Dire Elf's page

As much as I try to shut out the world sometimes, some songs will pierce that veil and makes me react to it in some way. "Danny Boy" and "Hallelujah" will rip my heart right out, and if you've not heard "Hallelujah" by a singer called Puddles the Pity Party Clown, I urge you to go to Youtube and find it (but when you're alone, of course. That song will just get right inside you). He is an amazing singer and does some truly outstanding covers of both old and new songs.

Puddles is amazing. His has an incredible voice. I’ve seen him live twice and hugged him once. He’s also physically impressive - nearly 7 ft tall. He auditioned on one of the singing shows, whichever one Simon Cowell is on, but he didn’t make it. I think the clown schtick was too unusual for them. He does some fantastic pantomime comedy in his live shows too.

On the topic of songs that make me cry, I’d have to choose Souvenirs, or Hello In There, by John Prine.

My husband has had some serious health issues over the past couple of years, to the point that I was afraid he’d become bedridden and we’d lose what little social life we have when we’re not on pandemic distancing. But his doctor had suggested a temporary stay in a skilled nursing care facility to try to get a handle on his problems, and he decided to take the initiative and do that. He spent a week there and with the targeted treatment he made great improvement. Unfortunately he had a bit of a setback the day before he was scheduled to be released and landed in the hospital instead. He’s home now, though, and we’re experiencing what it’s like to be hospitalized but not in the hospital - paramedics or nurses come to the house thrice a day to take his vitals and administer IV meds, and we have a dedicated phone and iPad for a nursing contact center. He lost some of his progress, but I think he’ll be able to recover it in time, and he’s still much better than he was a month ago. I’m so lucky I have a job that provides good healthcare benefits.
But it sure is cutting into our gaming. He can’t play when we’ll be interrupted for an hour by the medical treatments.

I confess that I love playing wizards, but I’m pretty poor at playing that class. I can never seem to choose the right spells for the situation, I can’t make up my mind which spell to cast, I get analysis paralysis. Then when my spells fail (or more likely the other characters or enemies move in / out of range and ruin my plan) I get frustrated.

I also confess that I get whiny when my character gets knocked out or mind controlled.

The things that bother me the most are less game and more player things.

If you say you are going to show up then you should show up.

It seems to be popular now to commit to a session and then not bother to show up, let anyone know you will not be coming, etc.

If this was a rare event, it would be one thing, but it seems to be pervasive.

As a GM, if you are willing to put many hours into prep then the least the players can do is make realistic predictions about their attendance.

I read an article a while ago about how some people have become much less willing to commit exclusively to a single social activity these days because there’s a perception that they might miss out on something. The article related it to other social phenomena of the smartphone/instant information/flash mob/popup event era we live in.

This doesn’t excuse that type of behavior, but I think it’s also related to how no one ever has enough time to do all the things we want or need to do. I can game, or see my friend who’s only in from out of town for two days, or do laundry, or go to the gym, or spend time with my kids.... Which ones do I give up? And while gaming has become more acceptable and mainstream I think there’s still a perception among some players that it’s not that important, or a misunderstanding of its importance to the other members of the group. It’s part of the social compact that should probably be discussed with the group along with play styles and table etiquette.

Last week’s Kingmaker session was kingdom-building bookkeeping. Our budding nation experienced a plague and two monster attacks from the event cards.

Player: “Where’s the event for ‘Won a beauty contest, economy improves by 2’?”

I’ve spent far too much time in Hero Forge making new characters. I backed the Kickstarter and coloring my characters is just way too much fun.

Some dude adventures with you for four levels and doesn't understand why you call him a 'Paladin,' since he's *clearly* a Crusader... Similarly, the 'Priest' of Desna has no use for the term 'Cleric.' There's no need for the out-of-game class nomenclature to be ubiquitous in-game, and it can certainly vary by culture or religion.

I’m playing a paladin for the first time ever in my 25+ years of gaming, and I’m trying hard to avoid referring to her as a paladin in-game. She is a warrior n the service of Sarenrae. I could envision using paladin as a title if she belonged to an organization, but I see her more as having been inspired by an experience to dedicate herself to this path, not as a member of any organized group of people with similar abilities. She’s also an aasimar and I’m resisting referencing that in-game, too. Her parents are elves, she was raised among elves, she looks like an elf. She sees herself as an elf.

