, the Misfits and the allied armies of the Whitestone Forces (WSF) had occupied the long abandoned High Clerist Tower, which we'd learned had been a dragon trap constructed thousands of years ago. The Tower also housed the Blue Dragon Orb, containing the greater wyrm blue dragon (basically the progenitor for all blue dragons), which had been used by the O.G. Wizards of High Sorcery to prime the trap and trigger dragons into mindlessly charging head-first into the traps. We knew, however, that controlling a Dragon Orb required enormous willpower and magical know-how. Our wizard Justinius had managed it once, only thanks to a Nat-20 on his roll, and we had no expectation that it might happen again.

The WSF would have to defend the Tower against the attacking Blue Dragon Army (BDA), believing the BDA had multiple reasons for capturing it-- morale (defeating the last real threat to their conquest), strategy (controlling an access point for the WSF's reinforcements from Sancrist), and catastrophic (freeing the blue greater wyrm - thus putting three of the five greater wyrms in play)

Bob explained the mass combat rules, which were a little complicated, but straightforward for us. We had to decide which of the WSF forces to commit, where to arrange them, and then command them ourselves. We had the option to join the battle ourselves (embedding ourselves in one of our regiments and turning them into a "hero unit") or remain in the command position, which prevented us using our character abilities/spells, but did allow us to use special command actions on our go.

It was basically like Dragonlance RTS, when you came down to it.

Right at the get-go, however, the BDA's dragons-- five adult blue dragons-- flew past the battlefield and headed for the Tower. It still took them three rounds of combat to clear the battle, but they were out of range of our ranged attacks/spells, so once they made it past the curtain wall of the Tower's fortress, Justinius left command to run down to the basement of the Tower to the Dragon Orb. He had to pass some high DC Arcana checks to command the Orb, and when he looked like he might fail, he used his Portent ability. As a red-robed wizard, he can use this ability to pre-roll 2d20 before the session, and then as a reaction use either of those rolls in place of any other roll. And one of his Portent rolls that day had been a Nat-20.

So the blue greater wyrm was contained, and by properly sealing it away again, Justinius triggered the attacking dragons to go feral and mindlessly attack the Tower, shoving their heads through the gates. This prompted the portcullises to slam down on their necks, trapping their heads, and then the giant bear-trap arms to clamp down on their mouths, preventing them from using their breath weapon. Unable to free themselves or retaliate, the WSF reserve forces were able to merk them and slaughter them.

The battle wasn't without its losses. Lord Derek Crownguard, seeking to redeem himself through death-or-glory in the front line, fell in battle, and the dragons managed to wipe out two of our reserve regiments before the dragon trap got them.

But we successfully defended the High Clerist Tower, giving the WSF control over an access path to the coast, where the rest of our reinforcements from Sancrist could land, and thus broadly defended Palanthas against conquest. Our next step will be the pursuit of the retreating BDA, so we can reclaim the Vingaard region and free more of our forces.

[Nunavut Pants]

Five, count them FIVE game days in the last two weeks!

First was the "very short notice gaming day" at A&M's on Saturday.

I played "Hare and Tortoise", a game where you as a bunny race around the board. You pay for your moves (in triangular numbers!) with carrots; you earn carrots in specific spaces on the board. You start with three lettuce cards, and you have to stop on one of four specific spaces on the board to "eat" (discard) a lettuce card. Finally, you can only cross the finish line if you have less than 10 carrots per place you will be getting--so the first place player can finish with 0-9 carrots, second place 0-19 carrots, etc. If you have too many, you must use spaces on the board to discard carrots. Which can take quite a few turns... As usual, I finished in the bottom half of the players.

We also played Outpost Power Grid, which is a Power Grid variant with flavoring from the Outpost game. You're still powering dwellings, but you have to manage "workers" as a resource. Last place for me--I do not play Power Grid many times per month like most in the group do, so I'm not that good at it.

We also played "Feierabend" (apparently there's an English version titled "Quitting Time") which is about trying to stave off depression as a downtrodden group of factory workers. "Strike tokens" are a valuable commodity which allow you to purchase things like a shorter work week, more vacation (actually, any vacation and then more vacation), higher wages, etc. You place your worker tokens in various board spots to take various actions. I did very poorly, in part because I tried to stretch my turns out longer to avoid collecting the "go back to work this week" depression. Actually, you usually want to cycle through your work week quickly so you can take more actions. Oops.

Finally, as the end of a long day of gaming we played "Just One". Lots of silliness, lots of laughter. Especially because one gal kept saying that she was going to use "Blowjob" as her clue every round... One other bit of play that sticks in my head is that I was able to use the word "clutch" in two consecutive rounds; one as a clue for "handbag" and one as a clue for "car part".

