"Can I Bless the Yeast?"

So Lee,

Here's what you've been missing D&D wise.

After you left Jordan came back and has been playing Vogen, the Elf Librarian (Magic-User) and also Libby, the chick that gave you the crud. Vogen is in love with Libby. It's complicated.

So the group has been travelling around the same countryside near where you as Ranger the Ranger got into a fight with your future-son and time travelled mid-wrestle. After checking in on Timmy's grandmother, the crippled bus boy at the Crooked House tavern, and burning down her house after picking up a demonic spell book and magic rapier that hits anything on a 14, but NOT the target on a 16 or 17; fighting off hellhounds while one dragged Arthur's soul into the inferno; losing said demonic to spellbook to a mysterious figure that's definitely Timmy; sneaking into a giant ant hill and stealing an ant egg for a wizard-scholar who most likely is trying to create an ant-monster army; breaking the neck of a Giant Roc that had 36 HD (!) and meeting Arthur's many new characters they decided to get the hell out of Dodge.

This entailed looking for a job in the capital and hitching a ride as... security? aboard House Cannith's new airship that uses a new engine to power it made from the schematics you guys spent so long collecting. Remember all that fighting Warforged terrorists and going into the jungle with Miss Patsy and Zinzelpants and braving the zombies and weirdo skeletons in the Desolation? Yeah that all turned into this giant airship that was being used as a peace ship to make treaties with the newly discovered southern continent and their Empire. Emphasis on the past tense in that sentence.

While you were doing all those dangerous as fuck fetch quests remember your patron, Elayne? Yeah she's here too running around telling people what to do and helping to look for the vampire which is good because she totally did all the work when you guys killed the Lord of Blades. Well, her and Matt's shotgun.

Oh I forgot to mention the maybe genocide that's happening, but whatever that's not important right now.

So the party, newly named Random Task Force, is on board the ship not five minutes when Warforged terrorists, shouting something about the Lord of Blades, attempt to take control! (Imagine in the 5th element when Bruce Willis walks onto the bridge and just one-shots that guy completely winning in one quick motion). After a pretty terrible rescue attempt of the engineers being held hostage in the engine room, the party had won! Except all the engineers died and Libby fell on a smoke bomb after being sent in (naked) as a distraction.

So she's rushed to the infirmary and the rest of the group splits into 2 (!) to search the rest of the decks for any trouble telling the ship's Captain to have everyone on board go to the top deck. LOL. Naturally the emissaries/ambassadors all decide to help cause they think they're tough shit, but they all end up dead. Right at the moment the party gets there to see them murdered by a mysterious black cloud of course. Please keep in mind these guys are all badasses. And they're dead.

The final confrontation happens in the hold of the ship fighting on and around crates.

Them:  "What's in these crates?"
Me: "/shrug"
Them: "How do you not know what's in the crates?"

How I should've responded was having bad guys burst out at that moment and then looked them dead in the eyes and said "Happy?"

Just as the guy I was trying to frame (successfully?) as the vampire is murdered by said mysterious black cloud in front of their eyes the cloud takes humanoid form and slowly dissolves away into...

Everyone: "Is it Elayne? It's Elayne isn't it?"
Me: "...Yeah, totally. It is definitely Elayne. Was gonna be the whole time..." [deletes notes]

Turns out you can't hit a vampire unless using a holy weapon, or silver which the corpses around them have. Damian's golden, holy mace does a shitload of damage to her and Jordan's magic rapier keeps accidentally hitting Amanda. Things aren't looking good. Mostly because vampires feed on people's life force, and in D&D what is the most precious form of life force?

Levels. Yep she was eating their levels! Just by touching them! Bummer!
Also she raised zombies and at one point mind controlled Jordan into attacking everybody while she hid in the rafters and regenerated life.

Yeah turns out vampires are bad news.
This is how we left it last week.

THIS WEEK SHIT GOT REAL.

The Mage Ambassador from Aundair and her cronies came down and cast a battlefield spell that imbued everyone with fighting prowess. It was pretty awesome. Golden light enveloping their muscles and shit, I was proud of myself.