Found a couple of old ones.

GM: “This is a normal mummy stuffed with linen and herbs and spices. And chicken.”
Player: “I can detect at least six spices. Maybe seven.”
#kfcmummy

One character is affected by a curse compelling him to drink some enchanted water.
GM (whispering): “Drink the water. Drink Sprite. Be yourself.”

The party found a jar of alchemical preservation, which we kept referring to as alchemical preserves.
Player: “Made by the great alchemist Smucker.”

Another session of our Kingmaker campaign:

The inquisitor is feeling a bit out of her element in the wilderness.
Inquisitor’s player: “[Inquisitor] is losing her mind. She needs to go back to society.”
Half-orc: “We need to build her a society.”
Wizard: “So what is this, your therapy kingdom?”

New adventure path - plan is for the slayer to become party leader but it’s only session 2. Party have gone to deal with some bandits at the bandits’ campsite. The wizard is using ‘message’ with two party members.

Wizard whispers: “They found a bandit camp.”
Slayer: “This one time, at bandit camp...”
Wizard whispers: “You’re not allowed to be leader anymore.”

The party enter a chamber to face the BBEG, who is a mummy.
GM: “A trumpet fanfare greets you.” Plays ‘sad trombone’ sound file from his phone.
Later, after the party have destroyed a golem minion protecting the mummy:
GM: “The pharaoh is angry that you defeated his golem.” Plays ‘sad trombone’ again.

From a Star Wars campaign:

Jedi is currently in a bacta tank while the other characters are under attack nearby.
Jedi player: Waves hand, signifying he’s using a Force power. “That guy misses.”
GM: “He’s outside the range of that power.”
Player: Gets up and walks across the room to where the GM is sitting, them waves his hand again. “That guy misses.”

The party is in a long hall. The investigator looks toward the far end.
GM: “Make a Perception check.”
Investigator: “ 54.”
GM: “You can see a field mouse all the way down there taking a poop.”

The host’s cat jumps on the back of the GM’s chair and starts vigorously rubbing her head against the back of the GM’s head.
GM: “It’s hard to be evil wihen this is happening.”

Things are going badly. Many of the party members have been strength drained by shadows, and the warpriest has been possessed by a demon and is attacking her friends. Suddenly one of the hosts brings in a cat and hands her to the GM.
Host: “ I’ve brought in reinforcements.”

Secretive casting: The rule I use in my games is that casting a spell, under any circumstances, is treated exactly the same as drawing a sword: Always Obvious, Always Noticed, Always Treated As Hostile. And still my players ask if they can sneak in a cast while someone else is talking to the NPC.

What if the NPCs aren't familiar with spellcasting gestures? I suppose they could be like modern police, who may err on the side of caution by assuming that if you've got a roughly gun-shaped object in your hand that it's a gun. Assume that if the PCs are gesturing it's a threat, even if the NPCs don't know exactly what it is that they're doing.

But speaking of that, why do the NPCs always know about magic? I'm always disappointed to play a magic-user and every non-magic-user NPC seems to know not only that I'm casting a spell but what spell it is. I'd like to encounter some NPCs who are awed/frightened/intimidated by magic. See my earlier complaint about uniformity of spells too - if my character is of a different race or nationality, even another caster who knows that spell shouldn't necessarily recognize it the way I've learned to cast it. Maybe the way I pronounce the draconic syllables of the verbal components has a different accent they can't understand, or I don't use quite the same gestures.

As a side note, I do have a GM who gave me a homebrew feat so other characters who try to identify my elementalist wizard's spells get a small penalty because she's from an uncommon school. And just for fun flavor, all of her spells have her element incorporated into them somehow. Doesn't change the effect, just the appearance of the spell. I think that's a simple way to differentiate spells - maybe if you're a cleric of a good deity your light spell is warm and golden while the light spell of a necromancer gives off a purple light that makes everyone look gaunt and cadaverous. Still light, still affects the same area, just doesn't have the same cosmetic effect.

GM: "What supplies do you want the quartermaster to look for?"
Investigator: "I need some more alchemical grease."
GM: "What are you using it for?"
Shaman: "Saturday nights."

