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Tabletop Tales

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Post by Archengeia Sat Mar 02, 2013 8:20 am

So enough people have asked me now about the whole 'largest group I've ever run' thing I mentioned a few times. Thought I'd share a couple tales, offer for others to do the same.

In actual fact I have run two games that involved 15 total players, plus me as GM. The first was somewhat unremarkable, set in a world I eventually dubbed the Soulstone planet and integrated into my overarcing Imperium storyline later on. It was quite fun; I instituted a few custom rules for playing, like if the party took longer than 5 minutes to decide on something I would say their next statement would be their decision as a group. I was not trying to be cruel, mind, but to keep the flow going, and it worked surprisingly well. Sometimes the party would do so on purpose when they were at a genuine disagreement of how to proceed. The whole world was my own custom take on D20 Modern, for those who are curious, and involved what at first seemed to be magic being integrated to the world but ended up being an experiment and... well you know me.

The second tale I find far more interesting to tell. See, it was set in Star Trek. 15 players, all of whom were playing major roles on a single ship, the Nebula-class Cruiser Yuri Gagarin. It was an absolute ton of fun. I set it during the height of the fighting in the Dominion War, with the players each being told they can make up their backstories and species at will (within reason, as always) but the one requirement was; none of them were soldiers. They were dragged to war, they didn't go charging. This was one of what I like to call Roleplaying games (rather than Rollplaying) because the character sheets were incredibly minimalistic. While I had full specs up for the ship itself, each individual had what amounted to a Skills list (which I'll get to in a second) and GM's decision on how badly they were wounded. No HP, AC, nothing. The Skills were effectively copy pasted from the Star Trek Customizable Card Game; Leadership, Engineering, Medical, Honor, Music etc. and in general would only have 1 rank in any given skill, which would slowly increase as they leveled. These would change what types of situations they could handle, and how. I also kept the Integrity, Cunning, Strength system but primarily as a roleplaying mechanic, again to determine how not if they could deal with a situation.
We were playing in Rob's basement (I don't mind dropping his real name I haven't seen him in over a decade) which was specially setup for gaming, video and tabletop varieties both, and usually the bridge crew would setup on one side with chairs and the couch and the 'everyone else' (medic, away team, engineer, etc.) would be on the other side. It was incredible fun setting up situations for the ship and away teams to solve basically simultaneously. I also implemented a system I admittedly borrowed heavily from Star Control, for the away teams; they could take down any number of 'security personnel' (I tried to get them to call them that but they all just referred to them as 'red shirts') who upon failing or getting in bad combat situations would die, lowering the away team's 'health'. Usually if they hit a point where they lost all their 'red shirts' and it was down to just the party members they'd call for emergency beam out (which wouldn't always work) because if they got hit again it'd be a player that was injured or died.
I think the funniest thing about the Star Trek game was setting it up. The stories just came, back then I felt more creative then I do now and ideas would just flow. But no what I mean is everyone pretty universally decided Joel should be the Captain, whereas certain other positions were hotly contested and had to be resolved by dueling Mario Kart sessions (no I'm not kidding). These included First Officer (aka Away Team leader), Security Chief (I... guess cuz they wanted to shoot things?) and finally, of all things, Chief Medical Officer. That last one I understand the best actually; this was a good group and several people wanted to have a chance at roleplaying a medic in a war they didn't want or need.
Probably my best single memory from that game was when they were at a Gorn firebase and were taking pretty heavy losses on the ground while the ship was in the middle of deciding whether or not to start shelling the base from orbit. The Captain had decided to try to be diplomatic but the Security Chief on the ground (played by Ingi) turned to me and said that she was going to deliberately disobey orders and call for the strike because, in her honest opinion, the situation was unsalvageable and they were taking pretty bad losses (First Officer was already unconscious, and a Security Officer who went down dead). I decided to allow it so she bluffed the Captain into changing his mind and they withdrew and shelled the hell out of the base, killing several thousand Gorn but saving the lives of the rest of the Away Team and possibly the ship as well (they were about to send a distress call out which a nearby Dominion squad would've picked up). She got an actual dressing out, in-character, right there in the basement when she got back to the ship but stood her ground. The Captain actually demoted her and elevated another person to Security Chief on the spot. The whole incident was pure roleplaying (ranks don't actually mean anything and she'd still be on Away Teams) but they all took it with proper gravity. It was awesome.
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Post by Essoje Sun Mar 03, 2013 12:06 am

Those sound awesome.

