Tell me about your RPG campaign
Hey folks, I haven't posted in a hell of a long time and thought why not get this going again.
So when I last posted I think my Paladin had just been basically killed off and I wrote up a druid. Well this one has been amazingly fun to role play, being that he has lived most of his life in solitude he has no social skills and tends to do things that can be a little off at times. Our merry band of misfits had cleared a small towns problem warerats who turned out to be a family of Gnomes who lived there, while trying to console the final member of the family Rolen (my druid) felt the best way to give emotional support would be to congratulate the young Gnome on becoming the head of the family. This actually broke the whole table for about a minute, the DM sat in silence for a moment, laughed, tried to role play the distraught girl but failed epically.
We have also got another campaign going with a few of the same guys as the bigger campaign, this one is mostly homebrew. The first character I made I really wasn't happy with so spoke to the DM and we worked out how to kill her off and introduce the new character I made, completely homebrew this one and it's again been far more fun. He is a Dwaf Shaman whose ancestors speak to him constantly, sometimes good and sometimes not so much.
So what has been happening in your RPGs? anything big, fun or just want to chat about? painted anything cool? got new dice? anything at all.
I am in the design process for my next campaign.
We are going to start by playing a game of The Quiet Year by Avery Alder. This is a collaborative map drawing game, where we build the city that the main campaign will take place together as a group. Each turn someone draws a card which acts as a story prompt (e.g., someone new comes to town, who are they and why haven't you seen them before), and can then take an action to change the community (e.g., the people are fearful of outsiders and start building a wall to keep them out). Every action that can be is recorded on the map of the community, such that at the end I'll have a very good understand of what this place is, and how to start building the main game on top of it.
I really enjoy making campaigns this way for a few reasons. First, there is no better way to get players totally engrossed in the world you are creating from day one than to give them some creative authorship. This is something I learned from my brief (ended when I moved for a job :( ) DungeonWorld campaign last year, "Ask questions and use answers". You will also usually come up with way more interesting ideas as a group than by yourself. Plus it's infinitely less work for the DM, your players will hand you the hard part -- the foundation of the world you're playing in -- then you get to think about all the motivations of the community, facts about the world, etc. to build on top.
I have prepped (or really, thought a bunch about) some of the world I would create by myself. This is largely inspired by the suite of songs: Mountains of the Moon > Dark Star by the Grateful Dead. I've linked to the lyrically analysis because it's more relevant here, but if you've got 40 minutes to kill, I would be happy to hook you up with the appropriate soundtrack. I'm picturing a city built into the side of a mountain (or perhaps in the valley between two peaks). Lots of vertical rise, minarets, narrow windy streets, dark alleys (we're going to be playing Blades in the Dark for the main campaign, so a sneak thiefs' dream seems about right). I've read a lot of the folklore referenced on those pages by now, I'm particular interested in using Hans Christian Andersen's
The Marsh King's Daughter(sans the Christianity bits) -- essentially a local Noblewoman gets lost in a narsh, and months later someone finds a baby who looks like her in the center of a giant lotus in the Marsh, the baby also changes form by night, and maybe personality too. There's a ton of other things in there that would be great too, e.g. the Carrion Crow as the leader of a death cult or assassin's guild -- I have a running list in my head. The really nice thing about the Quiet World is that it makes it really easy for me to introduce story elements I'm interested in, while not totally taking over control of the authorship. For example the Marsh King's daughter could be done on one turn (prompt: someone gets lost, action: search party for her, that eventually finds the daughter). Then she's just in the world and we can find out together what her motivations are. So while I have a whole bunch of ideas, I can't tell you what the world will look like till we play to find out what happens.As you can tell, I'm very excited :)
I'm also in a D&D campaign, but it's the opposite of everything I just described. I'll continue to play because I like the guys in my group (Skyping with friends from home), but honestly my heart is not in it. I don't care which hallway we go down, or what goblins we fight, so let's go down the first one and crack some goofs while we're doing so.
That sounds absolutely amazing, the smaller campaign I'm part of our DM for that one has your passion for the world / story he has been creating. I'll try to give a brief run down, our party was sent off to take out a necromancer only once the killing blow landed the all mighty necromancer was a child playing with his father's books. In his dying breath we were all cursed.
