Fun / Interesting Game Stories

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Amara
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Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Amara » Mon Oct 28, 2013 10:44 am

Title subject to change, thought this was the best place for this thread. If it needs to be moved, that's fine. C:
I already have the 'things my character is not allowed to do' thread, but obviously people have lots of neat stories that don't fit in to that, and I'd love to hear them!


I'll start with a few random snippets from a game last night.
As of last night, we have a new strategic maneuver that's been dubbed wizard in a can. Level one is prone to spawning weird tactics anyway, and after a few combat scenarios gone horribly wrong, and the realization that with a single d6 health virtually anything could one shot my wizard, the party decided the best way to proceed was forming a human blockade around him so that he couldn't be flanked.
Of course, the same party, who had insisted on two person watches, also decided Elevar could take a shift by himself since the bird gets her own perception roll...
The irony was that the wizard wound up being the only one able to hit anything for a good solid few rounds, even after exhausting his spells, and was STILL doing more damage with his quarter staff because everyone else kept rolling 1's for damage.

This same fight involved two people almost dying, and me resorting to having my familiar be distracting / having her throw stones at the enemies below.
The distraction worked, thank God. I can now safely say I've seen a raven roll a 20 on a bluff check. o_o
RUATHI! YOU SAVED US

If anyone is interested, there's a much longer tale on Bobo the cursed / blessed ogre.

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Godbot » Mon Nov 04, 2013 11:06 am

All right, I've got one.

So I joined this D&D 3.5 campaign, and the DM was allowing all the original base classes and a small handful of alternative ones, like Swashbuckler and Favored Soul. I'd never heard of a Favored Soul before, so I asked what it was, and the DM explained it to me: They're like clerics, but rather than worshipping a god and being granted powers in exchange, they were minding their own business when a god said "Hey, you. I'm giving you superpowers. You work for me now, okay?" I loved this idea, since it lent itself to a beleaguered character and a whimsical god who are constantly sassing each other and getting on each other's nerves. I'm also really big on support characters, so I became the party healer.

(My character's god was Titania, Goddess of the Fey, and an important character in the campaign, so I named him Ananke, after a) one of Jupiter's moons, along with Titania and Oberon, b) the Greek goddess of unavoidable necessity, and c) Anansi.)

A handful of sessions into the campaign, we're led into this enchanted forest and led through some portals for a bit before we eventually come out into a room. The DM turns her laptop around to reveal a picture she's shown me before, of a beautiful fairy-type lady, lounging on a couch in this lavishly decorated room, and says that only my character recognizes her. The DM asks how my character reacts, and I stop to think. I really wanted to get this right.

So we pause for a few minutes, let some people get some snacks and stuff, and when everyone comes back I say that I think I've got it.

When we resume the session, I blurt out,
► Show Spoiler
Everyone loved this, and it defined their relationship from that point on. When I said it, Titania just smiled sweetly and disregarded me. She did a bunch of other stuff just to mess with Ananke, like giving him a giant pair of butterfly wings when his class gave him the ability to fly, or taking his spells away for a day for sassing her (to which he responded "Whatever, lady,") or giving him an artifact that would let him talk to her, in the form of a magic mirror (he had a vampire bloodline, and had no reflection). Favored Souls get a bunch of new spell slots every other level, so we figured every once in a while Titania was like "Oh yeah, I guess I should probably give him some more magic or something."

Anyway, the couch was destroyed when a devil in the upper ranks of Hell basically kidnapped Titania, crippling the fey and allowing the devils to invade the material plane, in hopes of getting a promotion. Titania's pocket dimension collapsed without her there to hold it together. We got out in time, but my couch did not.

So that's the story of how I lost my fictional couch.

How I got it back is a different story.
Last edited by Godbot on Thu Nov 07, 2013 10:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Amara » Tue Nov 05, 2013 1:58 pm

That is beyond fantastic.
I officially produced a hyena shriek in the middle of class. That will be fun to explain.

Okay, Bobo. Let's see.

Bobo was originally created to be a low(ish) level encounter for the players in a friends game. He was statted as a bog standard ogre, with absolutely no deviations. Since he was a singular challenge, and the players had a party of four, at their level he should have been a tanky but relatively easy challenge.
He rolled three twenties in three turns to hit, confirmed all three, and proceeded to wipe the entire party, with the exception of the rogue who chose to play dead.
The DM was astonished. Now, this death was hand waved, of course. That shouldn't have happened! But this meant Bobo got to recur. Later, when fighting him again, he again rolled several crits, confirmed all but one of them, wiped the party again.

When the DM later needed a name for an ogre in an arena fight in another game, he again chose Bobo.
Yet again, the ogre proved capable of rolling crit after crit. Playing dead to get away from him became a preferred option. But what if he fought for the party, not against?
Later, Bobo appeared as a sort of forced hireling for another party. I don't remember the particulars, only that he was given specific instructions, was under the forcible command of the party's ranger, and made every encounter the party had after that point last less than two party rounds because yet again, the ogre seemed to only be able to roll hot. And it wasn't always, no. The ogre had terrible perception, and a worse will save, and failed plenty of saves, but whenever he needed that 20, it appeared without fail.

Several years later, and in one of the Pathfinder campaigns I'm currently in, the DM, a friend of mine and who had by now heard the stories of Bobo from my friend, decided of roll up a Bobo of his own for the campaign. This Bobo was meant to be nothing more than a casual reference, and surely his luck wouldn't follow him from 3.5 to pathfinder, right? He was rolled up as a gentle giant sort, merely a half ogre, (but still classed as large,) with racial HD and a few levels of barbarian.
We (the party) bumped in to him. Literally, in my cleric's case. Isaac was trying to sneak away and ran smack in to a wall of half ogre.
Bobo asked why Isaac had slammed in to him. Now of course, the conversation on the half ogre's end was much, much simpler, and flustered, Isaac attempted to apologize repeatedly. The half ogre persisted (and followed), and not knowing what else to do, Isaac offered him a handful of candies to distract him before taking off.
Needless to say, the party had a loyal new follower. Namesake or not, surely since this wasn't the same Bobo, the curse/blessing of Bobo wouldn't continue, right?

The party made their way, Bobo in tow, to a library in an abandoned city to gather information. Bobo wouldn't fit inside the library with us, and Isaac wound up asking him to keep watch so that the poor half ogre would at least feel he was doing something important. (Certainly we didn't actually expect to be attacked.)
"Ok, Birdman!"

Isaac had summarize prepared, and made quite liberal use of it, (along with a rather nice roll of 19+9 = 28 on a linguistics check for what few things were in an unfamiliar language,) so we soon had a fair sized stack of useful books, and poor Isaac soon had a summary of what felt like half the books in the library floating about in his head. (I still keep getting situational bonuses because of that, and it is fantastic.)

We were just finishing up on the third floor when we hear a panicked "No! Bobo not like bees!" from outside the library.

We came racing outside, just in time to see a robed figure sprinting away. The (illusionary) bees seemingly disappeared from poor Bobo once the robed figure was out of range, but Isaac had already given chase.
Later, Bobo explained that the 'invisible man' tried to sneak up on him.
Oh, he failed the will save against the illusion naturally, but Bobo rolled a 20 to notice this guy. A 20. On someone invisible. So he noticed the puddles of water at the stranger's feet.