Sadly, I don't think I have any stories that I haven't already wrote about in this forum or at google groups. Most of the campaigns that haven't been mentioned felt like tabletop strategy games using D&D rules instead. Nothing wrong with that, that's just not as fun as having solid roleplay backing it up in my opinion. You know, like this forum's campaign. Very Happy
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Post by Araiguna Sun Mar 03, 2013 3:07 pm

sounds epic haha, well, I know i'll be telling stories about this campaign sometime in the future xD
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Post by Permeus (tabran) Sun Mar 03, 2013 4:35 pm

i dont have anything that would class as a full story just some interesting events like the time that while playing Deadland my huckster saved the campaign and the party with a level 0 cantrip style spell (that was kind of like scan) we had just killed the last boss and were sealed in his room with the timer counting down on a self-destruct device that would level the mounting this bad guy had his hidden base under no one could think of a way to get out and we couldnt get to the bomb, he had locked the door with a code and non of us had seen what it was affraid so i do this spell as a last ditch attempt at saving us (i didnt expect it to work) the GM had forgoten i had this spell so he was as shocked as the rest of the team when i said that i was going to try it.

for note in deadlands Hucksters cast spells by playing a game of poker with the spirits with diffident spells needing better hands to pull off and some spells having better effects the better the hand you pull, and if you pull one of the jokers (jokers count as any card for the poker hand) that are in the deck the spirit you were playing with was to powerful for you and good or bad things were going to happen, Red was a good spirit Cool , black was a bad one Twisted Evil and the GM gets to decide what bad thing happens to you like if you were casting a healing spell then you would do damage to the person you were trying to heal and so on.

so for the spell to work i needed a pair of anything so i draw my hand....nothing so i push my luck (i forget now but i have a skill or something that let me draw additional cards for a cost) i had to end up pushing it 4 times to get a pair, so i saw the code opened the door and we all got out, well kind of we couldn't make it all the way out before the timer ran out so we ended up taking a portal that we didnt know were it went to but at lest we weren't all killed.....yet.
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Post by Kolson Sun Mar 03, 2013 9:02 pm

In the original D&D campaign I played in my character was a pretty crappy fighter. His stats were awful (It was 2E but we generated them the old fashioned way, 3d6 in order.) and I generally rolled poorly during fights anyway. FYI I was 9 or 10 years old at the time so I don't remember everything as well as I would like.

The campaign itself was pretty deadly, with all of the other players losing at least 1 character to traps, fighting, and failed player shenanigans. But not me. Somehow, in someway, my crappy fighter survived all the way through the campaign through a combination of hiding, sucking too bad to bother with, and a generous helping of luck and cleverness.

Some highlights:

Highlight 1:

Highlight 2:

Highlight 3:
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Post by Snarg of Wildpaw Fri May 31, 2013 2:45 am

I'm necroing this thread because.

Explosives + Fireball = Lake
This story takes place in the world of Iron Kingdoms. It was actually my first D&D character I ever played who met an unfortunate end in a one round TPK. If you're not familiar with the setting, this describes it pretty well:

Tabletop Tales 500px-Iron_kingdoms

We were a mid-level party of specialists for the Cygnar army heading to Five-Fingers to conduct some under-the-table business. The party composition isn't vitally important except for one person: the arcane mechanic. Essentially the big crafter of the group. He liked explosives - remember that.

Travel was accomplished by way of boat down a river going towards Five-Fingers. Everything was going fairly well until we ram in to a Kodoran ambush. After dispatching most of the ambush, we spotted several snipers on the shore. The captain decided to run the boat straight towards them to get the melee fighters a chance to get off. As soon as we got to shore, someone noticed the finger waggler in the background. He was casting a fireball at our group.

It hit the boat, hurt a bit, but everyone had enough HP to survive the spell. That was when the arcane mechanic spoke up: "uh, do unattended objects have to save against that?" There was a bit of silence as it dawned on us; he was speaking about explosives. Unknown to us, he had recently crafted a bunch of explosive mines on the ship as we were traveling. They had just been hit by a fireball.

