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Author Topic: Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: COBRA!!!  (Read 939620 times)

Rolan7

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I have a special request for any interested.  My character is now insane, via shenanigans I might detail later.  He has contracted Malkavianism and is now growing two new personalities.

I want ideas for one of those personalities.

His character is basically:  Fedora-and-trenchcoat wearing, cowardly, spy.  High respect for human life, believes in appeasement.  Jewish.  Goes by JakeTheEar (his early online contacts claimed there was a 10 character limit and it stuck)

I have an idea for his darker half, JakeTheFear.

But what about his other new personality?  For inspiration, he has a lot of guilt over...  Well, a lot of things.  Nearly-killing people nightly to feed.  Destroying a young woman's life by making her his ghoul.  Betraying the Prince under torture.  Failing to live up to his sire's humane example.
He's also constantly being threatened with death.  By the Prince, by Belial's Brood, even to some extent by the party Gangrel.

But it doesn't need to relate to that.  It can be any sort of character, past or future.  It [probably?] isn't real, just a product of Jake's imagination that he'll live as 1/3 of the time.  Our female Malkavian party member has a 50's gangster and an ancient Mesopotamian named Lilith.

Outlandish is good!
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She/they
No justice: no peace.
Quote from: Fallen London, one Unthinkable Hope
This one didn't want to be who they was. On the Surface – it was a dull, unconsidered sadness. But everything changed. Which implied everything could change.

Jimmy

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Jester, ala Cicero in Skyrim. Bonus points if he carts his mother's corpse around with him in a coffin.
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Harry Baldman

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Make the third personality be Simon Magus, the been-everywhere, possibly done-everything sorcerer of the ancient world.

Alternatively, you could go for the Freudian trio and have one be the id (darker half, I presume), one be the ego (regular person) and one be the superego (third personality). Or play with the concept and have yourself be the superego, the darker half the id and the third one act as the ego who gets shit done (a role not exclusive with also being Simon Magus). Or have yourself be the id, exemplifying the cowering response, one be the superego embodying vicious and alien principles of vampire life, and the third be a maneuvering overachiever (possibly one who likes to pretend that he's actually regular-you for all intents and purposes) of some kind.

Then there's other archetypes you can play with. Consider what tabletop roleplayer archetype you fit, and have the other personalities conform to different ones, which might make it so that they play differently as opposed to merely talking differently.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2016, 05:47:52 am by Harry Baldman »
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scriver

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You want something to do with his guilt? Make it a flaggellant monk who has taken a vow of silence in penitence and only speaks in Latin prayers.
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Love, scriver~

Gentlefish

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Or have his new personality simply be the antithesis of himself - the manifestation of all his fear coming true. Feeds on specifically non-kosher humans and animals, for example, and whatever else his fears are, he becomes.

NullForceOmega

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Hell the last three weeks of my campaign have been a slog, between people not getting enough sleep and passing out during the game, problems getting small children to go to sleep, and various other issues, things had slowed to a crawl.  Thankfully last night's game managed to actually get the ball rolling again, now I can finally get everyone back on track to the next major story element.  All of this has made me miss sticking to my strictly freeform DM style, why I decided to do a plot game is beyond me, I must have had a good reason when I started, but now I just want to do something else.

Oh well, I've already committed, and things aren't going that badly.  I'll keep going until either we finish or something gives and we can't continue.
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Grey morality is for people who wish to avoid retribution for misdeeds.

NullForceOmega is an immortal neanderthal who has been an amnesiac for the past 5000 years.

BlackFlyme

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Old DM came back. Joined in on the side-campaign, though. Maybe we'll get back on track eventually.

Another group he was in was not so kind to his absence. Kicked him, without even letting him know. They also quickly fast-tracked their campaign to make sure it got done before he came back, and killed his character so utterly that the character and everything they've done has been erased from existence.

The DM of that group is also a player in this group, and urged us to kick the player once he announced he would be away for an unforeseen amount of time. This guy is rather strict on attendance. Asked to kick the Current/Replacement DM's girlfriend because she had to attend a funeral.