Jordan couldn't come and he let the others play as him (smh), but Arthur rolled two crits as Vogen and did decent damage to the vampire and her zombie minions. Damian did some crazy holy mace damage again and things were looking good. The tide had turned!

So Vamp-Elayne decides to bail. Blasts a hole in the side of the ship and grows wings. Arthur intercepts her with his two characters Vogen and Peaches while Damian casts Yeast on the ship hole and Amanda blesses it.

So now there's a living patch of holy yeast on the escape route. Was it going to do anything? Maybe burn a little? Cause a holy-unholy infection? Who knows, because while standing in front of the hole they kept shooting arrows at Vamp-Elayne who proceeded to pick up Vogen and use him as an Elf shield.

You see where this is going? Yeah she threw Vogen's corpse at the three of them in front of the hole and they all dangled "thousands of miles" in the air.

Except Vogen. Vogen tumbled like a rag doll towards the ground. But he wasn't completely useless yet.

JaNice, Amanda's character was on the bottom of this barrel of monkeys strand and she failed miserably to try and climb up, slipping and falling after Vogen. But this is where things get fucking awesome.

Have you seen that movie with Wesley Snipes and the parachuters? Drop Zone? Fuck it, any movie where someone falls out of a plane and speeds up to catch up to somebody? JaNice does that and grabs onto Vogen's body and uses him to cushion her fall.

AND IT FUCKING WORKS.

It was amazing man, I wish everyone in the world could've seen it.

Meanwhile, Peaches and Ganthet are still fucked, hanging from the ship, but they miraculously manage to climb up just as the Aundair Ambassador launches a fireball and incinerates the Vampire. Promptly, Libby finally shows up with a "life boat" and they get the fuck off the ship just in time to see it ripped to shreds in a massive explosion and crash into Sharn (where this all started) levelling a third of the city.

They find JaNice a few days later in an emergency shelter set up for the victims of the crash and she is surrounded by a group of mid-tier aristocrats who worship her as their new queen. And a puppy.

Epic success! ... ?

With love,
Christopher.

My Year Of Nerdery Catch-Up

This year, as readers (anyone? anyone there??) will know, I started playing Dungeons & Dragons with LDB,BL co-creater Chris Santee, who serves as my esteemed Dungeon Master. If memory serves me right, we started around January or February which makes it almost a year. But just because it has been a year, doesn't mean I am remotely close to being a Dungeon Master myself. I still never remember which die to roll for damage most of the time or which abilities my character has. Not for lack of interest, it's just simply a lot of stats and figures to remember and I am terrible at math. And memory. And props to DM Sitmo because those books are dense, there's no way I would ever be able to break all that stuff down and wrangle it into a cohesive game that 5 or 6 people can play at the same time. I of course started as a human ranger named Leoendrithas Droverson, an archer raised by elves. This was a whole new world for me, elves and dwarves and XP and hit dice...it was all foreign. Frankly, I wasn't nerdy enough to understand it at first. I mean, I've seen Lord Of The Rings once but I am no means a fantasy genre enthusiast and have never played table games beyond Monopoly and Candy Land. I've never played Skyrim or seen Game Of Thrones. That became evident when we tried to play a Star Wars role playing game, for which I had to be schooled in the basics of the Star Wars world, which drew the ire and laughs of my fellow gamers. Truth be told, I feel like a complete outsider in the D&D group but that's okay. The more the game goes on, the more I am immersed in the fantasy genre world, the more I learn the lingo and character archetypes, the more enjoyable it becomes.

Of course, the aforementioned Star Wars debacle continues to haunt me and I made an effort earlier this year to right that oversight. And I tried, I really tried. This summer, I made the effort, I had all three of the original trilogy in my possession but I just didn't make it. I'm sure it's a fine world that Lucas has created, I'm just not that interested in it. As I've said before, I think I needed to see it about 15 years ago, when it was the height of technological and special effects achievement, not to mention, the height of cool. Now, it just looks hokey, the world not sufficiently interesting enough for me. By now, there's too much in the canon for me to bother catching up with. When people catch wind of me not seeing Star Wars, they give me the same response as when they find out I don't drink. "WHAAAATT!!! I want to be there when you watch it for the first time." I of course don't want to watch it, just like I don't want to go out and get drunk, but it doesn't stop people from expressing the interest in wanting me to do so. As noted in previous posts here, my interests lie elsewhere but this year and from here on out, I hope to expand my nerdy oeuvre. My collection of comics is growing, I'm going to see The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug, and I've tried to limit the amount that I talk about football and Jason Statham among people whose eyes will glaze over when I do so. Gotta know your audience.