Many dice were rolled and, long story short, no one ended saving against the AoE damage and took the full brunt of it. There were no survivors on either side.

We immediately made plans to continue the game as residents of Five-Fingers, fast-forwarded several months after this event. It was amusing to learn that there was a new lake at that location named after the arcane mechanic.

---------------------

The next three stories come from the same game series which actually only lasted two sessions. Not for lack of interest, but it rather due to the GM only being in town on leave for two weeks. We were able to wrap up the story he had in those two sessions and many great moments came out of it. The sheer amount of stories that come from those two sessions speak volumes about the great fun that series was.

Melon shot
It is a post-apocalyptic world using the Rifts system. We were each assigned a random mutation after remaining on earth when the nuclear bombs fell, our space ship (secretly a testing lab) failed to launch us before they hit. We all came out with some very amusing conditions, but I digress.

We were heading back from an old military base to gather supplies, vehicles, etc. Along the way, we met with a group of bow wielding "natives" who thought that there were evil spirits in the base and that we had touched that evil. There was a Mexican standoff. We didn't really want to kill them (we had a .50 cal and they had arrows) ... well, all but one person. They wouldn't take our food and water, since it came from the "evil place", so one of the players went through with an evil plan. Taking the bottle of water he had, he flung it at one of the braves and hit him, splattering water all over him. The brave fell to his knees, sobbing about how he had been touched by the evil and was to be put out of his misery. The chief turned to him, raised the bow to his head ... and crit. He did way, way, way more damage than he needed to.

The others looked at the chief, looked at the brave, and decided that this wasn't all worth it. They turned and walked away. Thus ended that encounter which was supposed to result in combat. Later on, we found out that just throwing water on these natives would essentially cause them to all suicide.

Don't Cross the Pee Line
This was later in the day, when I and another party member were driving two trucks down the road towards another base. It was night time and we had heard rumors of "devil dogs" that inhabited the forests. We had, of course, heard this from the natives, so we weren't too sure what to make of it. As we drove down the road, we kept seeing flashes of these demonic, spiked dogs. They weren't doing anything, but more and more appeared as we continued down the road. It was then when both of us, the drivers, spotted a large, dark line that went across the road; several dozen of these devil dogs standing on the other side of it.

The other driver managed to slam on his brakes and stopped well before the line. I unfortunately failed the drive check the first time. The truck began to skid forward, coming closer and closer to the line, which we could now tell was a bunch of liquid across the road. I finally made my drive check and came to a stop juuuust short of the line. The devil dogs watched our vehicles, but neither of us crossed the line, which we by now had figured out was a big pee line. Everyone in unison turned to each other and said: "don't cross the pee line!" From that point on, whenever there's anything we don't want to do, someone will say "don't cross the pee line!"

We ended up trading with the devil dogs, who turned out to be quite intelligent, although none of us ever crossed that pee line.

Weekend at Bernie's
Finally having reached the base and just settling in, we were surprised when a huge army of bandits showed up. Having killed their initial scouts, we were then faced with the decision of what to do about the ones upstairs. The only way down currently was an old service elevator, which they had proved to be guarding with a machine gun. It was instant death if anyone tried to go up there.

That's when the explosives engineer had an idea. Taking the bodies of the dead scouts, we hooked them all up with explosives. We then loaded them in the elevator car, put up a false wall that we all hid behind, and sent the elevator up. It worked perfectly. The confused guards at the top thought we had sent a warning to them and gathered up their companions. As soon as they had carried them far enough away, the engineer remote detonated the explosives, taking them all out. We sprang out of the wall and collected the spoils.

From that point on, any trap involving dead bodies and/or explosives is always called a Weekend and Bernie's.

-----------------------------

A currently ongoing campaign is one we call the Savage Game. This is a Pathfinder system game in a world that has recently hit the bronze age. aka no cool metal weapons, crossbows, etc. Magic is still prevalent, but it changes a few things up. This has been a very character focused game, so I feel it would be best if I explained the party:

1. The Bard. An evil Kobold bent on world domination and seeking an alliance with the evil dragons who are currently conquering the world. Always scheming to increase his influence.

2. The Cavalier. A Human general of one of the last free cities, currently under siege by the dragons. Fiecely loyal to his king and constantly striving to free the world from the dragons.

