Gamery updates

Coming to the end of another week and I realised I haven't done an update on the games I'm running for a while.  Our home game is canceled this week, so I'll just have to indulge myself online while Itigiak and his spirit weasel wait in gaming limbo to track down the missing portal.

Online, however, things are ongoing.  My gadget-Queen rogue, Angalia, is sobbing over the body of her fallen friend and hoping someone knows more about healing than her and can save his life.  She is the only character I'm playing under any non-4e system at the moment - and I hasten to point out there is no prejudice.  I've had Savage Worlds, Swords and Wizardry, Arcana Unearthed, 3.5 and Pathfinder characters at various times, but the games have all died.  I swear it isn't my fault. 

However it comes about, Angalia is the sole representative of anything non-4e at the moment and she is not a very awesome example.  In combat with a deformed and extremely evil Surgeon, she rolled almost nothing above a 6.  Even with combat advantage and sneak attack, that's not going to do very much.  On the plus side, she rolls extremely high when looking for ingredients.  It may not be enough to keep her alive.

My other online PCs are mostly on hiatus or in slow games and I don't need to worry about them at the moment.  The games I'm running are also in a mixed state. 

Halls of the Mountain King is just about at the turning point of their climactic battle.  I suspect the party are about to turn things around for themselves in a major way now they've eradicated some of the irritating artillery.  They are keeping a decent set of effects on the Big Bad (now Big Bads as he split into two different entities when bloodied) and trying to finish off the taunting devils who keep making them drop their weapons (a sweet power, thank you Open Design).  I have a few tricks left up my sleeve and am hopeful I may manage to drop one of them at least.

Once they're done there, we'll move on to The Lost City which I've been pruning judiciously.  Mostly this pruning will apply to maps and generally empty areas.  I'm also trying to get ahead of myself by sorting out some treasure parcels in advance.  This is good DMG advice and I never do it.  I forget and then realise my parties are grossly under-equipped.  At this point treasure arrives in a mysterious glittering heap for some vaguely concocted reason.  My aim this time is to make the process smoother and more organic for myself and the players.  We are using the inherent bonus system, which means I can plunder the more amusing magic items with impunity as they will never be catastrophically out of whack with the encounters.  I know all too well how easy it is to get bogged down with upgrading mainstay kit, but personally I love the crazy knick-knacks more.  Enterprising players get some unexpected uses out of them as well.

Tombs I are about to enter the old Tomb of Horrors site in Skull City - recent victim of a cataclysm, but still containing some dangers.  Tombs II are investigating one of said dangers and have spent a lot of time this week splashing across a shallow pool.  In both situations the parties know something terrible will happen to them, but they don't know what it is or when it will strike.  In game terms, this tends to slow things down as they take all the precautions they can reasonably think of.  My job, really, is to hit the starter button and throw something at them before they get too bored.

Rune Stones are mid-battle with a batch of Cylopes.  They've turned out to be a lot of fun as I suddenly realised they were slightly Jeevsian in outlook.  Accustomed to tending the whims of fruitloop fomorians, they treat the PCs like philosophical nannies while attempting to mallet them to death. 

Skills we don't have

Well now.  That was interesting.  Tonight's game was short and sweet.  It was a reorientation exercise and reminder of what had happened when we last played this campaign nearly a year ago.  Towards the end of that, however, we were commissioned by Doodles (Providers of Business to Adventurers) to go and help out an old lady who had a problem on her farm.

We're good guys, we help out and naturally we set off.  We found the farm and were greeted by a tough looking farm hand who wasn't about to let us in until he was convinced we weren't going to scare the old lady or laugh at her fears.  Skill challenge!  I'm a fan of this occasionally maligned feature of 4e.  Done well, they provoke good role-play and a lot of lateral thinking - both of which were needed here.

You would think that a reasonable skill set would include diplomacy, streetwise and insight and you would be correct.  Those were indeed the primary skills.  That was when there was a communal intake of breath as we looked confidently at our character sheets and realised that only one of us was trained in streetwise, none of us were trained in diplomacy or insight and the highest Charisma score among us was 10.  Panic ensued.  Luckily we have a DM who is both forgiving and willing to listen to suggestions, however bizarre.

