De Profundis sounds really cool. So does your retired mech RPG!! Keeping these in my back pocket because, yeah, the hope is to play more diverse RPGs with very little wargaming influence (not that that stuff is bad, ofc).
I think I can run Toon over PBP, so we’ll roll with that likely starting this week. And then I am eying World Wide Wrestling RPG. I feel like it wouldn’t be too bad to run a Pulp/Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green game like this some day, or at least I hope it wouldn’t be.
butt fc shadowdark episode last saturday was bonkers and remarkably free of party deaths, so i’m proper dreading the next bossfight
Every time you all survive, it just tells me: make it harder…
oh yeah during the fucking sb shadowdark game last week my character brak got his biggest payoff evee. brak is a goblin who was originally planned to fucking screw over the party at every turn. any time I thought something was a trap I’d set it off, and I honestly didn’t get to do much more, only kinda plan it and forget it because a few sessions in brak drank a loyalty potion that made him forget how to speak goblin. so I then had to pivot to incredibly loyal goblin who is still chaotic but won’t do anything to fuck over his party, which has been rewarding on its own BUT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PAYOFF. oh the suicidal chaos goblin also rolled a dice with his face on it and got 18 intelligence. so he has the biggest brain out of everyone in the party now too, which I’m sure pisses them all off constantly. (he’s not really wise so like he’ll put wax in his ears and forget and think he’s deaf until someone pulls the wax out)
OKAY so the fork
we go to an antique store, a junk store, whatever and i bust in and tell the shop keep ‘GIVE ME SOMETHING SHARP AND CURSED’ and the shop keep presents brak with a fork and everyone in my party is already groaning at the stupid fork that costs like 15 percent of our current money
NOT ANYMORE THOUGH WE’RE RICH NOW BABY
and guess what I buy it. and it’s like a 1d2 damage piece of shit.
TO EVERYONE ELSE
Cuba dms me and tells me that the fork is hungry for blood and says the fork is whispering to me about blood and needs blood. brak relays this to the party and no one believes him. I, as a player am like oh my god this is so funny I gotta keep it to myself. so for MONTHS brak was trying to convince everyone the fork was real but in such a way that they wouldn’t actually beleive him. I have had to walk this tightrope of LYING for fucking MONTHS
just gathering blood any way I can (usually just rolling good on at attack and stabbing someone in the balls. ask anyone in my party what happens when brak attacks genitals. no don’t. I’ll tell you. they all get to groan and get mad as I stab upwards into someone’s balls and drain the fluid directly into my mouth and describe it in lucid detail out loud. and I try not to have too many repeats in my genital mutilation, like last night I shoved the ‘sword the size of braks penis’ into someone’s urethra and twisted til the end of the dick blossomed outwards then put it behind my ear like a tropical flower, but it probably looked more like a bento octopus hotdog). sometimes I had to get creative. like when I convinced a child to punch her mom in the face and collect her blood and give it to me. though after that, I got another dm from cubes saying the fork only likes non consensual blood now probably because he knew I’d be able to manipulate people to give my character blood too easy. brak is a charmer!!
can you imagine having this character in your party who only attacks with a stupid fork. FOR MONTHS??? (i have a sword too but like i said the fork needs blood so i would use it a lot)
BUT LAST NIGHT
DURING THE BIG BOSS FIGHT
a big sexy demon that brak wanted to fuck before it changed to demon form and after it changed to demon form brak wanted to fuck it even more!! he almost got seduced and controlled but ‘’‘‘luckily’’‘’ someone put wax in their ears and brak was like ‘oh that’s awesome I thought I was the only one who liked the feeling of wax in my ears and wanted more’ and did it too. so he couldn’t hear the sirensong of the evil character he’s been trying to bang the whole game. it’s the worst good decision I’ve ever made
BUT BECAUSE OF THAT AWFUL CHOICE HE WAS ABLE TO COLLECT THE BOSSES BLOOD
AND THE FORK FINALLY ACTIVATED
AND EVERYONE HAD TO DEAL WITH IT BEING REAL AND BRAK WASN’T JUST PRETENDING HIS FORK WAS FUCKING AWESOME
Pharaonic Corkscrew of Mummification:
Brain Eater (INT spell). DC 13. Close. 2d8 damage.
Mummification (INT spell). DC 15. Near. Target must make CON check against spell roll or become dessicated, dying in 1d4 rounds unless they spend their turns hydrating. Water-based creatures die instantly.
