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[Trekkin]

No dwarves, elves, or other standard fantasy fare at launch for player races. Instead, we specifically see a very strong focus on Paizo IP races. This is despite the lore ostensibly occurring within the same universe as the Pathfinder series.

I'm not a fan either, but there are some Pathfinder core races in the core book. Page 506+, in the bit about making Starfinder work with Pathfinder.

I have no doubt they will receive zero additional content for precisely the reasons you stated, but they are there.

[Arx]

Let us set the scene.

It is soon after nightfall in the small farming town of Alnswick. Few windows are lit, and nobody is about on the street. Outside the tavern a rusted sign swings slightly in the breeze, barely legible in the half-light as reading "The best cocoa in Golarion". Only silence comes from inside,

Into this sombre setting stumbles an unlikely group of adventurers, like the heroes of countless stories before. United only by their shared desire for the bounty on information from Alnswick, they peer about them into the darkness.

Ithariel, elven prince, has taken the lead. He is unmatched with a dueling sword, and he has never been known to tell a lie. Flanking him are Gurga Trollarms and Grozen Hookblade, half-bloods that earned names for themselves in combat. Gurga is a half-giant, towering over her comrades and wielding a greataxe to match. Grozen is a half-orc, unassuming but for his scars and the faintly glowing glaive he carries - the Hookblade.

Trailing them are an ever-less likely bunch. Archibald, an enigmatic, completely hairless man in scorched robes. Cheeky Kevin, a tracker with a pair of deadly bush knives, a strange accent, and a mercurial personality. And finally Hammond, young, unassuming, covered in dirt.

Approaching the tavern, Ithariel confidently knocks and calls cheerfully, "Hello! Anyone there?"

Met with no response, he opens the door and the group files in. As he enters, a surly man with a heavy build stands from behind the bar.

"What'd'you want?"

With which the party begins trying to negotiate rooms and cocoa. But the barkeep is unhelpful, and only yields to go prepare some food and cocoa after extensive badgering and Ithariel flashing a few coins. In the interim he dispatches his assistant, a wan young man, to show Archibald and Kevin around the dormitory upstairs. Ithariel goes with, but returns quickly. Kevin and Archibald immediately turn in.

Downstairs, the barkeep has introduced himself as Big Sean and served two mugs of rancid cocoa, asking a gold piece for each. Grozen takes one sniff of his mug, and rejoins that if Sean paid him a gold piece he might drink it. Gurga doesn't even bother with her mug. Hammond has seated himself at a table off to one side.

As Ithariel returns to this rather one-sided merriment, Archibald utters a cry upstairs. Within moments, weapons are drawn and warriors have dashed up the stairs, discovering that a crook has emerged from a concealed passage and attempted to sap Archie.

This, reader, is where the story grows stranger (and grimmer) ((and it becomes more apparent that we loosed our inner munchkins and then played the characters to the hilt)).

As blows are exchanged, Hammond arrives and begins to writhe and grow. Within moments, a creature like bear fills half the room and begins mauling the skulker. Drawn by the noise, robed figures emerge from the passageway.

The melee grows wilder, with Ithariel vaulting the furniture to blind a figure with his robe and go to run him through. As Grozen arrives, he deftly reaches past Ithariel and relieves the would-be reinforcer of his limbs. Kevin goes to work with his knives, and within moments the room is silent except for the panting of the druid.

Ithariel sets off down the passage way and discovers a trapdoor. Dropping down, he finds himself in the basement; and more importantly, the midst of a cult of sorts, and shouts a warning to this effect. Rather than risk the passageway, Hammond tears apart the floor and plunges down amongst the enemy. Shortly after, warriors are dropping like flies through the hole, landing on friend and foe alike. Gurga uses Hammond as a landing pad, stunning him, but he fights on.

As Ithariel goes to join the battle, two immense wasps fly out from behind him. Immediately, he strikes at one, scarring its carapace. It flies by, but strays into reach of Grozen's blade and is cut out of the air in pieces. The other describes a circuit of the room, unsettling those nearby with noxious fumes, but never quite within a sword's length.

Now as it seems things cannot grow more chaotic, Archibald begins screaming and flames stream from him. A pillar of fire erupts in the centre of the basement, throwing cultists like ragdolls and setting the building alight. The flames and the blades of the cultists overwhelm Hammond the Hamster, and he blacks out. However, it takes Gurga only a moment to strike down the last of the cultists.