Last night during a sci-fi game, the PCs were in a forest where they were attacked by a creature the GM described as a snow leopard.
Player 1: “So it’s just a regular snow leopard? It doesn’t even have six legs or anything?”
GM: “Okay, It has six legs. Now it has two extra attacks.”
Player 2: “Keep it up, Player 1. Next it’ll have a bite attack at both ends.”

During today’s Pathfinder session:
The party encountered an unfriendly djinni.
Player 1: “Does the djinni like pina coladas?”
GM: “Yes, she does.”
Player 2: “She is evil, then!”

After the djinni was slain, discussion turned to the elaborate pectoral she was wearing. The party’s tengu monk has a reputation for wanting the gaudiest items; at one point he was wearing a crocodile mask, a fancy plumed hat, and a hand of glory amulet.
Monk: “Can I wear the pectoral until we get to someplace where we can sell it?”
GM: “It would be like a breastplate on you.”
Bloodrager: “Is it a big clock?”
GM: “Yes. It has a big gold chain.”
Monk: “I’m not wearing that!”
Druid: “It’s too tacky even for you.”
Shaman: “You could be Flava Crow.”
Monk: “I am not Flava Crow!”

Later the party found a skeleton wearing a bright red cloak of the mountebank. At the time the druid was wild shaped as a large earth elemental. The other players suggested the druid should take the cloak.
GM: “I think the earth elemental wearing the cloak would be funny. It would look like a napkin on you.”
Druid: “A teleporting elemental would be funny.”
Monk: “A telemental!”

At the beginning of the session:

GM: “How’s the party doing for resources?”
Brawler: “Fists for days!”

A GM in our group is thinking of running an Eberron campaign in 5th edition. I kind of wish he'd run it in Pathfinder.

#GamerWorldProblems

GM: "I don't think you've been told why the temple was abandoned."
Player: "Their Yelp review score was 1.5."

The PCs have been forced to participate in a chariot race. All of the chariots are drawn by camels.
GM: "It's a clash of camels."
Player 1: "Clash of Camels, the new novel from George RR Martin!"
Player 2: "Is that from 'A Tale of Sand and Spit'?"

GM: "We haven't played the adventure path for a while. Let's start from the beginning."
Tengu: "I remember pecking my way out of the egg."
GM: "Here, let me show you in interpretive dance!"

One of our group's running gags is when a character is flying, we ask what style of flight - Superman or Dark City. Recently we added a 3rd option - Wonder Woman.
Player 1's PC starts to fly.
Player 2: "Are you flying Superman, Dark City, or Wonder Woman?"
Player 1: "Greatest American Hero."

Not during a game session, but...
My husband and I are discussing new abilities for our Pathfinder PCs.
Husband, reading from a source book: "Inspire Minions."
Me: "I'm not your minion, you're all my minions! Elf, older and smarter than everyone else, duh!"

I like to collect minis. While looking at Dark Sword Miniatures' 'Critter Kingdom' line of anthropomorphic animals, I thought, why not a campaign about a group of anthropomorphic animal adventurers? Perhaps they've been cursed or the victims of a magical accident, or maybe they come from another plane or country where anthropomorphic animals are the norm.

I like the idea that they're cursed. Then they have to persuade people to recognize them and take them seriously.

But I also like the idea of them coming from someplace where they're the norm, like a magical fantasy version of Zootopia, and then ending up in a traditional fantasy setting surrounded by humanoids.

PLAYER to GM: "Wait, the villain's doing something else? It's my turn to do something else!"
GM: "Nope, nope, nope. He's a villain. They get seven standard actions."

The player-characters have slain three efreeti.
PLAYER 1: "We're just churning out some efreet sausage over here. It's spicy hot!"
PLAYER 2: "Efreet meat! Get your efreet meat here!"

PLAYER rolls a Knowledge (Arcana) check to find out about a desert drake's abilities. After asking a couple of ordinary questions...
PLAYER: "What was his college major?"
GM: "Draconic Arts."

A monster speaks in Ignan.
PLAYER: "I'm ignanorant of that language."