I mean, I don't like some of the Old-DM/Problem Player's antics at times, or his limitations on books, but he's gotten much better, and he's still our friend.
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Rolan7

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My vampire character's story ended with his final death.
Story-wise, there are probably threads best left out.  But there are also threads which were tragically cut short.  Our GM played a tasteful sad eulogy instrumental as our coterie continued the mission.  Completely befuddled by Malkavianism, they were barely aware that my character died or even ever existed.  But eventually our gangrel's core personality resurfaced, and...

Our GM put Rules of Nature on

(the full version, not that sample)
It was... close.  I want to write a proper story of Jake's chronicle.  My posts have lingered too much on some things, and avoided others.

Until then.  I think our craven sharpshooter would be proud to be eulogized with this dankness.  Particularly since he wasn't exactly his normal craven self at the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3viNl95FlMw
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She/they
No justice: no peace.
Quote from: Fallen London, one Unthinkable Hope
This one didn't want to be who they was. On the Surface – it was a dull, unconsidered sadness. But everything changed. Which implied everything could change.

Jimmy

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My players have successfully beaten the kobolds in the local mine!

They decided to try a frontal assault on the mine, despite the difficult approach 100 ft. in every direction (reskinned barbed wire trap from the Pathfinder SRD) meaning they couldn't close to melee. The samurai had sold his shortbow last session too, so I had a good laugh at his expense when he realised the dozen javelins he'd picked up would be useless. The gnome telekineticist used their simple blast to knock down the kobold's watchtower, and from there they fell to ranged attacks.

They were smart enough to search the door and find the two traps on it, making good use of a 10 ft. pole to set them off. Inside the mine they found a passage coated in lantern oil, on the other end of which was a kobold who threw a smokestick to give himself concealment. They set fire to the oil themselves, but took a pair of acid flasks worth of splash damage from the kobold on the other end of the passage while they waited for the two rounds of burning oil to go out. Then the gnome charges into the passage once the oil is gone, only to set off two fire trap runes placed by the unseen kobold sorcerer inside the room that were underneath the oil. The samurai sets off a third before deciding it's worth actually checking for traps, whereupon they find the remaining two runes and safely move around them. Once they close to melee with the kobold rogue and sorcerer, it's over fairly quickly.

They interrogate the sorcerer after capturing her alive, learning the leader's name, that the kobold leader is transforming into a dragon, and that they have a pet dragon too. They release the kobold prisoner and move further forward, failing to search for traps as they move inside the next room. Lucky for them it's not a trap, but there are four kobold barbarians hiding under camouflage netting who get a surprise round on them. They get some solid hits in but don't manage to deal serious damage, but after healing the group decide they're spent for the day and retreat to rest.

The night passes as they keep watch on the mine entrance, seeing a kobold peek out but immediately retreat. The next morning they attack again, finding a thirty foot deep, five foot wide chasm running across the room. A pair of kobolds riding dire war weasels shoot from the back of their mounts with shortbows, jumping across the chasm to avoid being caught in melee. One of the kobolds goes down, his companion succeeds on a handle animal to get the riderless weasel to attack the samurai, and the weasel rolls a natural 20 and crits! Per the monster entry, it latches on with its teeth, so the samurai gets a feral weasel hanging off his family jewels. Luckily he manages to (carefully) strike it with his sword, killing it and avoiding taking strength and constitution damage the next round. The second rider is quickly cut down shortly afterwards.

Finally the group descend down a 60 ft. shaft, and reaching the bottom find the boss chamber lit by six burning braziers. The kobold boss is described as shimmering with a heat haze and dripping liquid flames from their clawed fingers, and it delays long enough to allow everyone to enter the room before pressing a switch on its throne, triggering the collapse of the ladder leading up the shaft and causing the braziers to start emitting concealing smoke in a 20 ft. radius burst. The party have an 'oh, shit' moment when they realise that they've completely forgotten to use the wand of resist energy given to them earlier.

A merry chase ensues as the boss uses the smoke to their advantage, setting the group on fire and burning down their fire resistance with its infusion abilities. The fight ends up being a near TPK when the boss wins an initiative roll with a natural 20 (we roll initiative each round to keep things interesting). The whole party is perfectly aligned for it to hit them all with its 15 ft. cone of fire, and all of them are at single digit health scores.