Later, once we were inside a collapsed temple, there was a trap that went off closing a door and barring our passage. Bobo proceeds to roll a 20 to smash down the wall.
Later, after being told he cannot follow the party when we set out in search of a missing person (as we needed to be stealthy,) he rolls several 20s to track us down to a monastery halfway across the island.
The DM doesn't bother to hide Bobo's rolls anymore. There's no point. Any time Bobo needs a 20, Bobo gets a 20. Including at one point, unfortunately, a 20 to hit my poor cleric when Bobo failed a will save against being commanded to do so. Isaac was promptly brought down to 13 HP from full. And that's WITH damage reduction.
The story of Bobo lives on.
This includes, at one point, rolling a 20 on a diplomacy check when trying to talk to a giant so that it wouldn't rip the party limb from limb.
I don't even want to know the negative modifier on Bobo's charisma.
Last edited by Amara on Tue Nov 05, 2013 5:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Wolfie » Tue Nov 05, 2013 2:58 pm

I like Bobo. He reminds me of Joe, our enlightened Guerillan.

Um, a story from my adventures...

Oh! I think I mentioned this one once on the other forum, but it's worth a return.

I was DM'ing a campaign called "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil" and informed the players that most of the campaign would be played indoors, either in dungeons or underground and the like. So what do I get? I get a Dwarven fighter, a Gnomish cleric, a Human wizard, and a Knight! A friggin Knight complete with a fully decked out Warhorse and laden down with feats for mounted combat.

In his first encounter, he completely abandoned the party to save his horse from being dragged away by orcs and a half-ogre. He managed to fend off one of the orcs while the rest of the party decimated the other baddies.

In the second encounter, the group came upon a Blue Dragon and the Knight called the Dragon to One-on-One Combat, to which the dragon was just grumpy enough to comply with. He got fried (literally) before the two fighters got off some lucky crit shots with their short bows. The group then sold his horse and all its gear to pay for his resurrection.

On their next major encounter, he got all his armor eaten by an ooze and then petrified by a cockatrice. The party had his stone head mounted on a pike as warning to others.

Needless to say, he is now my "this is what not to do" example when telling people about how to create and play characters.
"This is my therapy dragon, she's for my panic attacks. I attack, everyone panics." (Quote found on http://outofcontextdnd.tumblr.com/)

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Amara » Thu Nov 07, 2013 4:16 pm

Oh geeze. Gotta love when you get those players...
Kinda like in the past when I've run Vampire games and received folks that don't understand that Vampire is...really not a hack and slash type game, they make strictly combat geared characters, try to fight everything they encounter, then get surprised when they're thrashed.
(After repeated, REPEATED warnings, even before character creation.)

Hnm, well, I've a shorter story of last night's silly antics, I suppose! Two, in fact!

1rst)
► Show Spoiler
2nd)
► Show Spoiler

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by gamecreator » Thu Nov 07, 2013 4:31 pm

What about those mirror images? I'd like to hear that.

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Amara » Thu Nov 07, 2013 7:23 pm

Ah, the mirrors.
Okay. Wow, this is actually kind of a long story, when given detail.
► Show Spoiler
First, the orcs suggested letting the war chief decide who was real. Both Isaacs flatly refused. They then suggested letting Sasha/She'alti'el, Isaac/Ensai'lalaith's brother, decide who was the real one. They consented to this, and the party was brought back to the war camp, the two Isaacs were tied up, and eventually the war chief came out in a rage. Sasha was missing! It seemed he'd fled the camp in search of another missing individual shortly after we'd departed.
Oh dear.

...but the NE Isaac saw a chance.
"Hey! I can find him for you!"
The war chief listened; mirror!Isaac was untied, and under careful supervision, was allowed his harrow deck. He began a reading... and determined a path to take. But there were undead marching, and the chief would need to send a small group, indeed.
The NG Isaac, still bound, spoke up, "you say you need a small group, who has to move fast; who can move faster than the two of us? We will find him!"

► Show Spoiler
Or, the much abridged version;
DM made a mirror image alignment-flipped clone of my NG cleric, let me play him, I took it and ran with it, far beyond what the DM intended, and it became such a plot point that the DM decided to retroactively include a clone of my character's brother, as well, who has now become the current story's big bad.

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Dagazzard » Fri Nov 08, 2013 8:30 pm

Love hearing these stories :D

We started playing last week (basically our first tabletop rpg game session ever \o/). One particularly fun story about how the DM plans went awry... He planned for the rogue elf, Alaia, to be imprisioned in the start of her story so the rest of the party would rescue her (and that's how we'd all meet for the first time). But she rolled VERY well when making her character.

So, she entered the tavern to get information and was challenged to a drinking contest in order to earn it... The beer was drugged and would put her to sleep. But instead she took the barman hostage with her short sword, forcing the information out of him. A guy tried sneaking behind her and hitting her with a glass (which would have knocked her out) but she managed to dodged it. In the end she killed everyone in the tavern (except the slaves which were imprisioned downstairs), freed the slaves and all without a single scratch. xD

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Amara » Sun Nov 10, 2013 3:26 pm

Haha, well, I don't think I've taken anyone hostage in my current on-going games. It's definitely happened in the past.
That's fantastic. We did have a plan arson moment that went wonderfully awry, but that was a session I was merely spectating, and not a part of.

Though, the last (and only) drinking contest to ever happen in my Isaac game ended absolutely horrifically for those involved. It was part of the start of the campaign, and was originally going to be just a joke start and explain how Isaac wound up with a bit of (VERY MUCH UNWANTED) attention at game start, where he'd be working. (We all started the campaign as caravan guards for a local tavernkeep.)
Post-cataclysmic this and that, world falling apart, yadda yadda, Isaac wandered in upon the start game city, goals by this point limited to getting absolutely blackout drunk, and forgetting the events from his past few months entirely. He finds the tavern, takes a seat, and is about to order when a nearby dwarf decides to take offense to an elf daring to sit so close to him.

Now, the dwarf was just rolled up as a level 1 commoner, and Isaac at game start was cleric2/swashbuckler1. Elves are not particularly well known for their constitution, though his was at least a flat 10, with no negative modifier. Still, the general idea was 'let's roll for it and see what happens' because all of the players involved decided outdrinking a dwarf was a hilarious idea.
This is the point where I should mention that Isaac receives a +4 bonus against poisons on saves...and alcohol is, of course, counted as a poison.

The dwarf died.
Everything was actually rolled for, and the dwarf flat out died of alcohol poisoning.
My character's first moment in the new campaign resulted in him killing a dwarf. With alcohol. Come to think, Isaac's been surrounded by a lot of accidental death, too. ...not good for someone with the protection domain.
► Show Spoiler

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Godbot » Tue Nov 12, 2013 10:11 pm

Amara wrote:Or, the much abridged version;
DM made a mirror image alignment-flipped clone of my NG cleric, let me play him, I took it and ran with it, far beyond what the DM intended, and it became such a plot point that the DM decided to retroactively include a clone of my character's brother, as well, who has now become the current story's big bad.
This makes me want to DM a campaign, throw all the characters in a dungeon with a similar sort of mirror trap that makes evil(?) opposites of everyone's characters, let them really play it up and figure out what their opposites would be like, and then just have them kill the entire party and make the opposites the players' new characters.