Naturally this upset us all to no end that we just murder hoboed a child and went to take it up with the guy that set us on that path. Just as we were about to raise our weapons at him our souls were torn from our body and we were shot across the land. The curse the child put on us was the reason for this. We ended up speaking to a disciple of the Moon goddess who explained what may have happened, we pledged to help if they could restore us (at different times we would be torn out and disappear like a fart in the wind) it was shortly after this I spoke to our DM (we have known each other for 20 some years so he was asking how he was doing) about my character and not enjoying playing her, he then told me about an idea he had that when one of the party falls the new character is drawn to the others by something unknown and will be Ta'veren like they all are. So that's when we cooked up my characters death and introduction of the new one.
Since then I've been throwing different ideas out and he works them into the game. We came up with an idea to help the others boost their characters low stats temporarily if they need it and so far it's been way more fun for all involved.
Sounds like a good DM :)
Does this mean your new character is not cursed like the rest of the party? Bonus!
I didn't put too much about my new character up because I thought my post had gotten a bit long as is, so I'll put it here :)
My new character is a Shaman based on the class from WoW that has been made up as a homebrew character I found online. What I originally had in mind was he meditates and speaks with the spirits to have a better understanding of what they are all babbling about, one day while meditating a new voice came to him one that radiated power and told Torvak to seek out the party of adventures, assist in whatever way they need then when the barbarian, Bryseis falls, she will live on with him. Torvak will carry her spirit with him to continue the fight for her.
This ended up getting changed for the better, the original curse was lifted shortly after it was put on us all (thankfully) then by the blessing of the moon goddess we can all communicate telepathically, if any of us get seperated we have an internal feeling as to where that person is.
We are now on a mission to save all the gods of the realm as they have been at war with another who seeks to destroy it all and remake it the way the old God wants it to be.
Oh boy, now I'm thinking of the ramifications of a badly failed roll = randomly teleported away. Your DM musta had fun with that one before the curse was lifted, haha.
Also, if I was your DM and your character:
a) had a god on speed dial (so to speak), and.
b) had a telepathic link to the rest of the party
I'd totally be trying to pitch you on dire circumstances if one of your mediations went wrong. A conversation to the rest of the party with a malevolent god delivered in your voice perhaps? :)
He had already planned out the times we ghost out then also had the idea that if one of us couldn't make it one week then that character would ghost for the session.
we have done similar things to that lol I've also been making a list of names of my ancestors, our bard has a magical instrument but isn't using it the way our DM had in mind, while chatting about different things with the campaign he brought this up to me and while in game I mentioned to our bard "Delg said while you play well, you play that wrong."
Other times when we are staring down a TPK he will pass me a note saying as much and I'll spin it out as one of the others telling us not to do whatever dumb thing we are about to do.
We just started ours back up last weekend, so not much to tell. It started off as many grand adventures do, in a bar. A bunch of strangers summoned there for a chance to take on a job for some coin. I usually leave my char sheet and notes w/ the DM so I don't forget them, so I can't give exact names, but we met with the bar's owner and he interviewed us for the job.
He gave us an item and told us to give him his best sales pitch for that item. My character, Craymond Zephyrson Ponce IV, was given a silver bracelet that when worn would create a small silver orb that orbited around the wearer's head. Mr. Ponce, ever the wealthy, out-of-touch salesman, asked of the bar owner if they'd ever sat at home watching private performances of their favorite play and wondered what it would be like to have a tiny silver moon circle overhead. When the owner flatly stated they never had, Mr. Ponce, ignorant as he is, informed them that individuals of their "race and gender" of all ages across "this geographic region" certainly were, and that the owner surely didn't want to miss out. Mr. Ponce was selected for the job (as were several others, but Mr. Ponce didn't much care for most of them).
That's where we left off. It was mostly a night to get our char sheets in order, meet/greet new players in the group, etc. And then we had an hour or so to talk in-character.
Thought I'd give an update on the campaign here since I wasn't sure if I should create an entire new topic for new discussion. Plus I'd love to keep these things chronicled somewhere.