Every time a comic book movie comes out, I go to my friends to get the background on what I missed out on in decades of comics and movies. I'm slowly catching up, but every time a new character pops up in a Marvel film, I always require a primer to get the basics. I'm excited in theory about these four new series that Netflix and Marvel are collaborating on but I know absolutely nothing about any of those characters. I think Ben Affleck was Daredevil once upon a time but that's as much as I could tell you. After watching the new Thor film, I needed Chris to tell me what the deal was with The Collector and how he fits into the universe. And watching Marvel's Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. has opened a whole new round of questions about what it is they do and how they fit in. And apparently the new Superman film will be Batman versus Superman, which is a mystery to me because I thought Batman and Superman were allies. But again, I enjoy delving more into these worlds because I feel like I'm catching up on what I missed out on as a child, when I was doing who knows what instead. I just need time to catch up because right now I'm pretty busy with the NFL and NBA seasons.

Impermanence in the Face of Immortality

Do elves truly love all that lives or is that just a myth perpetuated by others, legend and lore, a false rumor on the table? Nothing is certain, but they do in a sense. It is true if you look into their eyes you can see a glimmer that'll tug on your heart, like starting into the eyes of an old flame. Love dead and buried beneath years of stacked dislike defensively built around the halcyon memories. Except elves don't fraternize, this love isn't personal. Not anymore, not this century.

All souls begin as elemental, ethereal beings with their highest physical form being elves. Elves aren't immortal, but for the other races they might as well be. Even the long lived Dwarves can't remember an instance of an elf dying of old age. Violent death is a different matter. Whenever an elf dies their soul is recycled into the birth pool of the lower races, and some is lost in the process. They believe all souls do this which might be true. When an elf kills it is to release the soul to try again at another life. They would tell you it isn't murder, and can be very snide about it honestly. Society isn't a fan of this.

Because of this connection across multiple incarnations of a soul whenever you lock eyes with an elf there's a 10% chance you've met before. Well, they've met you.

Roll d10 to find out how this elf knows you.

1. Former family member: Mother/father/brother/sister/cousin. You should hit them up for magical items. You were about to anyway.

2. Arch-enemy that would gladly see you die a thousand deaths. Except they're probably pretty busy right now. You've been gone a while now with the being dead and reborn as a lesser race and all. Where did those minions run off to? He'll have them kill you just wait right there.

3. Murderer: in a past life/lives this person killed you. You should ask why or just take revenge immediately, ya sociopath.

4. Lover: your soul-mate. Well one of them. That next Sex Point might be coming up real soon.

5. Adventuring comrade! Remember that time 3,489 years ago you slew that troll arch-mage with a broken arm, a dagger and a flock of bluejays? No? Well trust us, it was awesome. Immediately follows as Henchman.

6. You saved their life once, and now they owe you a favor. Make it good.

7. Rival! Can't resist a bet based on a competition between the two of you and they just happen to know where your mcguffin is, but if he beats you there he gets to keep it. This is when his crew shows up and they look equal to your party.

8. Business partner who's a little nervous about some old debts that hopefully you don't bring up and keeps patting the coin purse slung hidden under their shirt self consciously and looking at the door.

9. Drinking buddy that gave up the old haunts after you died and is now a traveling gourmand who can teach you hows to stretch your rations while also slightly improving their taste. Knows a ton about this location/region.

10. Roll Twice! And if you get family member/lover combo and don't want to roleplay some oedipal shit I understand. It'd be hilarious, but just re-roll I guess.

If you have any more leave a comment and we'll add it to the table.

Must succeed on an Intelligence Check or go insane with new influx of knowledge for 1d6 days. INT mod affects days spent insane.

Weekends blah, amiright?

Not really, I had my first weekend off in about 9 months last week and it was glorious. I felt so free enjoying two days off in a row with the rest of the world.