"Has he got a bad back or corns or something I can heal to help him be more receptive to us?"
"I can run around him for a really, really long time and demonstrate my unwillingness to give up?"
"I can tell him stories about other nasty things we've defeated to inspire confidence in us."
"I have a decent nature check - would flattering his farming skills help?"

We blundered on, narrowly making it with a few very lucky aid another rolls and a lot of rather poor rolls on the skills we elected to use for our primary checks.  Twas ever thus.  Even so, the glow of satisfaction on finally being allowed through the door to see one old lady equalled the thrill of winning some battles.  D&D is  sometimes very strange.  But I love it.

EDIT:  I just noticed that in the previous post I warned myself about disrespecting the dice.  I should have kept my fingers off the keyboard.  Most the really horrible rolls in that skill challenge were mine.

Game on

Itigiak (my Muktuk the Hard Boiled Shaman tribute) gets his first outing tonight.  Very excited to be playing live again after lengthy break - absurdly so.  I caught myself crooning over my neglected dice earlier today and promising them the chance to send me to hideous doom very soon.

It's not true to say I've rolled no dice at all.  I have rolled quite a few, but as a PbP DM - which is not the same and indeed, nor are they the same.  My DM set sits on my desk and is entirely different to the sets I use a player.  DM dice have been doing nicely lately, rolling more crits than I've seen in a while.  Player dice were pretty rubbish last time they rolled in play.  This is fairly par for the course.  Few of my characters roll well in combat, although they have the habit of nailing skill checks.  Nothing wrong with that, of course, but just occasionally I would like to be able to hit something rather than be able to assess a magic sword at a glance.

I'm aware this is ungrateful and if I could find a way to type in a whisper, I would.  It never pays to upset your dice.

Character building

Literally.  Not the "I'm sorry if it hurts now, but it's all character building" sort of character building.  This is gaming character building.  Which, come to think of it, often ends up in the same place when your lovingly crafted elf rogue bites the dust after an ill-advised advance on a giant spider.

Friday sees the long awaited return of our home gaming group.  We've had a longer than intended hiatus as our normal GM was inconsiderate enough to go and have a baby and he and his wife are hors de combat at the moment.  Then it was summer and we (i.e. my family) went away on holiday for a bit.  Then another player went on holiday.  Then another one was ill.  And so and so forth.  

Anyway, we're getting back on the road at last which is all that matters.  The campaign in question is run by my husband and we haven't been there for a while.  Due to the loss of both our healer types due to above-mentioned baby, it has fallen to me to build a new party member to keep the old party members in band-aids.  In 4e terms, that's a Leader and I often play them.  In our home campaigns, my Leaders have had variable fates.

Flora the shifter cleric was overwhelmingly lawful and good and prone to striding into the middle of battle and yelling "Who's hurt?  Tell me now!"  This sort of behaviour meant she had to be raised from the dead once and rendered her unconscious a lot before she finally died at the hands of furniture.  It was a less ignominious ending than it sounds.  Slightly.  The furniture in question belonged to a necromancer and hurt anyone who started their turn next to it.  She was imprudent enough to drop unconscious next to a table and that was that. I decided her day was done and moved on to Karolina.

Karolina is a human bard.  Yes, present tense.  Karolina yet lives, although not in the current campaign.  She has a vampiric background and a heavy Transylvanian accent.  So heavy, in fact that hardly anybody can understand her.  This is a pity as she is also the party ritualist and routinely sends reports of battles and pleas for aid via animal messengers.  Such messages are delivered in the voice of the caster, so Winterhaven is full of people who have received an unintelligible demand for something or other and are deeply confused.  Unlike her predecessor, Karolina's notion of a good fight is one in which she stands at the edge, doesn't get hurt and sings sarcastic songs to her foes to make them fall over or be otherwise distracted.

The current leader is not yet decided.  I have two in mind.  One is another look at an old favourite of mine, a halberd wielding warlord who prefers others to do the dirty work.  The other is based on a recent discovery,  Muktuk the Hard Boiled Shaman.  Muktuk's tribute is called Itigiak and looks promising.  I haven't recreated the warlord yet, but over the course of the day he too will burgeon into life.