Grozen takes the opportunity to feed a healing elixir to Hammond as a door opens and a wolf, slavering and sprouting obscene growths, bounds past Ithariel. Soon he is engaged in a pitched battle with another set of cultists and the wolf, until Gurga and Archibald put a swift end to it with mighty axes blows and another immense blast of flame.

The optimistic would believe that this was the end of the saga. But no! Covered by the sound of the kineticist's fires, Big Sean himself enters and charges down Grozen (rarely a wise move). But with an unnatural resilience, his skin deflects the Hookblade and he crashes into the half-orc, sending him reeling into Archibald. A moment later, Grozen responds with brutal hacking chops, causing writhing growths to sprout from Sean's shoulders where he strikes.

Alas for Sean, before he has a chance to do anything more Gurga unseams him from nave to chaps in a single mighty blow, leaving him split like like a troublesome log.

As the tavern begins to collapse around them, the misfits seize anything they can that looks like it may be of use and flee. Kevin hurls himself out of a window, landing deftly on his feet. Archibald follows him, lifted on gouts of flame.

As Grozen and Hammond busy themselves with picking up an unconscious cultist and some bones, respectively, Ithariel unlocks a passagway back onto the ground floor. It quickly becomes a race to see who can leave the fastest and most impressively, with Gurga leaving first by a narrow margin while Grozen hurdles the bar, carrying the cultist. Ithariel runs along the table tops, unfortunately setting himself alight in the process. Hammond follows less dramatically, but more safely.

Within seconds of leaving, the tavern collapses behind the party. And yes, the DM was rolling damage to it every turn.


I doubt that was particularly readable, but for whatever reason I wanted to write it out. We've been playing a short campaign with a different DM while our usual DM runs a convention, and it's featured some very silly characters played very straight. Like the Elven Prince Ithariel, who is actually a human with an incredible Bluff check that just convinces everyone he meets he is an elven prince. He regularly swears by the elvish gods. Or Cheeky Kevin, who is definitely not an Australian. Deeefinitely not. Or Gurga, who is... not very bright and speaks only in fragments. All the time.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I've officially started playing D&D, so I guess I should post here.

[Mephisto]

I'm just going to leave this here.

Listening to the podcast, you'd be hard pressed to catch what system they're using unless you happen to catch a reference to "Gizmo" now and then. The about page, however, says they use GURPS, one of my favorites.

[BlackFlyme]

Last session was something. Not really the session ; we completed a dungeon, where the only notable thing was that the Hunter used Wild Empathy to calm an elasmosaurus guarding an underwater treasure.

DM's brother was pissed about something, and refused to play with us. But he did spend the entire time blaring his music as loud as it'd go, stomping up and down the stairs, slamming doors, and smashing things off of other things. We were told to just ignore him. A bit concerned that DM and his brother are going to beat the shit out of each other, or worse.

And the previous DM is still insisting that Paizo's a shit company and he ran Giantslayer and Hell's Vengeance books to the letter. It's been months, just fucking come clean.

[Sirus]

I'm running a kineticist psion in a 3.5 game. Kineticists are supposed to be ranged, energy-damaging, crowd-controlling DPS powerhouses.

Thanks to my insistence on playing as IC as possible, he has done nothing but sneak and bluff his way around. Not a single offensive power used in three sessions

[SOLDIER First]

Your GM let you fluff your Rogue as a Kineticist? Nice.

[Harry Baldman]

Your GM let you fluff your Rogue as a Kineticist? Nice.

He rolled a 6 total on Move Silently, but this was okay because the door guard was so drunk that he rolled a -4.

[Sirus]

I thought it was -6. Oh well, you get the picture.

I *did* manage some pretty nice rolls in previous sessions, though.

[Kadzar]

So my last D&D session was rather interesting. For a little backstory, the session before, the players had going to investigate this creepy old mansion, since it's something I came up with a few sessions back when they asked a random NPC what the most dangerous place she knew of in the city (I believe they were inquiring about dungeons, but she wasn't the sort to know about that sort of thing, so I came up with something else). So, since I couldn't come up with or find a good haunted house idea, I decided to make it overrun with fey due to having a permanent portal to the Feywild in the attic.

So, after having several encounters with various fey creatures, both combat and non-combat, and learning that the tiefling enchanter that they defeated had been getting magical spell-imbuing drugs for his personality cult from someone on the other side of the portal here, they decided not to go through the portal once they found it, since they realized they didn't really have much reason to do so. Which was probably for the best, since the time warping nature of that realm could have potentially really messed with what they were doing.