One of the bad things about weekends, besides the constantly having to work them part, is no one on my blogroll updates on them. Seriously guys, I'm bored at work, give me something new to read! There's always Longreads of course, but I generally don't have THAT much time. I'm constantly refreshing looking for a new random table or some new, otherworldly monster for D&D. Sure i could just write my own, but I'm far too lazy for that. All the bitching being said here's a new monster:

BOOK FIEND (great name right?)

This lesser fiend looks like a wizard's lost spellbook except this of course is a trap. The clever devil uses the disguise to feed on the wonder and possibility that race through the reader's mind. It's "pages" have an illusion cast upon them that reads as whatever the victim imagined to be inside the pages in the first place. Victims are stuck in this trance until broken bu outside contact or until they die of hunger.
Barbarians and other characters with less than 8 Intelligence don't fall for the illusion and see the fiend as just a mundane book. If a player comes upon the fiend feeding on another being they can make a WIS/INT check to discern its real nature.

Magic Users could possibly command the fiend to tap into the memories and lives by making a Save vs. Magic at -2. Success means gaining a random spell of level 1d6 (stronger wizards don't fuck with the monster and thus won't lose any spells). Failure means losing a random prepared spell with another Save vs. Magic to see if that spell is burned out of their memory and unusable forever.

Any further attempts at domination must be made at a cumulative extra -2. If all spells are burned out of the character's mind then they can never cast again and go insane at the trauma of losing their connection to ultimate power.

Mondays are for Chaos

So I run two groups of D&D and my group that meets on Monday officially became bad people about two sessions ago. When they created their characters, the Lawful/Chaotic distinction kind of put them off. Not wanting to pigeonhole themselves, they all chose Neutral. This is understandable to me, but after a couple of months of murder and mayhem it's time to call it. They've gone to the dark side. Here, I'll give a brief run-down of the events that lead up to this decision:

• They met outside a burning inn and immediately decapitated and placed the heads on spikes of the kobolds who burned said inn.
• Robbed the wizard's house in the first town they visited, fled into forest.
• 3 die in forest, remaining two duel over belongings of everyone. Halfling leaves victorious and loot laden.
• Group meets back up in town after some hand waving resurrection that the Halfling is still pissed about, group murders more kobolds, revenge cited as reason.
• Halfling strangles street tough in broad daylight.
• Group flees murder charge across ocean, gets involved in Thieves Guild and starts race riots (against kobolds). 3 days of fire and carnage follow.
• After things die down they pull off massive heist of a bank and become rich as fuck.
• Group tries hand at dungeoneering, sacrifice all of their henchman, Halfling almost becomes wereboar.
• Group flees across ocean again.
• They meet tribal peoples, don't immediately kill them, but instead argue for 30 minutes over creating a slave trade.
• Raid on Imperial outpost 1 goes off way too easily, group super confident. Sends heads and testicles back to the mainland.
• Raid second outpost with help of druid/panthers. These troops have done nothing to them, just happen to be from same country where the Halfling is wanted for murder.
• Ambushed at third outpost, 45 minute argument about creating slave trade again.

Anyway I think this is enough. They now have at least 3 factions that could feasibly be hunting them. I'll give them one thing, they make my job easy.

Brie Larson's Feet

Working at a movie theater you might be surprised to learn I get into a lot of conversations about movies. These conversations inevitably lead to arguments about who was in what movie or who directed which trilogy or whatever. When this happens I immediately go to the internet to resolve the argument because I am determined to prove to everyone involved that I am right. I am rarely right. In one of these conversations the actress Brie Larson was brought up and I can honestly tell you I still have no idea what she looks like. I had to search for her to find out who she was, and I think she was in Scott Pilgrim and possibly played Ruxin's au pair in The League. Now to the title, whenever I search an actress' name within the top search suggestions is the option for "[Actress' name]'s feet."  I find this hilarious, but a little disappointed because part of me knows it's probably for normal, sexual reasons. I like to dream that maybe it's just some large group of aficionados of shoes or the platonic aesthetics of feet.