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Amara » Tue Nov 12, 2013 11:52 pm

Haha! Well, that might have happened, except he did rule for the mirror having all of the original Isaac's memories... so from the NE Isaac's memories, the party were all still his friends. He was more of a selfish jerk than their (entirely too self-sacrificing) NG original Isaac in the beginning, but he had the same basic personality.

Figuring out opposites wound up being a lot of fun in the long run, though. Amichai (mirror Isaac) has since become true neutral, and is actually beginning to slide toward CG. He's still more selfish than the original Isaac, but because of his unique circumstances, he now understands what it's like to fall under unwarranted and undeserved judgment.. and it's something he wishes upon no one else, whereas Ari (the originally CE copy of Sasha, Isaac's older brother,) was not only more selfish than his counterpart, but he was also much more temperamental and judging. The end result was that Amichai wasn't likely to hurt anyone, but would rather others get hurt but him. ...so he'd still help his friends, but wouldn't put himself in harm's way directly if it could be avoided. Ever.
Ari on the other hand would fly in to a rage at the smallest perceived sleight upon himself, and at one point opened fire upon his own brother in a fit of rage. It can be fun, and I'd definitely recommend it if you trust the players in question to handle it properly. I wouldn't say alignment flips would always result in a slaughter fest, of course.

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Wolfie » Wed Nov 13, 2013 9:06 am

In our current D&D session, our DM is having a boatload of fun with our group. We started out with a halfling rogue (deceased), a human barbarian (deceased), a gnomish rogue (me), a human druid, a half-elf bard, and two dwarven fighters (one of whom died last session). The rogue was replaced with an Elven paladin and the barbarian was replaced with his brother, a shaman.

First session, we woke up in a castle, locked in a bedroom with no gear but our clothes and a dagger on the nightstand. In the nightstand was a black covered book (blank) and the door handle had a rune that translated to "Sacrifice" with notch in it for the dagger blade.

By the time we escaped the castle, one of our party members (the dwarven fighter who died last session) owed his life to the big bad guy, Vorinth, who literally saved DF's life just before he (Vorinth) vanished. Now, we just escaped another dungeon crawl that we bumped into by accident. The highlights are as follows:

- We found a magical party where you had to make a Will Save to avoid joining, or you'd dance forever. EVERYONE failed and the Bard forgot to use countersong. Thankfully my character had an amulet that allowed for a Will Save per round against Aural traps. (Took me about 10 minutes to make the save though... stupid low will save). Saadi (me) ended up killing off half the band before getting the bright idea to stuff the party's ears.

- We start solving most door traps by throwing blood on it, due to the previous castle adventure which required ever increasing amounts of blood for "Sacrifice". We ended up throwing a bad guy's corpse on the final one and just cut his throat.

- We enter a room by jumping over the first 5 feet (too many pit traps)

- We open a door by turning the handle, then stepping to the side and pushing the door open with a stick. (I kept getting ganked by bad guys with minor invisibility who stood right behind the doors ready to stab the first person through.)

- Every rug we come across, we throw something heavy on just to make sure it won't attack us

- We climb stairs by first throwing a book on the step in front of us (pressure plate trapped stairways)

- To deactivate fire traps, we hand Saadi the Flaming sword we found that gives +10 DMG Resistance Fire and let her activate the trap. With Evasion she either gets less damage or no damage.

- The Bard is no longer allowed to sit watch by herself. (She can't make Spot and Listen checks at those times. EVER. Other times, she's great at it. During watch, she'd miss a shouting neon sign.)

- The Bard is to be kept away from "Shiny!" objects.

- We've had two fights where all of the front line fighters but one are down to minimal hit points and Saadi has stepped in to help.

- We took advantage of Vorinth's "gift" to the dwarf. If he ever dropped below 0 HP and couldn't stabilize before -10 w/o help, he got an automatic 10 HP. If he dropped to below -10 HP and someone touched the rune on his chest, HP would be transferred from them to him, up to 12 HP.

- The dwarven fighter is not allowed to sit watch OUTSIDE the door, especially if there is a big rune on his chest allowing him to be taken over at any time by Vorinth.

- Necromatic objects are not to be activated simply to see if they control the Big Statue in the other room. (Turns out it steals HP from those in a certain radius who can't make a FORT Save. Oops... )

- The dwarven fighter died by sacrificing himself to Vorinth, which restored everyone in the party to full HP, but caused him to poof out of existence in a rush of blue flame.

- We pushed Vorinth off the edge of the tower, watched the other bad guy jump off... and the tower fell with us on top of it. (That ended the session ... and we don't play again for another 10 days)
"This is my therapy dragon, she's for my panic attacks. I attack, everyone panics." (Quote found on http://outofcontextdnd.tumblr.com/)

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Godbot » Wed Nov 13, 2013 9:56 am

Amara wrote:It can be fun, and I'd definitely recommend it if you trust the players in question to handle it properly. I wouldn't say alignment flips would always result in a slaughter fest, of course.
Oh, yeah, I definitely wouldn't do it with just any group. It'd have to be people who are a) perfectly fine with being screwed with and b) excited enough about characters that they'd really think about what their opposites would be like and be okay with being handed a weird and unexpected roleplaying prompt.

And I agree that just conjuring up the party's opposites (not necessarily alignment flips, by the way) wouldn't necessarily mean both parties try and kill each other. I just want the original characters out of the way so that the players all end up with weird, possibly unhinged characters who are likely very different from what they would normally play.

And this Isaac/Amichai business sounds really interesting. I always like it when characters end up with something unexpected that ends up becoming their main thing.

(My character in M0rtimer's campaign, Threads of Reality, was informed by a god of some sort that a) the quest the party is on has failed countless times before, forcing the gods to rewind time and try again, and b) he is going to do something that will destroy the world, and could he please not do that this time because they can't rewind time again or the universe will be destroyed. They didn't actually tell him what he does, though. It's made him so chaotic good and so driven to succeed that he's basically just lawful evil at this point, and more amoral than some of the antagonists. Fun times.)

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Amara » Thu Nov 14, 2013 11:25 am

Wolfie wrote:
- We found a magical party where you had to make a Will Save to avoid joining, or you'd dance forever. EVERYONE failed and the Bard forgot to use countersong. Thankfully my character had an amulet that allowed for a Will Save per round against Aural traps. (Took me about 10 minutes to make the save though... stupid low will save). Saadi (me) ended up killing off half the band before getting the bright idea to stuff the party's ears.
The best kind. Counter song is a wonderful thing...
Unfortunately last time we dealt with compulsion we didn't have a bard.
We did however, have an inquisitor more than happy to slap people to their senses. Literally. I love you, Sasha,
Wolfie wrote:- We start solving most door traps by throwing blood on it, due to the previous castle adventure which required ever increasing amounts of blood for "Sacrifice". We ended up throwing a bad guy's corpse on the final one and just cut his throat.