Curse of the Pharaoh. Any time the user fails the item’s casting check, they take 2d8 damage. If the user does not cast one of the corkscrew’s spells at least once per combat, they fall to 0 hit points immediately at the conclusion of combat.
the payoff of hearing everyone in the voice chat EXPLODE when my fork was real was a top 10 gaming moment of all time. unforgettable experience. LOVE PLAYING SHADOWBUTTS
the dessication is SO bad ass
also the comedic opportunities for NOT using it and then dropping dead at the end of a fight!! i love braks fork!!
I don’t know brak’s max hp off the top of my head but I’m pretty sure it’s <= 16 so 2d8 damage on a single failed roll could easily drop him to 0 hp in one shot. I can’t wait for that to happen
oh yeah that’s gonna fucking rule, what a way to go
It’s gonna eat someone’s brain, one way or the other…
Our play-by-post experiment is proceeding very very well. It is a deliciously luxurious experience to be able to reply at your own pace and use all your writing ability and knowledge to make posts that convey all the detail and the tone you want… omg I am loving it. I have seen my players, all which are basically novice RPers, make the biggest swings I’ve ever seen them make in this thread. I also think they are realizing the pleasure of meta-gaming to create an entertaining story, which is something I’ve noticed hasn’t been second nature to most inexperienced people I’ve played with. I think having a separate ooc channel and the thread for playing helped make that apparent.
I have found it really useful to use a Discord Community Server, because it has the forum feature. I make a thread in the forum dedicated to the group and game, and we post all our play in there, and have side convos in the ooc channel. I gave each of these players a role that lets them post and update these channels and threads, but everyone else in the server can only observe and react with emojis.
Visited a friend up in NH for our once-a-year weekend of D&D. She’s a very good painter of minis and has started really branching out into small clay pots, trees, and things like that for our sessions.
This year, she surprised me by having created an absolutely insane five-tier gnoll cavern map with removable segments, allowing us to hide and show content as we played, like it was a goddamn BG3 map or something:
She also did an absolutely incredible job painting minis for us and the gnolls we encountered, including my harpy character Gren!
(@gary this was that friend I mentioned)
Huge apologies to all my players.
the new call of cthulhu module, sutra of pale leaves, already interested me by being set in 1980s japan, but it also provides an in-game justification for the gm to metagame when playing it more than once
the villain, the prince of pale leaves exists outside of the universe, and can see into alternate timelines
after that big fight in shadowdark we decided for a two week town-wide carousal so everyone had to think of an explanation for the roll they got and what they did for 2 weeks, here is my character braks (i rolled some experience and a bard companion, which reminded me that i already had a different bard companion from rolling the same number on a previous carousal)
after brak dares taranth to speak truth on his ex he brags all night about being the inspiration behind his hit song and puffs himself up so much that he decides to start a band with his bard everyone forgot about and flak the pocket priest. one weirdo bard at the tavern latched onto braks tales and toured as well
our band is called Na’amah’s Nasty Hole. fan favorite songs are: knoche estate is burning, a twelve minute song called ‘the taste of gnoll semen’ thats just everyone in the band, including snak, from the ground, gargling what is rumored to be semen but True Nasties know its just potato startch and water (but shh only brak REALLY knows that he finishes off every batch with a geniune goblin load). also andraste’s favorite “saint-expired” (brak uses an especially tinny sounding trash can to play snare on this one and makes sure that it’s amplified louder than every instrument)
brak on percussion, mostly uses a sword and mace to hit a shield and breast plate that are on stands. instead of a kick drum Snak is laying on the ground getting kicked in the gut and going ‘oof’ . he will improvise with any objects in the venue to make any sound that is ‘needed’. Nasties all over town breathlessly tell stories of brak demanding a shoe or breaking off an audience members fingernail for the perfect sound. One particular fan will brag to anyone she can at the bar about how brak pulled her on stage just to slug her in the stomach hard enough that she vomited, so he could amplify the sound of her vomit hitting snak in the face
Bjorn Zorn plays a giant metal spider statuette with metal stringed webbing, uses his bow and arrow as a bowstring with one hand to play different parts of the web and statue. the other hand holds a lever that connects to a mechanism that slams a tiny iron maiden on his hand when pulled, he screams though a modified cornucopia on a stand. bjorn is a tall human who wears patchy hand dyed skin tight leather suits. he squeaks when he walks
Revelations F. Rumenty plays a simple, dented, shitty contrabass with their asshole. they are a filthy nude goblin mess, just a pile of oily tangled hair and crusted with detritus. when not touring/playing music they are completely non-functional and mostly crouch in corners eating garbage and muttering to themselves.we tour around the town for two weeks, decide to keep the band together, adventurer style. at the last minute revelations adopts six dogs and informs the party they’ll stay behind raising them and working their solo career, but no one in the party heard this explanation because they thought it was just a bunch of rats squeaking around in a pile of trash
Speaking of the big boss fight, since it concluded the PCs kind of have a chance to breathe and decide what they’re all doing with their lives going forward (for example one of them decided to form a filthcore noise band), so I offered to make like a little summary of all the hooks that are still dangling. Interest was expressed so I wrote it up… it took longer than actually prepping a session lol. Still, after 32 sessions, it was kind of cool to see it all put together like this. It’s just fantasy rpg junk but it grew up organically and I’m proud of it. I love my players for making this thing breathe!