Whatever reason here's an RPG table:

What's Up With That Foot Cult?  (Roll d6)

1. Guild of Cordwainers who are searching for the perfect pair of feet to adorn with their prized relic and leadership to bring about the return of personal luxury leather shoes.
2. Minor politicians and upwardly mobile middle class leaders operating a not so secret foot fetish club rotating nightly between each other's houses and you just found the invitation with tonight's address.
3. An Elk's lodge type thing. The foot fetish as mascot was a joke proposed long ago and now it has taken on a ceremonial significance most serious.
4. A group of misguided architects looking for inspiration in all the wrong places - notably by kidnapping young people and cutting off their feet to trace the arches.
5. Halfling worshiping hippies who drink and smoke all day while proselytizing the joys of bare feet.
6. A mad wizard who is searching the world for the latest incarnation of the Traveler or similar god whom he believes can only be found by studying the dirt gathered in toenails. (Bonus points if you decide to use The Traveler from TNG, the weirdo.)

Fun Fact: Brie Larson's Feet was almost the title of this entire blog, but we decided that wasn't a great long term name.

Last Week in D&D: Everyone Died!

So this is where I feel kind of bad. As a DM I feel like a bit of a failure in having a total party wipe happen on my watch, but I've made a point recently in avoiding telling people what they should and shouldn't do.
You want to bribe that mercenary working for your enemy to help you sneak into the main stronghold? Sure sounds great.
You want to unlock the main gate so your side's army can get in easily? This city is a major trade hub so it's already unlocked.
You want to sneak into the city fort next to the castle - the two places guaranteed to run into major NPCs I've created - and ingratiate yourself with their army? Excellent! I love this plan! Maybe I'll get to trot out some of my precious plot and background stories!
You brought the barrel of gunpowder? Uh...okay. Well that enemy merc is about to betray you so that will come on handy!
Distract the enemy with bats! Awesome they're flying around now the black knight ... You roll the gunpowder towards him? Uh okay you're inside so - you shoot it? Let me look something up real quick. (This is where I start laughing uncontrollably). The explosion kills 10 enemies and 3 heroes outright.
Raise your hand if you're dead. Okay everyone living you have limb damage in... (Rollrollroll) missing left arm, right arm at the wrist and your chest is crushed.
At this point it's all downhill as the injured heroes tried to drag the dead heroes back to their airship and ran into multiple fights. Black Knight was demon spawn and he cuts them off, but is slain by the mysterious weapon known as Goblin Bane. But not soon enough and more soldiers arrive to cut down the final fleeing heroes. RIP.
Know that your noble sacrifice helped the elves end the oppression of the Republic. Let's take a moment to mourn for the citizens of the goblin city you burned to the ground, the tree stump town Dragoncrest that was wiped out by the Tytans, and the town of Ayonae overrun by the undead horde you released when escaping the tower.
Maybe I don't feel that bad after all.

What's With The Undead?

I've been running a weekly game of Dungeons and Dragons for some months now and lately I've been thinking about the undead monsters in the game. I'm no particular fan of the undead myself. I think zombies are boring, Walking Dead the book should've ended at the prison, and the show should never have been made. This is a particularly hard line for someone who consistently throws undead monsters at his players, and it troubled me until recently.

Last session I ran Death Frost Doom for my group and after particularly disastrous run in with the fungal spores inhabiting a certain object early in the dungeon they seemed to handle it pretty well. Too well if you ask me, but hey they're not out of the woods yet. Literally, they're still in the woods I put on the mountain that holds the entrance. With the undead horde marching slowly towards town. Will they stand and fight to save the town? Probably not, they tend to leave destroyed towns in their wake.

The vampire character in DFD and the ghouls empire in Midgard are strong and compelling undead examples that redeem the undead for me. Because let's face it the undead, in spite of or because of their recent upsurge in popularity haven't been the same since Buffy. Undead are abominations, crimes against nature. And you couple that with "Heart of Gold" archetype? Please.

All that being said, undead are easy villains. They're so two dimensional that no one cares if they get destroyed, much less how they came to be. This is boring to me and I want to change this. Weiss and Hickman had a fun sort of zombie in the Death Gate Cycle that could only be raised through the death of another in the species, and I might play with that. Especially since one of my players is now playing a Necromancer just seems right that way. Maybe it's like the Dark Sun mechanic for magic on a more tragic scale. A soul for a soul.