- We enter a room by jumping over the first 5 feet (too many pit traps)

- We open a door by turning the handle, then stepping to the side and pushing the door open with a stick. (I kept getting ganked by bad guys with minor invisibility who stood right behind the doors ready to stab the first person through.)
Ohhh boy traps. A few dungeons back the strategy became 'throw the winged elf through every door first, acid doesn't seem to bother him." When acid traps became fire this strategy obviously stopped working and Isaac really had no interest in being lit on fire.
After our archeologist nearly died to a fire trap in the first room of our most recent dungeon however, Amichai took de-trapping doors in to his own hands. Most of the traps were set off by the door being open/moved, the doors themselves were not magical, and most of them were made of wood.
LIGHT ALL THE THINGS ON FIRE.
Sasha was thrilled to have a mob of flaming zombies shuffling after us, I assure you. He stopped complaining about plan arson when Amichai decided to throw lamp oil at a mummy, ignite it and then run like hell.
Then plan arson was a very good plan indeed. And yet Sasha still rolled a 2 on his fort save...
Wolfie wrote:- Every rug we come across, we throw something heavy on just to make sure it won't attack us
YUUUUPPPPPP just replace rug with book and you have our GM's fascination with book mimics OH GOD WHY. (Especially bad when the cleric prepares summarize. Every single day. How has Isaac not lost a finger yet?)

Wolfie wrote:- To deactivate fire traps, we hand Saadi the Flaming sword we found that gives +10 DMG Resistance Fire and let her activate the trap. With Evasion she either gets less damage or no damage.
Zombies are excellent at de-trapping doors! Apparently. We found charred remains of them anyway.
Wolfie wrote:- The Bard is no longer allowed to sit watch by herself. (She can't make Spot and Listen checks at those times. EVER. Other times, she's great at it. During watch, she'd miss a shouting neon sign.)

- The Bard is to be kept away from "Shiny!" objects.
...yup, my other campaign, Elevar...oh. God. The party assumed 'he's an elf, he has great perception!' NO HE DOESN'T. Shiny? Our drunken cleric of the same campaign, Akihito, who was well on her way to insanity due to books of forbidden knowledge. x_x
Wolfie wrote:- Necromatic objects are not to be activated simply to see if they control the Big Statue in the other room. (Turns out it steals HP from those in a certain radius who can't make a FORT Save. Oops... )
But that's the best plan! :D just replace fort with will, and have the guy with +12 to save somehow roll a 1, and you have 90% of the stupidity the party gets in to thanks to Isaac.


Let's see, my favorite recent highlight...
► Show Spoiler
The actual book plot has (mostly) wrapped up and has many glorious stories, but I'll save that for in a bit.
Godbot wrote: Oh, yeah, I definitely wouldn't do it with just any group. It'd have to be people who are a) perfectly fine with being screwed with and b) excited enough about characters that they'd really think about what their opposites would be like and be okay with being handed a weird and unexpected roleplaying prompt.

And I agree that just conjuring up the party's opposites (not necessarily alignment flips, by the way) wouldn't necessarily mean both parties try and kill each other. I just want the original characters out of the way so that the players all end up with weird, possibly unhinged characters who are likely very different from what they would normally play.
Oh, it definitely was. Now, someone that's outright opposite from Isaac, I think would have been easier for me than what I wound up with, since it was a 'mirror image' situation. Not true opposites. Flipped alignment, minor physical things like Amichai being right handed when Isaac is a leftie, but it meant their differences had to be both important, and subtle.
They would often reach the same conclusions and make the same decisions for entirely opposite reasons. I remember the party being shocked when I revealed the actual reasons behind some of Amichai's earlier 'benevolent' behavior. (Of course, Amichai has since become N and is sliding toward CG slowly, but that's more to do with story development than anything.)

Godbot wrote:And this Isaac/Amichai business sounds really interesting. I always like it when characters end up with something unexpected that ends up becoming their main thing.

(My character in M0rtimer's campaign, Threads of Reality, was informed by a god of some sort that a) the quest the party is on has failed countless times before, forcing the gods to rewind time and try again, and b) he is going to do something that will destroy the world, and could he please not do that this time because they can't rewind time again or the universe will be destroyed. They didn't actually tell him what he does, though. It's made him so chaotic good and so driven to succeed that he's basically just lawful evil at this point, and more amoral than some of the antagonists. Fun times.)
Oh definitely. Amichai was a blast to play while it lasted, and I originally came up with so many outs for him. When he was first created the players were honestly huge jerks to him, and I planned on them eventually driving him off completely. He would have eventually returned as a shadow dancing cleric (necromancer) of Shar.
Instead they started treating him decently, welcomed him with open arms, and he started to change. I hadn't expected redemption. Wow.

Ahaha, I love things like that, too. You give a tiny (well, not so tiny in your case!) detail like that and it drives player and character alike mad trying to figure things out. Tiny glimpes in to the future? Doubleplusgood.
And what you mention ÔÇö a character that's good but so driven to succeed.. ahhh, reminds me, one of my favorite types of villains. I may need to throw a few good aligned villains at my players whenever I get my pathfinder game rolling.

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Godbot » Thu Nov 14, 2013 12:18 pm

Amara wrote:After our archeologist nearly died to a fire trap in the first room of our most recent dungeon however, Amichai took de-trapping doors in to his own hands. Most of the traps were set off by the door being open/moved, the doors themselves were not magical, and most of them were made of wood.
LIGHT ALL THE THINGS ON FIRE.
Oh man, that reminds me. In the 3.5 campaign I'm in - the same one with Ananke and Titania - we mostly run into trouble by exploring the wilderness on our airship, or by ending up in situations where we're going to have to fight some unimaginably powerful dude, but can take time to prepare for it beforehand.

We've been to exactly one dungeon, when we had to take down the shadow ruler of an entire continent, who was an obscenely powerful mystic theurge, by assembling an artifact and tricking him into using it, which would remove the thing that was making him so evil and powerful (our party's fault). We needed a bunch of items surrounded by legend to make something strong enough, so we ended up going through a bunch of sidequests that were references to fairy tales, most notably Sleeping Beauty. The others were all sort of boring, and we ended up buying a lot of blankets or something. (One time we muscled our way into a heavily defended town, grabbed the piece of the artifact from the ruler's house and just ran, while the town's entire population of guards chased us.)

Anyway, the Sleeping Beauty segment was a dungeon, which was this castle surrounded by an enormous hedge maze. We fought our way through a few plant monsters in the maze, and our angel tried flying over the walls to get to the castle, but some magic thing prevented him from doing that, as is standard procedure with mazes. We'd decided we'd probably have to go through the hedge maze without cheating after all when our sorceress (who was kind of ditzy and didn't really understand how the game worked) innocently asked why we didn't just burn the whole thing down.

We decided the ensuing cookout was only semi-canon.

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Wolfie » Thu Nov 14, 2013 12:30 pm

Amara wrote:-SNIP- Tiny glimpes in to the future? Doubleplusgood.
And what you mention ÔÇö a character that's good but so driven to succeed.. ahhh, reminds me, one of my favorite types of villains. I may need to throw a few good aligned villains at my players whenever I get my pathfinder game rolling.
Our DM got a full on bow from me and a "I am so F*ing Impressed with you" last session.