Ancient elven wizard Azzamar the Cruel, driven mad from the quest to resurrect his dead husband Otello, has dedicated himself to summoning an Avatar of Vile Shune into the world. His lair is the ruined Temple of Fathoms, which lies submerged off the shore to the east. He is collecting magical items from all over the realm, which are apparently necessary for the summoning ritual.
Lareth, priest of Shune and Azzamar’s lieutenant, had taken up residence in the abandoned moathouse outside Pescataway in order to excavate the Finger of Mordanticus the Flayed. He had contracted the Red Hand bandits and their leader, Rotgut, to waylay travelers and do other bandity things, and deliver any artifacts suspected to be magical to the dead drop outside the moathouse. He did in fact find the Finger, but never told Azzamar, as he had his own amibitions to become Shune’s #1 guy and cut Azzamar out.
This journal has disappeared from the party’s possession. Whoever has it now knows this too.
Lareth’s plans were all tragically cut short by the Yaoi Hands Club, who now has the Finger in their possession. The Finger can be used in some way to enter the Temple of Fathoms, but it is also the key ingredient for Azzamar’s summoning ritual.
The YHC knows that the Red Hand bandit headquarters is a place called Nimrod’s Well, deep in the badlands of the Devil’s Cheek, and they know approxmiately where it is, though they have no specific info about its exact location or configuration. They also know that the Greenbriar jobber peasants who were playing at being big bad Red Hands, led by Curtis Crings, have a small camp on the South Bend River at the northern edge of the badlands, and that Jala the forester agreed to take the PCs there on the condition that they don’t kill any of them.
Lareth’s command center at the moathouse noted four magic items of great power that were of particular interest to Azzamar:
- The Scepter of the Crimson Lord, found in the secret tomb of the desecrated shrine beneath Greenbriar. Stolen from Elmer by Oralia Pech, an assassin in Azzamar’s employ, who was mentioned in Lareth’s journal.
- The Egg of the Cockatrice, central relic of the New Moon Grove shrine of the wode elves. The shrine was invaded by the drow priestess Neytiri and her various fey servants so that this item could be stolen. Luckily, it was spirited away by the Grovetender, Fiona, who turned it over to the YHC after they defeated Neytiri and cleansed the grove.
- The Apple of St Terragnis, which was stolen by the Thieves’ Guild on contract from Gilde Knoche, who was the devil Na’amah in disguise. The YHC now knows that Na’amah was not themselves a Shune worshipper, and so why they agreed arrange this theft on Azzamar’s behalf is unknown. The YHC knows that the Guild delivered the Apple to the agent that Knoche designated; they do not know where it went after that.
- The Warhammer of the Dwarf Lords. The only thing the YHC knows about this is that Lareth believed it was held by the Stouthammer dwarves in something called the “Law of Stone,” and that his theory was that it had something to do with Ord’s Rest, the only dwarven settlement that has regular contact with the rest of Andrim.
Some larger threads that are character-specific that might implicate the whole party:
Professor Emeritus of Ramalaatism Arleigh Laughlin has told you that if you can get your hands on a living Wild Axe, you could take it to a ruined shrine of Ramlaat in the dwarven lands, to which she has a rough map. There a ritual performed on the axe may be able to transport you to the Everfields, where a duel with Ramlaat’s champion could be fought for Janka’s soul. A Wild Axe is rumored to be in the hands of an orc leader in the White Tusk lands to the north, known as Ramlaat’s Bones. Temp is currently trying to dig up more specific information on its location. The most obvious way to Ramlaat’s Bones is through the King’s Gate Citadel, but everyone knows the law: the Duke forbids anyone to pass.
Janka’s corpse has been stolen by her halfing vampire ex-wife Renwae, for purposes unknown. Renwae offered to give Elmer the “gift” of vampirism, but when Elmer declined, she neither killed them nor forced it upon them, apparently respecting their decision. Why is a mystery.
Taranth was sent on a quest by his wizard mentor Auralam to find the allegedly legendary text “Popular Fungi.” He found it, and it’s a Highlights-level pamphlet for children. The implications of this on his “quest” and his relationship with Auralam have not yet sunk in.