3. The Alchemist. A money/power hungry Gnome who refuses to take precise bombs. In love with the pyromaniac.

4. The Pyromaniac. A ditzy Gnome who loves catching things on fire. When she isn't sure what to do, something randomly catches fire. This happens a lot.

5. The Gravewalker. An evil Tiefling with severe body deformations. Hates being called a necromancer. Always running around with an army of zombies and skeletons. Always chased out of town.

6. The Magnificent. A pretty boy fighter very concerned with his looks and showing off his swordplay. Chiefly concerned with his personal fame above all. "The Magnificent" is actually the surname he goes by.

I'll let you guess which one I'm playing.

Hey, let's all join the evil dragon!
There are many stories from this currently ongoing campaign. It's been a roller coaster ride, although the biggest event happened fairly recently. As it tends to happen, being away for one session means your character is captured. This is what happened to the bard when he missed a gaming session. Finding himself captured by the Savage Elves, he managed to escape along with his cohort, the last female of his tribe.

They somehow met up with a half-dragon who attempted to convince them to join the dragon she served. Unfortunately, this meant putting on mind controlling bracers. Also unfortunately, this particular dragon had spit acid on the Bard's face when he had last spoke with her. This didn't go over well with him. He refused and proceeded back to the party's last known location. He took the braclets with him to study.

Meanwhile, the general had created a stampede to try and clera the dragon's forces out of the jungle, unknown to the bard. As he was walking back, it came through and nearly killed the last female of his tribe. Fortunately he did take healing spells and barely managed to bring her back up.

When he got back to the party, he began yelling at the general and causing damage to him (he can cause damage with the power of his voice). The General's dinosaur mount decided that he didn't like that and bit at the bard. Unfortunately for the Bard, the dinosaur hit every single time and crit with his biggest attack. The bard every single one of his rolls too and died.

This set off a chain of events. The Gravewalker decided he wanted to reincarnate the bard and did so, turning him in to a half-orc, who promptly ran off. He also left behind the mind controlling bracers of the dragon when he fled.

Party count: 5

They followed him, but were unable to catch him. They retired to the nearest city where the Gravewalker was promptly shot at by the locals. Up until this point, the Gravewalker had been the Bard's self-proclaimed 'advisor'. With the recent rejection, he shouted out that "at least they will need my services!" and slapped on the mind control bracer. He promptly teleported away.

Party count: 4

This caused some array of chaos. The rest of the party was upset, people weren't getting along, so the Alchemist decided he would join the dragon too. Grabbing hold of the Pyromaniac, he slapped on a bracer and both of them teleported away.

Party count: 2

At this point, the GM decided to give them an out. He changed the scene to the dragon's lair where the Gravewalker, Alchemist, and the Pyromaniac were there. The Pyromaniac, not being mind controlled, immediatley began hurling fire everywhere. She was fighting the Alchemist and Gravewalker, who were mind controlled, and a half-dragon priest. Somehow, the Alchemist's bracer was melted off and he regained control. The Gravewalker also managed to switch bodies with the half-dragon using Soul Jar and an artifact. They were able to escape and eventually decided to all fly back to the city.

Party count: 4

They all collapsed back in the city, the Gravewalker having a new half-dragon body in a city that is in a war with the dragons. They kept him/her hidden and discussed what to do next. The king's personal witch brought in an advisor to help with the situation, a Gnome bard and his bodyguard. I forgot to mention: the Bard has a very high disguise skill.

Party count: 5

We lost 4 players and gained them back again. It's been a very interesting game. The party makeup is so varied, there's evil characters mixed with good characters, and there's constant deception. Heck, the only person who actually knows the Bard is actually the Kobold is the Gravewalker and he doesn't really care to tell anyone.

Moments
A lot of the best moments are reoccurring or happened very quickly. Here's a few of my favorites:

1. The Magnificent must always start combat with Dazzling Display; even against mindless hordes of undead.

2. Every single forest we've gone through has ended up being burned down by the Pyromaniac.

3. The Bard constantly refers to the Gnomes as his slaves and they go along with it ... sometimes.

4. The Pyromaniac loves undead horses and rode around on one she called Glue Factory. Unfortunately, it met with an untimely end in combat. "For Glue Factory!" is now a default battle cry for her.