Anyway, before they went to the portal, they had encountered a green hag who had set up shop in one of the bedrooms, and they went to she her again before they left. She had introduced herself as something of a buyer and seller of abstract qualities and various bits of information who refused to deal with goods that didn't have some sort of sentimental attachment to the players, several times saying the phrase "I value what you value." (Though when the bard tried to get something by threatening her life, she casually dismissed it, saying he in no way had a claim on her life. If I was more quick-witted, I would have said something like, "there's only one way to take another's life, and then it's in no fit state to be bartered away.")

So the first actual deal she made was with the rogue, who offered up the knowledge of his sister's middle name in exchange for the location of one of the members of the pirate crew that had killed her (part of his backstory). So, after making sure he understood the terms of the deal, knowledge of his sister's middle name was stricken from his memory, and, in return, he received knowledge of the fishing shack where the former pirate was now living.

Next was the fighter, who traded the poetry he had been writing throughout the adventure so far for knowledge of a really nice sword (or something to that effect), since he is a collector of swords. So, after giving up his poetry and any knowledge of its contents, he learned of a sword that had belonged to the first king of a nearby kingdom (Aerishod), that anyone who brought the sword to that kingdom's capital (Hendifel) would have the right to declare themself king, and that the sword was hidden somewhere within the city the party is in (Riverport). Though, because of the way the deal was worded, he didn't get a more exact location.

The last deal was with the wizard, who offered up a spell scroll of gaseous form, and managed to roll well enough to convince the hag that he valued it greatly, and in return got the location of a member of the thieves' guild leader (Sumak Runninglock, a halfling) that the party had been trying to get into contact with for a while now.

Actually, I think before all of this the halfling cleric must have traded something to her for directions to the attic, but I don't remember what, and my notes are unhelpful in this regard. But, as for the rest of the party, the monk and bard didn't make any deals with her, and, despite being the first to deal with her (or maybe because of it), the halfling cleric is rather creeped-out by her.

So, after this, they leave the mansion, mostly to do some shopping. During this time, the fighter went around to ask about the sword, and while he didn't manage to learn about its location, he did learn that the kingship thing was probably true, since it's customary in Aerishod for titles of nobility to be granted to those who have recovered relics of the kingdom. He also learned that the diplomat from Aerishod had recently left Riverport, and that there were rumors that Aerishod was planning to attack the city, since they were without rulership (since the party had basically killed off the city council in the previous adventure (to be fair, they were evil)) and no longer had the magical fear effect that kept nearby nations at bay (which was powered the essence of gods who had been captured by a ritual. The effect had also kept most of the population docile before).

Also during this time, the rogue took the boat they had used to get to the district (since the city exists on multiple islands connected to each other and the mainland by a series of bridges, much like Venice or Tenochtitlan) to the other part of the city where the former pirate's fishing shack was. Failing to trick him into thinking he was another member of the pirate crew (since the rogue has a magic dagger that gives him the form of whichever pirate crewmember he last killed), he just intimidated him into giving him the location of another pirate before killing him and returning to the party.

So then the party went to see Sumak Runninglock where the wizard learned he would be, which was a fancy restaurant. The place was restrictive about who they let in, so first the fighter went in disguised as a member of the assassins' guild that the thieves' guild was/is tentatively allied to. He got some stares and rude remarks, but was better welcomed once he offered to buy everyone drinks.

Meanwhile, the rogue went in the back and, after knocking out a cook who was hauling out trash, went back in and took his place. Then everyone else came in that way after being turned invisible by the bard.

Eventually the invisible people made their way to the private section of the restaurant, where they overheard the thieves' guild leader and other high-ranking members discussing the looming threat of the Aerishod invasion of Riverport, and their plan to ingratiate a certain revolutionist trying to petition democratic ideals to high-ranking members of the city's legitimate guilds (who currently have the most legitimate authority to appoint new city councilmembers) so that they might encourage him to help form a new government more favorable to them, like the one that existed in 19th century Sicily and helped form the Sicilian Mafia (in other words, one where only a few people can vote, so it's easy to promote candidates they favor).