The druid, wild-shaped as a falcon, blasts some enemies with a call lightning spell.
OTHER PLAYER: "That's some bird poop you don't wanna mess with."

More moldy oldies...

The same party that included Pakkin the goblin NPC also included a dwarf barbarian/fighter named Rock.

A monster had tried to swallow Rock.
PLAYER: "It can't attack now. It ate a Rock!"

Rock's player was absent so another player was running Rock.
PLAYER (rolls a 1 on a Will save): "I broke Rock's Will!"

CLERIC: "[Enemy] is between a Rock and a hard place."

ROCK'S PLAYER: "Can I have a resurRocktion?"

Rock falls down a flight of stairs due to a failed Dex save.
ROCK'S PLAYER: "It's a Rock tumbler!"

GM (to Rock): "The creature slams into you and rocks you back."
ROCK'S PLAYER: "Uh-huh, I Rock here."

FIGHTER: "He Rocked her world."
GM: "That staggers her."
PALADIN: "Does staggering provoke an attack of opportunity?"

ROCK'S PLAYER: "I'm going to stand at the edge of the room and hate people."
GM: "[Fighter], what are you doing?" (The fighter and Rock were best buds.)
FIGHTER: "I'm hanging with Rock, but I'm not hating."
ROCK'S PLAYER: "Rock's all about the hate."

Rock rages during combat.
CLERIC: "Sorry, Rock is in a rage right now, if you'd like to leave a message."

Just Saturday I was talking to the GM of one of our games and was reminded of a thing that bothers me:
Spells that are shared by more than one class, and spell descriptions that make it sound like everyone, everywhere casts that spell exactly the same way.

Seriously, in the real world people from the same backgrounds don't all make food the same way. So why would all races, classes, and nationalities cast spells the same way, or know the same standard list of spells?

I'm embarrassed that I can't remember anything specifically exciting or dumb that I did when I started roleplaying. It's been nearly 30 years, and I didn't get into tabletop RPGs until I was 35. I never went through the phase of playing with a bunch of teens or tweens, with a GM who barely knew the rules better than the players did. My first group was with a bunch of experienced players who had all been playing for at least a decade, and they walked me through the rules so I wouldn't make n00b mistakes.

But I do remember some fun stuff that happened to other players in that earliest campaign. My boyfriend (now husband) got me started, playing RuneQuest. For those not familiar with that system, RQ doesn't have classes or levels. My husband was playing a warrior type who had become a Runelord of the god Humakt - kind of like a paladin, but without the lawful good requirement (no alignment in RQ, either). One of the other players had imported a character from Palladium to RuneQuest and that character had pretty high rolls in combat too, similar to my husband's Runelord.

RQ also has something called 'divine intervention' where a PC can call on his deity to help him - any player can do it. You roll percentile dice, and if you get a certain percent (98-100 if I recall correctly) the god will intervene and give you a boost, but you may suffer a penalty afterward.

Anyway, we were involved in a difficult combat with some tough enemies, and the Runelord and the imported Palladium character both really really wanted to best their opponents. I think some of the other PCs might have been in trouble, with disabled limbs and near death, so the two powerhouse characters both called for divine intervention from their deities. Amazingly, both of them made successful rolls. Suddenly the Runelord managed to ride up to his opponent and split him like a trout (not easy to do in RQ - the game uses hit locations and hit points per body part, so he had to exceed the enemy NPC's total hit point value to kill him with one blow). The other character literally kicked her opponent's head off.

The GM described the event as being like a fireworks display with a heavenly choir singing as the two characters massacred the opposition. I think the rest of the PCs just stood there with their mouths hanging open.

It depends on the players and the GM. Typically my friends and I don't stay 100% in character through an entire session, because we're not there to be actors, we're there to play a game with friends. But we do try to keep in mind "what my character would do" based on the personality we imagine for that character. However, we have had players in our group who never think of their characters as separate individuals; their characters are just stats on a sheet of paper.

The GM also has to encourage that type of roleplaying; if the GM just pushes the PCs from one combat to the next, there probably isn't much opportunity for players to think about what their characters would do beyond choosing their next action.