Yesterday we left our employer's bar in search of information about this new drug with magic properties called "vermil". Well it started off with one of us not remembering the name, but then turned into all of us referring to it by a random v-word (Vermouth, verb, vermillion city, etc.) So in pursuit of "Virginia", we visited a local "info" shop to inquire about the origins of this mystery drug. Mr. Ponce, being a salesman, tried ot hide our intentions with a bit of deception. He asked a informant for information about the upper tiers of the drug trade for he was looking to become an investor. We were pointed to the palace, because evidently "Versace" goes up to the very top of the political food chain.
One of Ponce's companions asked him, before entering the palace, to think of us a scheme to get us more information or in touch with a higher-up at the palace.
Earlier, one of his other companions had casually mentioned that his weapon wasn't nearly as nice as it looked, but rather was just a cheap weapon painted silver by himself. So with that in mind, Ponce concocted a plan to paint sticks silver, sprinkle glitter on them to give a "magical" quality, and convince the local militia leader that he NEEDED these weapons.
The DM made us roll to determine how good these "weapons" looked and I managed to roll a nat 20. One of the other guys rolled a 1, but then rolled to convince Ponce that it actually looked REALLY good. He passed the roll so everyone had to spend a bunch of time convincing Ponce not to put this terrible weapon at the top of the pile when he made his sales pitch. "But it's a very fine weapon and should sit atop the rest!" He cried.
Ponce made his sales pitch and thanks to rolling a 19 and the militia leader being quite drunk, we managed to sell two of the weapons in exchange for information. One of which was the crappy weapon :D
So our lead involved visiting the docks, but on the way we visited the shops for gear. Ponce then proceeded to give a sales pitch and sold another 4 or 5 of these painted stick "weapons". Along the way he managed to get the deeds to two mysterious towers, so his networth has gone up considerably. I've decided my goal with this character is to get as wealthy as possible. He didn't share any of his gold from selilng the "weapons", but nobody seemed to notice :D
Good damn that's fantastic. I look forward to hearing more of Mr Ponce and the fleecing of any and all who will listen.
I'm DMing for the first time, and I'm playing Lost Mines of Phandelver with a group of 7 players, all level 3. We had the most intense session last week:
Lost Mines of Phandelver Spoilers!
The party decided to go after Venomfang (the young green dragon). They've handled themselves pretty well up until this fight and maaaaay have been a little too cocky. While roleplaying the dragon, I convinced the party that Reidoth (the druid who asks the party to drive out the dragon) is actually a rival blue dragon. They were on the verge of leaving to attack Reidoth, when the Cleric decided he wanted at the pile of loot instead and attacked Venomfang.
The Cleric, Barbarian, and Rogue were inside the tower so they landed a few good hits on the dragon and got him down to about 60% of his max HP (at 50% he would fly away). Unfortunately, the rest of the party was clustered together in the adjacent room. One solid poison breath from Venomfang instakilled our other Rogue. The party immediately sobered up and hauled it out of there.
The thing is, this is the first death any of us encountered in D&D and we didn't discuss it in our Session 0 (my bad). I was 100% going to roll with the consequences of death but noticed the player seemed bummed out, so I asked if she wanted to keep that character. Turns out she did, so I started trying to figure out how the party could resurrect her. One of the party starts texting me during break and we formulate a plan to have his character sacrifice his life for hers in some way (he's an experienced player and had a backup character already ready). So I have the druid take the PCs - one dead, one sacrificing himself, out into the woods. They return a week later and the rogue is alive while the other PC is nowhere in sight.
Soooo now I get to try and explain how the heck that happened! It should be fun. I felt totally out of my depth, but it seemed like everyone had a blast, and the players are really getting into the story, especially now that they know they can't steamroll every monster they come across.
when we got to that druid (similar situation under the spoiler tag) the druid used a froghemoth egg to transfer the life over, our halfling bard became an elf by the end of the spell.
Yeah, I noped our party right out of this exact situation a few months back, haha. Our paladin was like, "We can take him" and I was like... I just rolled a 20 on my performance check to desperately apologize for having disturbed you kind <spoiler>. It still almost instant killed us laughing at my performance :)
That's a great idea; I might have to steal that! Our Warlock is now convinced that he'll be able to Speak with Dead to commune with the dead player, so that'll be an interesting development to play off of.