About 8 or 9 sessions ago, our group ran across a floating poem after we woke up in the middle of the night to find our group of barbarian escorts all killed, drained of blood, and arranged in a familiar rune sign. When we went to inspect, we were rushed with all the black books that we'd collected from the castle. The pages ripped out and began swirling around the back end of the camp site... we saved the one page (the rest burned to ash when we grabbed the page, as it was the bottom half was burned off).

The poem (which I don't have on me right now) detailed some future events that we couldn't figure out. Halfway through our last session, I'm scrambling for my copy of the poem (I'm the note taker of the group) and then sat there smirking and shaking my head.

The first two stanzas totally happened. I let the rest of the group in on the secret when we were done, since the rogue (me) was otherwise too occupied to tell the others what she'd figured out. Our GM just smiled back and said "Thanks."

This is an entirely made up off the top of his head campaign. There are no notes written down anywhere, just a general outline in his head that he's following.

I was (and still am) impressed and can't wait til we play next weekend.

--------

Another interesting story from a campaign past:

We had a mage (played by the same guy as the Knight I previously mentioned) who's favorite thing to do was cast "Fireball". Room full of bad guys? Fireball. Cold? Fireball. A single kobold down to 1 HP and rapidly bleeding out? ..aw you get it. It didn't matter if we were in a 30' x 30' room or a 10' x 50' hallway. He'd lob a fireball and just laugh at the dwarf (in our party) who was now screaming from being burned and losing nearly half his HP from friendly fire.

He (the mage) couldn't make a session one time and we ran into a room of guerrilans. They didn't move. We started to go through the room and the only movement they made was shuffle out of our way. We put our weapons away and walked through nearly 10 rooms, all of them more increasingly packed than the previous one... and we never got attacked once. If he'd been there, it would have been a TPK. Only reason our party didn't kill him outright was the Paladin wouldn't allow it, even though he was the dwarf who kept getting burned.
"This is my therapy dragon, she's for my panic attacks. I attack, everyone panics." (Quote found on http://outofcontextdnd.tumblr.com/)

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Amara » Thu Nov 14, 2013 1:59 pm

We've definitely had things like that, too... In fact, there was one player who's old character was wayyy too impulsive and would have gotten us killed in many of the situations they're playing their new character in. Of course, they've also a bit more experience under their belt since.

We have actually avoided quite a few fights because "Hey, Isaac, don't you speak ____?" And Isaac proceeds to try and talk whoever it is out of attacking us. Or on one occasion, "hey wait, Bobo speaks giant!"
The DM was mystified that we avoided a fighting a single troll on that mountain. Each time, Isaac gave him words, Bobo translated, and the trolls left us alone.
Even incidents that should have royally screwed us over have been repaired because...Isaac seems to have become a talented spin doctor and a gloriously manipulative ass. Oh god, if you knew how many things he's had to spin in the party's favor...or in the favor of NPCs that the party almost screwed over.

[edit]
As for a 3.5 game I recently joined...
We were meant to have four players, so much of the preplanned challenges and so forth were scaled with four in mind. At the last minute our rogue-to-be had to drop, something I wasn't prior aware of. (That we would have had a rogue, not that a player backed out.) Since the game Elevar was in disintegrated after one level, and since they needed a caster, I rerolled him. The first session was quick, short... It was just to get us acquainted with the world and each other in character. After the session, I stayed and chatted with the DM for a bit since he's an old, old friend of mine. Balance often goes out the window in his games, and intentionally so. He'd really rather an interesting story and fun experience, and cares little for how much work he has to do to rebalance things in the process. He's one of those rare DMs that seeks to make life easy on his players. Of course, this also means he gets to get away with being brutal for tiny details other DMs would let fly, either. Ie, how is your Mage dressed? Oh, they're wearing robes and an oh-so-stereotypical pointy hat? Have fun with that...

Well, as we were chatting, I mentioned feats I'd be working toward picking up, was trying to figure out Ruathimaer's actual stats (Elevar's raven familiar) / get her a mock sheet for quick reference, and out of the blue he says...you know, if Ruathimaer had a class, what would she be?
I...guess a rogue, I said. It suits her personality best.
Well, the DM says, if you're level 3 now, that gives her 7 int, right?
Yeah, I say. That's right.
Go ahead and stat her, he says. I'll consider that smart enough. Three levels in whatever class you think fits. Doesn't have to be wizard. But I'm hard locking her stats. None can exceed Elevar's.
Are you serious?
Go ahead, he told me. Just don't tell any of the other players. I want to see the look on their face when she finally gets to act.

...so my wizard now has a level 3 rogue for a familiar. The rest of the time we spent giggling over how she'd pick locks on doors (which provided me a lovely mental image of Elevar holding the raven while she holds lockpicks in her talons.) and then the realization that if he uses shocking grasp on her before she gets a sneak attack in...
I've never heard Oji laugh so evilly.
This should be interesting. I anticipate MANY bird rogue stories to come. I cannot believe I am actually STATTING A RAVEN AS A PLAYER CHARACTER.

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Godbot » Mon Nov 25, 2013 12:34 pm

Amara wrote:
Godbot wrote:- Parking laws still apply, even if you're not in a parking space. And even if what you're driving isn't technically a car.

- "The blood of the royal line" is not adequate protection from sharks.

- I will refrain from being Lawful Good until my friends are a safe distance away.
I'm sensing another good story here.
I figured it'd be a little rude not to give the details on this. Spoilered for long.
► Show Spoiler
Last edited by Godbot on Mon Dec 02, 2013 11:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Amara » Mon Dec 02, 2013 10:28 am

Haha, I've never been one for giant robot settings, but that honestly makes it sound pretty fun. I've a buddy that keeps trying to convince me to play such a game... Maybe I'll finally take him up.

As for recently...
Well, as I mentioned in the list of things I'm never again allowed to do (I'd like to see anyone actually stop me,) I decided to make drugs in D&D.

More specifically, I make the D&D equivalent of ecstasy. En masse.
I needed a quick buck, and while thumbing through the list of things I could make via alchemy (as I lacked the funds to start brewing potions unfortunately,) I hit a point where I decided you know what? Let's make drugs. We are in the middle of a festival wherein half the point is that the usual taboos of society (mostly) are temporarily lifted. Let's make drugs.
So, soon I had a massive compiled list of every drug I could conceivably make in D&D in front of me and was double checking ingredients. I needed something that would be very easy to obtain. I needed to keep my costs low, after all. I was short on cash and I needed a quick profit. I found something. I double checked the rules on using magic for distilling emotions. What's this, I just need to experience the emotion, I can do it to myself, and it's not that difficult? Will saves to avoid physical pain, you say?

Oh, and all of our characters just recently recovered their memories regarding several months of torture while they were held captive.

But I took it a step further. I rolled my checks for alchemy crafting preemptively. A 20. And my modifier was very very high to begin with, so with a nat 20... The DM stared;
Okay, he said. Okay. I will let this happen, but you have to role play the entire thing. All of it. And how in god's name are you going to distribute this drug?