Iggs has the deed to a nearly worthless plot of land at the edge of the King’s Gate villages, bordering on the southwestern marsh, where he plans to grow pumpkins as a kind of evangelical mission to the Gourd Lord Ord. Thanks to Andraste, some competent peasantry have moved onto the land and are currently farming it, and thanks to Iggs’ proselytizing during Devilslay, a small clutch of pilgrims now huddle there, eager to hear the word of Ord.
The YHC recovered a dark blade from the devil Na’amah - legend has it, it was forged by Memnon himself. It can only be wielded by creatures of chaos. You have turned it over to Archbishop Alameda and the seminary to do research into how to cleanse its evil and bend its magic toward law and service to St Terragnis. No word on that quite yet.
32 sessions! An impressive run so far! How long do you think this campaign will go?
As long as they’ll have me and everyone is having fun, I guess… I mean there is an obvious Big Bad but the PCs are developing enough of their own personalities that they could easily blow him off and pursue other interests instead. Of course no one else is going to stop him, so if they do that long enough he will press the issue…
that’s a recipe for a campaign lasting upwards of 7 or 8 years
my pbp discord game of Toon is going far too slow for me. I think I am longing for experienced players. Toon may seem an unconventional system to play a single game over a duration of weeks with, but I think it is usefully teaching my players how to use the pbp discord system, and that consequences can be fun, it visualizes how a GM narrates a scene that includes everyone, and various other useful lessons. But yes I am frustrated because I wish the pace was quicker. I’m also afraid that I took things off rails when these players probably find rails very comfortable. I created some space, after a rollicking rollercoaster paced segment, to let them drive the car so to speak and at least my partner said she felt uncertain what to do. This is another challenge with pbp, in that conversation is also less spontaneous. I’ve made sure to check in and ask if people are enjoying themselves like they have been, and they say they actually are. And it has been a lot of fun, actually!
But, dang, I am eager to play more. JUST POST ALREADY!!!
Been getting some RPG books lately:
Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game
Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game of tabletop RPGs.
It has some fascinating ideas, like having a limited pool of actions based on dice where you kind of…bet dice on skill rolls? The resource mechanic aspect is interesting.
…and it does nothing with it whatsoever. It feels like it should be a thing where the players go around spending dice on actions and tests, and then when they run out it’s a call for the GM to do something. But the game inexplicably just…says you play it like a super trad RPG. It almost feels timid in how little it even wants to prescribe how you do that.
It’s also kind of a ‘hopeful’ take on the Mythos and that feels weird. It just makes me think of the excellent card game and how much better it is.
Cyberpunk RED
Played the pc game a bit and got hyped enough I wanted to check out the tabletop game some more. This feels like a 2005 game was tossed into the modern day but…kind of in a good way?
Maximalist and streamlined, crazy disorganized rulebook, but the setting has a lot of spice and flavor around the edges. Way, way, waaaaay more than 2077. System isn’t anything to write home about but is very…usable? Workmanlike?
It’s a weird object to find in the 2020s, but the vibe of the rulebook is fun and I do think you could have a good time with it.
Savage Worlds Sci-fi Companion
Yeah it’s a supplement but I’ve been looking forward to it for a year. Each of the companions has been its own thing entirely. Horror Companion is actually just a really useful pile of rules to calibrate Savage worlds into new and different modes of play. The fantasy companion is borderline just a conversion document for D&D.
Sci-fi companion is a completely random pile of stuff. Literally everything in here is Popular Scifi Thing with the numbers filed off. They gotta have every alien from Gaurdians of the Galaxy, they got stat blocks for Battletech Mechs and The RX78-2 gundam. There’s cyberpunk rules, kinda. There’s good enough mecha and space dogfight rules.
Still, though, I think by being ‘fine’ it’s now actually one of the best mecha RPGs I own lol. Savage Worlds is weird.
There’s a OSR-inspired hexcrawl and dungeon exploration RPG that’s getting some hype called Land of Eem which seems to me an attempt to merge a system as crunchy as like B/X and Dungeon World together in a highly produced package that could appeal to kids and adults with varying experience roleplaying who like fantasy but are looking for something a bit Don Bluth and Dark Cystal. I haven’t had much success with imagining a world when playing B/X just yet or getting people excited by the really generic/webcomics tone of Dungeon World, and I have lots of friends who are novice gamers that I hope this could snag. It’s not exactly the system I am most excited by, and I’m in fact curious if I can run it sort of agnostic of the strong setting and theme it comes packaged with, because it seems really approachable and like it could balance story and traditional RPG mechanics fairly well. I just want to hex and dungeon crawl with meaningful character development and engagement with the world, and for some reason that has been hard to create at the table with fantasy games I’ve tried.
Hm. What do you mean by this? Can you describe what your games have been lacking that you think they ought to have?