But wait! One of my players has saved something very special from the very first session of the campaign. At the start of the campaign, each character received a token valid for one immediate action to reroll one d20. They've saved this for over three months, and today they decide they're going to cash it in to make me reroll my initiative. I reroll, and the result is enough to make the boss go at the end of the round.

Snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat, the group emerge victorious, finishing the session exhausted but ecstatic despite the close call. They get a brief description of the massive stone blocking a passage deeper into the mine, painted with pictures of terrified kobolds, a series of draconic words, and a picture of a dragon.

I'm proud of the way this session emerged, and felt that everyone really enjoyed the game. I can tell that the weasel hit will be a running joke for the samurai character for many more sessions to come, and the boss fight was perfectly balanced to be a tough but winnable encounter even without the group remembering to use the clues I gave them to prepare properly. I'm pretty sure they'll decide to skip the optional bonus area in favour of retreating to town and getting their reward (the owner of the mine promised each person their weight in silver for the job). I can tell the group suspect something strange already about the dragon given how illogical it would be for a creature that large to get into a mine, but we'll see if they can figure out the trick or if they'll believe what the kobold told them.
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BlackFlyme

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Not enough people showed, so we had to start a back-up campaign for our back-up campaign.

Gestalted Kingmaker. Players are a Human Swashbuckler/Fighter, a Halfling Cleric/Fighter, and me, a Tiefling Kensai-Magus/Sanctified-Slayer-Inquisitor.

Swashbuckler's calling Hax because it is really a good combo, if you can juggle the stats well enough. Which we can, as we got a stat-block of 18, 18, 16, 16, 14, 14. I have all the Initiative and monster Knowledge ever.

We lost a little bit though. No Traits, and this DM didn't give his signature bonus of two extra Skill Ranks per level, and one additional 1st level feat.
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spümpkin

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Okay, so, today some people actually showed up to a school club me and my friend started up for this sort of thing!

Woo!

This is a big change, considering we spent a lot of weeks sitting doing nothing.

Anyway, we're planning on running a game on Pathfinder, with two separate parties (due to the large amounts of people), with two DMs. One party is 'evil' and one is 'good'.

I mostly just wanted advice on how to be a good DM? I've had a small bit of experience, but hearing some things from more experienced DMs would be beneficial.
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Quote from: Sergarr
When in doubt, use puns.
Quote from: Calidovi
in our own special way we are all shitpost
each day, when the sun shines and greets us with a smile, at least one of us finds that inner strength to spout bullshit on a forum revolving around the systemized slaughter of midgets
dont call me a shitposter, call me a spirit one with the shitpost atman
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Jimmy

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1. Be prepared. Have your notes in order, have the monster stat blocks available either in printed form or on an easily read electronic medium such as a laptop or tablet PC (not a smartphone).

2. Respect the social contract. Be upfront with players about how you want the game to run. Is it a sandbox setting? Tell them they're free to make their own adventures, you're just there for the background. Is it a structured adventure path? Tell them you're running an adventure path and expect them to run their characters with the goal of completing that adventure.

3. Don't use a DM NPC. I know it's tempting to have an awesomely powerful NPC that helps the characters with their quests. Don't. Just don't. Anything helpful or useful to the players should either be in the form of loot, weak NPCs that would die to a single strike of the fighter's blade, or vaguely helpful NPCs that end up causing the players more trouble than it's worth.
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NullForceOmega

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There is a good amount of DM advice throughout the thread, I'd recommend that you take a while and read through the first pages.  If you have some specific questions after that, or would like some clarification, by all means, ask away.
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Grey morality is for people who wish to avoid retribution for misdeeds.

NullForceOmega is an immortal neanderthal who has been an amnesiac for the past 5000 years.

GiglameshDespair

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3. Don't use a DM NPC. I know it's tempting to have an awesomely powerful NPC that helps the characters with their quests. Don't. Just don't. Anything helpful or useful to the players should either be in the form of loot, weak NPCs that would die to a single strike of the fighter's blade, or vaguely helpful NPCs that end up causing the players more trouble than it's worth.

By God, this.
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Old and cringe account. Disregard.

Emma

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Is there ever a place for DM NPCs or are they just universally awful?
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