The drug itself is normally in the form of a thick liquid. The description is dodgy at best, since it's just hand waived alchemy checks usually, but I assumed the drug required a water base before distilling took place. So I asked the DM, alright then, since we have access to a kitchen, is there any sort of gelatin powder available?

Yes, I was told. Where are you going with this?

Good. For the base I brewed a mint tea, and began distilling. Once the liquid was starting to thicken I started the gelatin. I soon had a massive pot of drug infused gelatin cooling in several trays in to thin strips of easy to store, easily dissolved minty gelatin.

Yup. I made the D&D version of ecstasy 'infused' listerine strips.

...and proceeded to roll another nat 20 later when I had to sell the ahem, product.
I've never made so much money so quickly before in D&D. Unfortunately, now the DM won't stop cracking Breaking Bad jokes.

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Godbot » Mon Dec 02, 2013 11:28 am

What on earth is your quest hook? If you're just out for treasure, then you could just retire and sell magic drugs from now on. Screw risking your life in dungeons for pocket change.

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Amara » Mon Dec 02, 2013 12:53 pm

This isn't so much a dungeon delving campaign. Er, the one my wizard is in.
We've progressed from being students of a world-renowned academy (which teaches both magical and martial arts, I might note, in addition to your more typical studies of history and more typical school things) to realizing the academy's 'contest' and 'experiment' that we were roped in to is all one big farce to slowly uncovering memories of our pasts and the realization from that point that all of us are here illegitimately in the first place. We (or at least Kraden and Elevar) now know that our memories are heavily altered, and that it involves torture. In Elevar's case, he was quite literally kidnapped. Kraden, our swashbuckler, was more coerced. Jack, our knight...I am still foggy on the exact details of how he wound up at the academy specifically, as he was unconscious when Elevar decided it would be a brilliant idea to go diving in Kraden's head in the first place, which is a story in itself, but I can return to that later.

Our overall goal was originally to figure out what on earth was going on regarding the academy in the first place. We still don't know what exactly the magical 'experiment' they're carrying out is meant to do. So while we have had a lot of money for brief points to throw around (mostly Elevar) and a lot of power to throw around (mostly Elevar,) we still have to be careful not to get caught, as anyone that's starting to uncover the academy's secrets tends to...disappear if the academy becomes aware. We have to play dumb.

We uncovered bits here and there.
► Show Spoiler
Along the way as the story progressed we met a powerful shapeshifter, Telaki, bound to a tiny little 'domain' he'd claimed for himself (the tavern he owned near the docks.) He's not bound so much as trapped. If he leaves his domain, the academy might notice him...and he really has no way of escaping their watchful eye. Telaki requests we find his daughter, and we quickly do. Correction. Elevar's FAMILIAR does. Lani, the daughter, makes the mistake of making a promise to the bird during her rescue. ...her kind become promise bound and are forced to fulfill any promise they make. Unfortunately her promise came with the wording 'until you say otherwise.' (To be fair, she was being held as a slave and was likely to be tortured soon.) In short, the bird now owns an extremely powerful shapeshifter.
► Show Spoiler
The second week begins, and with it, the festival we are currently in. Thanks to someone from outside the dream that seems able to freely enter, (within the dream he takes on the persona of the Child King, but we do not know his true identity, as the true Child King was murdered three years ago,) that each new Awoken destabilizes the dream. We cannot wake everyone or the dream will collapse, possibly killing those in it. We cannot leave them dreaming, or they will be abused and eventually tortured and killed by the academy to fuel THEIR goals. If we leave the dream stabilizes, but what of the others dreaming?

Elevar realizes;
1) there may be a way to stabilize the dream. (Current immediate goal.)
2) as dream logic applies...we can manipulate how dreams work by nature without directly altering the dreamscape. This is also less obtrusive and dangerous to The Dream.
3) not everyone we see is Dreaming. Many of those in the town are simply creations of The Dream. We are beginning to devise ways to determine who is Dreaming and who is part of The Dream.

Currently, we know The Dream is beginning to suspect us, but the actual academy still seems unaware. The are getting closer and we need a way of throwing them off our trail. There is a tournament during the three day festival. During the first day, Jack and Kraden competed, and Kraden wound up the victor; two individuals, a half dragon and an elf who had both been in some way magically augmented also competed. Both seemed to want Jack and Kraden very dead. Following their failure we do not know what will happen to the half dragon; we were able to rescue the elf. He is now Awoken and recovering in Telaki's tavern, which remains our one safe haven. (We had, prior, rescued two halflings who attacked us prior, and Awoke upon regaining consciousness. They now work for Telaki.)

Tomorrow is the magical tournament. Elevar MUST compete or The Dream will know we know. Currently it's just trying to stop those that have become troublesome to The Dream. It doesn't actually know we are Awake. The final day is team competitions. We know that the half dragon and elf were on the same team. The third, we have determined, is a girl who was a friend of Lani's, and who Elevar previously promised to find and save. She, like the elf and half dragon, will be under the same delusion and will be just as hellbent on killing him...

Now, regarding hopping in to Kraden's mind.
► Show Spoiler
Drugs happened after this.

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Wolfie » Mon Mar 03, 2014 8:48 pm

Yes, this is technically a thread necro... but I see no point in re-creating a whole thread for this. (And this does quite fit in "Stuff I can no longer do" thread)

Sunday, my DM once again proved that he has an awesome imagination and my group proved that we are more than happy to play along.

We came across a room with a single mirror floating in the middle of the room. No matter where we stood, we could only see the front of the mirror. So we did the only thing we could think of: we touched it.

It turned out to be a portal with 12 random outcomes.

Room 1: The final room, with a large door graced with a huge gargoyle head that talks. And is a bit stupid.
Rooms 2-12 included a waterfall room with lots of foliage, a library with a headless skeleton (he made things go boom if you touched his books), a room with 6 levers on the wall, a room with 8 magic sigils on the wall (Saadi touched one just to see what would happen.... then wrote on the floor "Do Not Touch The Sigils" By wrote, I mean etched into the stone with her dagger), a room where the player landed on a 2'x2' wooden platform and they had to walk across a suspended rope to the other platform to get to the door (it also had a 50' drop onto some rather nasty spikes and the walls randomly shot arrows from both sides that got progressively worse the farther along you went), a room with a rowdy tavern and lots of free ale, a room with 12 skeletons who were more than happy to show you their scimitars, a room with 10 sleepy orcs, a room with a large angry ogre, a completely dark trap room, and a "room" where you land on a cloud giant's shoulder.

The druid ended up in the ogre room, where she got beat up because she kept trying to save our shaman, and then she retreated back through the door... to the platform room. She did marvelously well until the last round, where she got crit'ed by some flaming burst arrows and had to turn into a bird to fly away, leaving all of her gear to fall onto the spikes below.

The shaman finally got a lucky break and summoned his celestial bears who beat the crap out the ogre. He then ended up in the waterfall room, tried to run through the waterfall and ended up in a really long hallucination about flying on his hippogrif. He was really just standing in the area right behind the waterfall mimicking everything, with his summoned hippogrif calmly preening himself and wondering why his summoner was acting all mental.