About this time the wizard, who had seated himself at the table dismissed his invisibility by throwing a dinner roll at Sumak (we counted it as an attack; I suggested casting a cantrip instead, but the player was rather set on the idea) and presented documents mentioning a pending hit
on Sumak by the assassins' guild. But, since the party interfered with the assassin's guild before they could try to perform the hit, and since the documents documents bore no signatures or any other identifying marks, Sumak had trouble believing the party.

He finally relented and offered them one way to get the party into his good graces: help the thieves' guild get the revolutionists they were talking about on their side. They would do this by escorting him when goes to meet with high-ranking members of the trade guilds, and along the way some thieves' guild members would fake an attack on him (unfortunately, the players made sure that they'll get to know the people fake-attacking them beforehand, so it's a bit hard for me to fuck with them in that respect).

Things are a little more complicated than they seem, though, since that revolutionist they're supposed to protect also turns out to be the pirate the rogue wants to kill. He has a plan to use his magic dagger to take the revolutionist's place, but can he pull it off?

There's also murmurs in the party that the attempt on Sumak's life was perpetrated not by the assassins' guild, but by one of the high-ranking members of the thieves' guild. Is this just player paranoia, or might it be true?

Tune in next time to find out! (Assuming I remember to do this again)

[milo christiansen]

That was pretty interesting, I hope to read more later

[Kadzar]

Oh, hey, thanks!

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Second session of my group has wrapped, we were missing a person but it went really well! We're apparently playing a very old AD&D campaign that's been reiterated upon in homebrew for 5th edition. Small farming town. Missing people. Necromantic cult dealio.

We spent most of the session going around town questioning people and pretending to be brigand-hunters and/or looking to purchase an old farm, and I gotta say I really like this group's roleplay chops, all the moreso because I'm the only one who has ever played tabletop before.

Session ended with the necromancer priest and co trying to kidnapp us in our sleep. Only got the sleep spell off on half the party, and after my and the sorcerer's violently successful intervention escaped by threatening to decapitate one of the sleeping PCs. It's probably good that we took the "deal" (more of a temporary withdrawl) because my Plan B was to pull a hostage reversal and make the guy realize that whatever they had to threaten, if they killed one of us we'd raze the entire cultist section of the town. Still might get to pull that one later on.

Only problem is that the priestess is...strong. Multiple levels above us, I think. Still nearly killed her though, which is what lead to the above scenario.

[MrWiggles]

The Dungeon World game, I was running came to an ending not too long ago. They were finally going to go meet Moana Loa. The Great Old Dragon that rules over the island of Hawaii, the kobold pirate haven. The volacno is named for her, not the other way around. And I've been telling them for a few sessions, they can't kill the million+ old dragon that made the hawaii islands.

And she near like a god really.

One of the players decide to try and get free stuff from her anyway. I was rolling with it. Originally I had planned for it to be something like Smaug and Bilbo kinda of thing, as they were looking for Death's saddle, bit and briddle for his pale horse.

But no. Wanna to see if the Dragon would be down with making him into basically the villian.

And he failed his roll, and the dragon killed all them.

GG.

GG.

So now I'll be running Red Markets, a game which isn't even technically out yet. Its a post apocalyptic economic horror game. The goal is for your character to retire. To stop being a player character.  West of the Mississpii, has been overran with zombies. And everyone that didnt make it out to the Recession is not only presumed dead but was legally declared dead. The problem is, well, most of the folks that were on the west coast are now dead and undead, there is still a none trival number of folks left behind. And they can't go over the mississppi river without being shot. They've formed Enclaves, little city states.

And the players are Takers. They do ad hoc big risk big reward jobs out in the wasteland.  You need to get a bank of a servers from a data center in a city? You hire a taker crew to take it. You need escort to get to the next Enclave? Takers. And Enclaves dont really like Takers. Takers aren't working the fence to keep the zombies at bay, they aren't farming to provide food. They just take.

[Rolan7]

That post-apocalypse scavenging game sounds really sweet!  I personally don't mind zombies, I love having enemies which are sorta like humans but without the moral problems.  Grim, but not conflicted like actual... conflicts.

As for the dragon, that kinda sucks.  But on the other hand, if you fuck with a dragon, you get the fate you plan for.
My experience with Dungeon World is from the times Slowbeef and Diabetus played it.  It seemed especially open for interpretation...  Less mechanical burden on the GM, which is kinda tricky, because it seems like the GM therefore determines what happens.  Even more than usual.

Personally?  I've had characters who would never retire IC, who I wanted to end.  Challenging a dragon is something they would do.