Our DM used the Reincarte spell for this and traded the egg in place of the gold cost. One of the party wanted to hacth the egg and use it as a mount... Most of us really advised against this but he was so hell bent on trying he won us over with the idea of whatever happened it would be fun to watch. That character was a gnome so no doubt would have been eaten.
I'm playing in a game of Invisible Sun. Last session our party was on a train between major adventures, and dealt with a group of murder/suicide cultists who were going to sacrifice one of their own in order to infect the people on the train with a magical plague. We short-circuited about half the adventure through a clever use of powers and law-abidingness: Our Face charmed a witness to find out what was going on, our Maker talked the train into showing us where the cultist's luggage was, our Weaver with powers of the Woods and Loneliness walked unseen into their room and tossed the keystone of the ritual out the window of the moving train, and we made an anonymous report to the train's staff so they could apprehend the cultists.
There's a part of me that is a little sad it wasn't more exciting, but no one was hurt, the ritual was stopped, and the bad guys were caught without any danger to the passengers or damage to the train. It's weird how what feels like a win and what might be a win in real life can diverge so strongly. On the other hand, we as a group are really not designed for combat, so the fact that there were no running battles is definitely in our favor.
I'm just a little sad I didn't get to try out my new knife. I'm the Maker in the group, and I just made a new unique weapon I haven't tried out in a combat scenario: On a successful hit, makes it such that the wielder had already detached and prepared as a crafting ingredient a portion of the target's mass. Causes an ongoing -1 effect on the target's rolls due to abrupt partial discorporation and disorientation, and the user gets -1 next turn as they incorporate the memory of the preparation. It was just at the edge of what I could make, and so I wasn't able to make the wielder immune to the mental effects of incorporating the new memories. It's so cool and awful and useful, and opens up so many possibilities for the GM to cause trouble down the road. :) Who needs to spend time tanning the hide of that monster when you can stab them and have the leather just drop to the ground next to the living beast?
That dagger sounds really fun. I may have to borrow that idea for our small campaign, my character has been getting around telling anyone who will listen they have a special "Big Pebble" that is all mysterious and wonderful, but does absolutely nothing. Until last session when the Dwarven god blessed it and now it's an enchanted pebble that takes the powers of whatever I touch it to and can transfer them into another item. The more crazy creative ideas we bring to our DM the more he works with them to make happen in game and that sounds really fun, it could go so many ways!
Y'all are making me super jealous reading all these, since my long-standing D&D group has recently gone on indefinite hiatus due to our DM and another player going back to school, and another moving to a new country, so they are all far too busy to continue playing. :(
A few of my other friends have asked me to consider DMing for them again though, so I will hopefully be spinning up a new campaign of my own some time in the next few months. I was thinking of doing a D&D 5E Sword Coast based Pirate campaign, possibly using Battlefleet Gothic as inspiration for the ship to ship combat mechanics. But my other potential campaign idea was updating Dark Sun from its 4E incarnation to something that can be played in 5E, since I absolutely adore the setting and its been over a decade since I last played a campaign there.
I was hoping you would see the thread, it sounds like you will be running the show very soon. I'll have to read up on those as soon as I have a minute.
Most of the campaigns our DMs are running are heavy homebrew stuff, it's been fun so far but these other modules would be a blast to have a shot at as well. Time is the big issue for most of us unfortunately, damn work and life and such lol
So say we all. What I wouldn't give for the ability to pause time so I could fully pursue all my hobbies, instead of half-assing them all like I currently do. ;)
Wow that is a hell of a super power I've never thought of!
So I'm gonna tell you in this rely just because. We did a one shot last night all 10th level and it was the most insane yet amazingly fun session we've had in ages, knowing that whatever we do won't really matter we all went for it.
I played a shadow sorcerer and need to play that one again hopefully from first level or a lower level because I need to connect with them a bit more and really role play all the things with their personality. I'm all sorts of excited about the thought of that!
LOL, yeah forget super strength, flight or invisibility. Those lack ambition! I would much prefer to be functionally immortal. ;)
And nice, I haven't ever played a Shadow Sorcerer, but the Shadowfell is my jam. I love the lore for it, and the bleak aesthetic. I tend to enjoy grimdark fantasy (e.g. Black Company, Malazan Book of the Fallen, etc) more than most other fantasy genres.