The paladin ended in up in room 1 after 4 turns and decided to meditate.

Our cleric and bard ended up in the lever room... where each lever summoned a chest. Guess what they found? Yep! A mimic. Which is now an invisible mimic due to the bard now playing with her shiny new wand. She also turned the halfling cleric invisible. Just because it was funny. (It's not really that funny when you realize the cleric is also a huge pervert.)

Onto the gnome rogue. She eventually ended up on the giant's shoulder. So she pulled out her rope, tied it around her waist and then around the giant's vest strap and tapped his ear while yelling "Please sir, can you help me?" The giant lurched to a stop and turned to look at his shoulder where the tiny voice came from. At that moment, Saadi hears a familiar scream as the invisible cleric fails his balance check and falls off the shoulder of the giant. Saadi doesn't hesitate and throws herself off the shoulder of the giant, following the terrified screams. (Now comes the fun part.) Our cleric sees Saadi and reaches out his hand (fails the check) and doesn't catch hold of the gnome. Saadi, however, catches him (I rolled a Nat 20 on my grapple check and got the better end of the 50% miss chance due to invisibility). He's still screaming. She starts screaming at him to shut up and to stop wriggling. They are both now swinging towards the lower back of this giant (both make the saves to hold on when they hit) and they start getting pulled up. The halfling at this point has run out of breath. Saadi sweetly asks the giant to let her touch his pretty crown after she assures him that gnomes are not tasty snacks. He agreed and put her on top of his head since one of the jewels in his crown was a mirror like the one they first went through. The halfling also went through on his next turn... to the platform room.

"I quit".

We (the players) convinced him to not jump to his doom, but to cut the ropes, one on each side of the room, and climb down, walk through the spikes, and climb up the other side. He... kinda went along with it. He managed to cut the ropes (shot the far one) when he remembered he had Summon Monster 2 prepared for the day. So he rode across the cavern on the back of a Bee (to the tune of the Flight of the Bumblebee... which had us all cracking up and crying from the hilarity). He even managed to grab the lost gear of the druid on his way through.

Everyone but the shaman made it to Room 1 so our Bard decided to have fun... she made the Rogue invisible. (Because that has never led to any trouble ever before :paranoia: ). Unfortunately, the shaman made it and the spell wore off before she could have fun with it.
"This is my therapy dragon, she's for my panic attacks. I attack, everyone panics." (Quote found on http://outofcontextdnd.tumblr.com/)

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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Amara » Tue Mar 04, 2014 9:03 am

(I don't mind the necro, personally. I always have lots of silly or fun stories to share, but I don't much like double posting! I'm glad others still have stories to post, themselves, haha)

Mirrors always seem to be trouble in game worlds, don't they?
Pity the rogue never got a bit of invisible fun. That definitely never ends poorly :J
The sigils though, what was the deal with them?



So... Elevar.
Dear Lord.
SO, when I first made him, he was somewhat of a joke. His stats were all average or poor except for his intellect (and dex, but being an elf, that doesn't count for much...) He was a bit shy, not the best in the world with people, had no real focus, (a high intelligence but his actual KNOWLEDGE was spattered about everywhere...also he was a universalist,) and had a tendency to bury himself in his books. Appearance-wise, he wasn't much either--a bit heavyset, even. (Oh, that doesn't cause problems at all for an elf.)
Additionally, his starting spells were almost all utility. He did at least have mage armor and magic missile. Literally everything else was utility. As I recall, upon first making him my first words were "hey look guys, I made an NPC!"
► Show Spoiler
The DM of the first 3.5 game (and one of the players of my current Pathfinder game that takes place in our now shared world,) and I had a good bit of fun thinking on alternate realities, and on how things would have turned out, should minor details have been changed. We got to think a lot on the backstory of various player characters, Elevar included, and that proved fun for the players involved. Elevar's parents, for example, were apparently rather disappointed in him for the aforementioned lack of focus, and felt he was wasting his time, and effectively going nowhere. At the time he was whisked away and thrown in to the dream, he was actually in the midst of being sent off to live with his aunt and uncle, who, his parents hoped, would give him a proper focus and path in life other than simply running from one obsession to the next. I would hardly say the boy had good parents. They certainly weren't the most supportive. It's not hard to see where Elevar's instant quips of "well, honestly, I'm nothing special, but..." and so forth came from. (My favorite remains "of course I can! But so can anyone, with a few decades of practice.")

So, we determined the following.

Manipulative scary jerk Elevar Had he never been whisked off to the Dream, and had he in fact been sent off to live with his aunt and uncle, he'd have never become the gifted wizard he is now. However, his sorcerer bloodline would have still manifested, and he'd have likely pursued that path instead. (Even in the 3.5 game, we were injecting SOME pathfinder whatsits, so he's fae blooded, if anyone is wondering.) His aunt and uncle, while certainly they'd love their nephew, are not the best people. They're far more caught up in pursuing petty power games than anything else, and Elevar would have simply been seen as a tool to advance the Ongluth house and name. (They're a family of minor nobles in setting, who once had a far more prestigious name, but they've rather fallen from power over the years.) So, he would have grown up being taught all manner of political maneuvering and backstabbing. He'd have become very gifted at this, and with his rather high intellect, he would have excelled at such subterfuge and manipulation. He likely would have restored the Ongluth name in the process. As we've proven with our "reality constants" discussions, he'd have eventually still met Lani, and they likely would have still be bound one way or another, but in this instance it very well would have been on his own terms, meaning her bond with him would be much like the promise-bond she held to Ruathimaer during the dream. He'd have effectively had a powerful extraplanar slave. It's doubtful this Elevar ever met Jack (our racoon knight) or Kraden (our half dragon swashbuckler); certainly, if he had, Kraden would have disliked Elevar immediately, and Jack wouldn't be far behind, once he saw through the outward 'charm'.

"Tyrant" Alternately, there's the matter of what would have happened, had he never left his home city, and had the war (that those whisked in to the Dream escaped,) occurred with him still living at home? Sarah, his childhood friend, would have died before his eyes in the wake. He'd have grown up seeing bloodshed all around him, and would have grown up repeatedly failing to keep any that he cared about safe.
That changes a person. He'd have become power hungry, and would have pursued this doggedly. Those in power, he would feel, did not deserve to make such decisions. They had wielded their power poorly. They would be punished. And no one else deserved that kind of power. After all, they couldn't use it properly. Couldn't wield it as they should, so who deserved that power, if not him? He would not make the same mistakes. He would stop this petty war. We did a power track of his abilities, class, etc, and he effectively became a multiclassed blood mage with a lot of rather scary ways to kill people quite instantly (though at high cost to himself.) In this reality, he'd have restored the Ongluth name. And then some. The kingdoms responsible for the war, and their respective royal families would have been hunted down, their power taken. For his part, Elevar would have actually made a wonderful king. To his subjects, he wouldn't be cruel. He would be very strict, but fair. Laws would reflect this. ...but in his pursuit of power he would be terrifying, if not monstrous. Everything would be motivated by that childlike notion of "if you can't wield such power properly, you won't have it. You're either with me, or you won't be." In this reality we theorized that the Valalani would have taken a rather darker turn, and this Lani would have met Elevar quite a bit later; she'd have promised him the power he needed to maintain control of his growing empire, but would be manipulating him all the while to get what she wanted out of the arrangement. Still, a NE variant of Elevar was interesting to plan out. In this reality, Kraden would likely serve beside Elevar, likely as an enforcer type. He'd hate to see what had become of his friend, but would likely believe that Elevar truly did wield the power he was accumulating fairly. ...he'd do his best to support Elevar in what he was doing, even if he didn't always agree with it. Jack? The poor knight would be kept in the dark about most of Elevar's dealings, but he'd be a loyal knight to his king...