5. There was the Druid (played by the Magnificent) for a few sessions until he decided to perform a ritual inside a necromatic box and got his soul trapped inside an artifact. This was actually the exact same artifact the Gravewalker used to swap his body with the half-dragon. The Druid came in to his body, had time to say "what-" and then was incinerated by a fireball. He was trapped inside that gem for at least 10 sessions before coming to in a Tiefling body and being instantly killed.

6. We found an ancient Dwarven hammer and anvil a local Troll blacksmith was using. The Bard figured out it was an artifact with alteration magic. He activated the artifact while the Troll was using it and the Troll was transformed in to an ancient Dwarven cleric. The former Troll now follows the party around advancing his own mysterious agenda. Coincidentally, the Dwarves, long thought extinct, have begun to appear once more.

7. Wizards don't exist in this setting. That concept is unknown to everyone ... at the moment. Upon finding an artifact (an animated severed hand), the Bard has learned of ancient Elves who practiced something called "wizardry" from some sort of memory share. He wears this around his neck and is currently unlocking its secrets.

8. There is an old lady with an ancient curse who is courting the General to be her husband. She has gone through almost a dozen husbands who were all killed in some terrible accident. Her handmaiden has no soul, confirmed by the Gravewalker.

9. In one session, the Alchemist poisoned and killed an entire town so Hobgoblins could take over that land. The Bard found out and went along with it.

10. The leaders of the Last Free City are being slowly replaced with simulacrums that are possessed by the dragons. This was discovered by the king's witch and priest, who are being forced to work together and with the party to sniff out and defeat these infiltrators. The creator of these simulacrums? The Alchemist's teacher.

11. The Alchemist has a terrible bluff score and constantly tries to lie to a party who has maxed their sense motive.

12. Once, the Alchemist was captured by a former college and held in a camp of Hobgoblins. The Bard and the Magnificent walked straight into the camp with an Aura of the Unremarkable and high bluff skills. They walked right up to him, cast Invisibility on him, and he walked out with them.

13. The Magnificent once out-intimidated a black dragon great wyrm ... at level 10.

12. The Magnificent once snuck in to the king's room. He revealed himself so dramatically that he was instantly given a high ranking position in the king's army.

13. The Gravewalker fought a week-long war in the sewers against the city guard using a skeleton and flying skull.

--------------------------------

These are only summaries and highlights of these games. There are many more stories I'd love to share, some even in the same games I've mentioned, although I honestly would rather just talk about them than write. I think I could do it more justice that way.

There's a very good Spelljammer game going on right now that has a very cool storyline. It's actually tied in to the Savage game although far in the future. Different GMs too.

Another good time was an incredibly fun Deadlands game. Putting Johnny Ringo in prison, RPing a card game with the biggest characters in the game, having a vendetta against the color red, and all sorts of other fun stuff.

Oh, and who can forget the time when I was a first mate on a space prison ship with the other players being prisoners? That was an interesting jailbreak. It's unique to play on the other side for a few sessions.

There was also that time I was an engineer for Google investigating an ancient demon from another dimension that I battled using quantum physics.

Playing as a guardrail installation specialist on the Death Star infected with a zombie plague was quite interesting.

We did continue the Iron Kingdoms campaign as Five-Fingers residents. One of our party members eventually became a High Captain who was secretly a spy for a foreign power. There was also a party member playing an Ogre rickshaw puller named Bakin who constantly had Infernals on his tail. That campaign had a lot of cool stories.

---------------------------------

If you're ever on my stream some time and want to hear a story let me know. Stay a while and listen!
Snarg of Wildpaw
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Post by Kolson Mon Jun 03, 2013 10:51 pm

Ha, ha. Great stuff Snarg. Did you play The Magnificent?
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Post by Zeiss Mon Jun 03, 2013 11:25 pm

Yeah, really funny Razz
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Post by Snarg of Wildpaw Tue Jun 04, 2013 9:51 am

Nope, I do not play that character. I'm actually the Bard.
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Post by Kolson Tue Jun 04, 2013 10:46 pm

That was my third guess after the Not-a-Necromancer. Razz
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Post by Zeiss Tue Jun 04, 2013 10:52 pm

I actually knew Snarg was the Bard. It seemed to fit with TheTh3rd's way to build characters.
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