The next day, Sunday, was the monthly gathering at L&M's house (no relation). I played several hands of "The Crew: Mission Deep Sea". It's a cooperative game, and we did fairly well. This time we ignored the "flavor text" and just played the card game. We had a couple of rounds where we failed, but more where we succeeded.

We finished that Sunday session with "So Clover", which is another word-guessing game where you have to arrange four cards with words on all four edges to match the clues written down by one of the other players. With an extra, fifth, card thrown in to make it more confusing. We only lost a couple of rounds of that one, while we were successful at guessing 10-12 times.

The following day, Monday, was the board game evening at a local restaurant. I played "Galaxy Trucker", and snarked that everyone else was playing for second place because A would win as he always does. He warned me that N had gotten very good at Galaxy Trucker in the past couple of years... And it was true, she totally kicked our butts! A did come in second, while I was a long way back in third and D was in fourth. I actually did very well with my first ship, but my second one got hit in a vulnerable space by a meteor and about a third of it fell off. And the third ship had a lot of holes in it when I built it--plus I built one part wrong which caused a bunch of it to fall off before I even started!

Then it was on to the second weekend!! Saturday was the "slightly less short notice gaming day" at A&M's. Once again I wound up in "Hare and Tortoise". I came in third; I had a plan to be able to finish second but H landed in the one space that could allow me to finish with the right number of carrots, so I had to fiddle around a couple more turns and come in 3rd out of 4.

From there, we played "Six Nimmt", which is a very German card game about playing cards on stacks in increasing order. It is often pretty chaotic, even though we didn't add a "dummy" or "Elijah" as an automated player. I was last in one full game, and first in the next. Player B was angry with himself for making several mistakes, which I don't understand very well because this is quite a low-stakes game IMHO. The chaos element means it's very hard to predict the board state and plan for it.

We also played "Feierabend" again. This time I did slightly better, coming in third (out of four) instead of last. I made one very significant mistake right near the end that cost me several points. Not sure if it would have been enough to put me into second place, though.

We tried a couple of rounds of "Wavelength", which is a game where you try to figure out where on a scale of "this to that" (drawn by card; one card might read "not spicy to spicy"; one might read "small to tiny") some given word lies. I didn't enjoy it all that much, so we moved on to "Just One" again.

Finally, that Monday was another Monday Night group at the restaurant. I was in a group that played Quiddler, where you put cars that have letters on them together to make words. The letter cards have points on them, and you score the words you make in a hand. Plus there is a bonus for longest word, and one for most words. I came in third out of three.

We also played TransAmerica, which is a railroad-building game where everyone can use any track that connects somehow to their start point. So when you connect to someone else's track you can use all of the track they have laid. I managed to win that one.

Tomorrow I leave this area for another month or two. So it'll just be back to the on-line Terraforming Mars games.

[Nunavut Pants]

Well, I contrived to lose the last game I mentioned. Plus a couple more.

I did manage to win one, though! I was able to absolutely pound on the heat production to get a bunch of terraform rating points. Plus I wound up able to play several "special" (brown) tiles on the planet, letting me claim a Milestone for that as well as for having lots of heat points. I also grabbed a few Jovian tags and the "infamous" Terraforming Ganymede card, which gives you one terraform rating per Jovian tag. Plus a couple of animal cards (Penguins and Salmon) and a couple of tricks that put extra animals on those for more victory points.

End scores were 75-70-68.

I am currently in the middle of thoroughly losing another game of it, though.

More gaming in person, but I'll write that up later.

[Ceir]

Got to try something new at this week's meetup, March of the Ants. Interesting, lots to it, and I'd definitely play it again - but even allowing for "this is my first play I don't know what I'm doing" I was harshly reminded that I am just absolute garbage at most engine-building games.

[Nunavut Pants]

I came sooooooo close to winning in the Terraforming Mars game I was playing last update. One of my opponents was doing really well, and managed to take first place in the "most cards with requirements" award away from me. In my last turn, I had money, and I had about fifteen cards, and a couple of draws. I needed two cards with requirements to tie for first place for that award, giving both of us 5 points instead of him 5 and me 2. I had one card with requirements, and ... couldn't draw another one.

He won by 2 points. If I had gotten that second card, I would have had 3 more points.

The next game I fell back into my old habit of chasing monetary income, and came in dead last. I also had a couple of significant mis-plays, like NOT playing my 3rd Jupiter-tagged card and claiming the 3 Jupiter Tags milestone, allowing an opponent to claim a different Milestone closing out all Milestones.

The current game is looking pretty grim for me as well; that same opponent has *two* cards with "this counts as any tag". So they claimed the "four power tags" Milestone, and are in the lead for a couple of Awards for most tags of a given type... I do have a lot of heat production, and will probably try for the "most heat left" Award. Not sure if I'll be able to do well in any others.

[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!!