Exhausted / Prime ...or, the actual game's story. Then, of course, there's the Elevar from the reality we were accidentally dumped in to after exiting the Dream. Meeting yourself still remains a strange experience. We found his corpse in his room in the shell of what had been the Academy in this reality. ...we also found Jack's corpse, in his room. We received a glimpse of Kraden seeming to snap, and going on a rampage in this world. Kraden killed Jack. He was shouting something about "you promised! You broke your promise!" From Elevar's own corpse, we instead received a strange vision of Elevar being startled while studying, by the grandmage himself. "I'm sorry, but I must. You know too much." He was killed instantly. Certainly he had no hope of fighting back, and with no preparation, but what did this Elevar know? Why would the grandmage kill someone who, from what we could tell of the school's records, was one of his top students? Needless to say, the lovely visions of people being gutted ended in my Elevar doing what any brave young elf would do in the face of blood and death and destruction. He fainted. (Kraden and Jack were not impressed.)
This reality was an interesting one. Telaki was dead, and Kraden had killed him. (All the while screaming something about 'it's not fair. You CAN, you just don't want to.' Can / doesn't want to do WHAT, exactly?) Telaki owned the same tavern near the Academy, in this reality; so we now knew Telaki, Elevar, and Jack were all dead. The grandmage killed Elevar, Kraden killed Jack... but what started all of this mess, and where was this reality's Kraden? Additionally, if Telaki was there.. where was Lani?
Our own Lani was feeling rather uneasy about all of this, and everything soon turned in to an awkward game of keeping information Elevar had away from Lani. (Mental barricades are, evidently, exhausting.) We just didn't want to hurt her, was all...
Upon discovering this world's Elevar's research (try saying that three times fast) we learned that he had been starting to uncover basic means of reality manipulation. This was not unlike what Elevar did in the Dream, but this Elevar was somehow managing to do it in reality, using the energy he could pull from thin areas between worlds, or from 'leylines' where realities crossed. This Elevar had actually met many alternate versions of himself, and had documented what he found of each reality and how things in it seemed different. Certainly Elevar found this fascinating. It simply confused Kraden, and...Jack didn't see the point.
This led to Elevar deciding he needed to disguise himself as the Elevar of this reality. After all, there had been no official death report, so no one knew he was actually dead! This was easy enough. They still looked...similar, and thanks to Lani, Elevar was actually slowly learning how to shapeshift. This was, of course, when we actually started to venture out in to the world and discovered that everything that happened at the academy had been twenty years ago. Upon returning to the academy to do some quick exploration (which we didn't have much time to do--the Valalani were rather insistant on sinking the Academy in to the ocean for reasons we, at the time, didn't understand...) we found that the grandmage's chambers had been sealed, but we had the key. Surely there was at least something valuable left there... right? Ancient gears ground, and the doors swung open slowly. Inside were a pair of glowing eyes, and a voice greeted us.
"Well.. I recognize that smell... but that can't be. I killed you."
Needless to say, we discovered just what had happened to this world's Kraden.
And that was when we accidentally let a crazed murderous half dragon armed with a soul-stealing artifact of amazing power go free.


I've.. wow that was a lot of rambling. Um if there's any stories anyone is interested in in more detail, I'll leave off here and let people ask. o-o

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Wolfie
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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Wolfie » Tue Mar 04, 2014 11:26 am

Amara wrote:(I don't mind the necro, personally. I always have lots of silly or fun stories to share, but I don't much like double posting! I'm glad others still have stories to post, themselves, haha)

Mirrors always seem to be trouble in game worlds, don't they?
Pity the rogue never got a bit of invisible fun. That definitely never ends poorly :J
The sigils though, what was the deal with them?
It was a lot of fun and (slightly meta-gaming) we knew what we were in for, since our DM loves to separate the party and he's used mirrors as pathways previously in the campaign.

Saadi has fast become my favorite character to play, mainly because our DM encourages actual role-play and not just roll play. I wanted to have a lot of fun with the invisible thing, but there was nothing to do, other than laugh at the Bard. Saadi had made the mistake of asking Ella (the bard) why she was invisible... :lol:

As for the sigils, there were eight of them, one for each color of the rainbow plus black and they all gave off a magical glow. So Saadi's reaction was "I'm gonna do something stuuuupid. I'm gonna touch one". (Apparently that came out a wee bit southern and the table cracked up.) So I rolled a d8 and got a 5 (which was the blue one). "Roll a Fortitude Save". Ok.... 17?. "You feel cold creep up your arm from where your hand is touching the sigil, but before it gets to your shoulder you shiver and the feeling goes away." Cool... where's my dagger? Saadi then spent the next few rounds carving "Do Not Touch The Sigils" into the floor. When the other party members showed up, they saw the words and just turned around to open the door again. :D
"This is my therapy dragon, she's for my panic attacks. I attack, everyone panics." (Quote found on http://outofcontextdnd.tumblr.com/)

"If I have a +2 strength sword and I stab you, you won't get a +2 strength, you get wounds" ~Sir Butcher

"How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them." ~Benjamin Franklin

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Amara
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Re: Fun / Interesting Game Stories

Post by Amara » Fri Mar 07, 2014 8:21 am

Ahah, I see. Haha


Well. No more concise simple stories from me, other than Bergus the super halfling. ...except one of my players and I (our Ranger, who's the DM for the other game I'm in right now,) realized something amusing about the crazy magic things going on everywhere in my campaign. Currently the players are effectively at the edge of what is similar of a magical black hole. There is a massive, growing dead magic zone, and the weave is being torn up and slowly destroyed at its edges as it grows outward. So, around the outside of this dead magic zone is a large chaotic wild magic zone. Elevar, at this point, is so intensely magically attuned that he can't go in to the dead magic zone without excrutiating pain. ...the wild magic zone, however, energizes / overcharges him to the point that he becomes completely manic. His thoughts race, he can't focus, he leaps from topic to topic, pressurized speech, etc, whenever he's in the area too long. It's made it intensely difficult for him to get information to the party, and they all effectively think that he's the craziest elf they've ever met, and have no clue what's going on. Lani (Elevar's now wife, the extraplanar being he's been bound to for around 160 years,) winds up being effected EXACTLY the same way as he is, since...they're still bound by an empathic link.

This doesn't effect their son, Quorren. So while this is all going on, you have this kid, the elven equivalent of a twelve-year-old, sitting here wondering WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY PARENTS. WHAT. WHAT. Meanwhile they're both zipping from topic to topic and are as hyper as six year olds post Easter candy binge.

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