I can only run original campaigns. I just can't run modules or adventure paths. I've never been able to do so with any sort of competence or confidence. Plus my players prefer homebrew campaigns. Using the PF rules we changed from our 3.5 setting (which dates back to 2e). There are some great sounding APs out there, but I don't run them. Another reason is I can't afford them.

I think it can really be a challenge to run a pre-written adventure. One of our GMs is heavily modifying an AP to better fit the style and characters of our group. That puts a lot of pressure on him to figure out what to modify and what to leave alone, and how to adapt the AP details to fit the characters and relationships we've created. But another GM is just running the AP as-is, so it really feels railroad-y and our characters don't get much time to interact with each other while they're so busy following the tracks from one combat encounter to the next.

Some of the APs aren't terribly well organized, either, so if you're not good at juggling a lot of balls it seems like it would be really difficult. Having to go look up monster stats in a bestiary, or finding that the stat block for an NPC is only included in book 1 but the NPC shows up again in book 4 can be frustrating.

I miss my variety. It feels like my current group overall only has d20 as their comfort zone. I've in the past ran games, campaigns, and one shots for more then a dozen other systems and settings. Le Sigh.

Hero System
Earthdawn
Shadowrun
Mechwarrior
Eclipse Phase
Powers and Perils

/sniff.

It's definitely better then no game however, and at least they are good people.

Right there with you. I miss original campaigns, too. We used to do RuneQuest, Warhammer FRP, Champions, Fantasy Hero, GURPS, Savage Worlds, D&D 3.5... And almost all of them were original campaigns, not modules.

Now we play Pathfinder exclusively, and it's all Adventure Paths. It's still fun, but not the same level of fun as when we were trying out all kinds of rules and all-original stories.

DungeonmasterCal wrote:

I've had to cancel more than one game due to my innards fomenting rebellion against the rest of my body.

Sadly, I've found that as I've gotten older, my once Cast-Iron stomach has rusted.

The things they don't tell you about getting old. It's not just wrinkles, gray hair, and arthritis.

I'm not the GM, but I am the note-taker in our group. I write pretty extensive notes and then type them up later as campaign journals that I post on my personal blog.

Our group's GMs generally open every session by asking, "What happened last time?" Then all the players participate in a short (15 minute) recap of the previous session. That allows us to recall names of NPCs or places (or get them if we didn't get them during the previous session) and refresh our memories. If the GM forgets about something later on, we can remind him of it. I write the names of important NPCs on my character sheet, too. It's not the GM's job to remember everything.

Oops, hit Submit Post too soon.

The player whose PC is grappled by the penanngalen tries to speak to it despite having part of its anatomy down his throat.
GM: "It [the penanngalen] has dentist language skill, so it understands you."

Later, as the penanngalen flees by floating upward, the brawler tries to leap up at it and punch it but fails.
GM: "If you'd hit she [the penanngalen] could have grabbed you for snacks later. You'd be a human Capri Sun."
Other Player: "She brings her own straw."

From today's session:

As the party scale a giant beehive, the DRUID asks,
"Does it look like a honeycomb inside?"
GM: "Yeah yeah yeah."
SHAMAN: "It's not small?"
GM: "No no no."
(This one probably only makes sense to Americans who are over 40.)

After the part have been attacked by two shalkeshkas in the desert and have slain them both, they find that the desert hunters' pit nests contain some loot from previous victims.
PLAYER picks up one of the minis used to represent the shalkeshka and begins to shake it at the other mini, berating it.
"If someone would take out the trash, there wouldn't be all this loot here to attract adventurers!"

When I joined a Star Wars campaign about a year and a half ago, I bought a Star Wars dice bag.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought some Star Wars spiral notepads and a Star Wars pencil case. Because our current campaign is set 10 years after the previous one, I bought a new mini for my character, since she was a teenager during the first campaign and is a young adult now.

And to carry all my Star Wars stuff I bought a Star Wars drawstring backpack.

If someone made polyhedral dice sets with the Death Star or Darth Vader or an Imperial emblem as the one, I would buy some of those, too.

The party have stumbled upon a camp of gnoll slavers and their captives in the desert. The druid wild shapes into a large lioness and joins her animal companion, also a large lioness, heading toward the main group of slaves. The gnolls have hyenas as guard dogs. On seeing the lions, one of the hyenas suddenly decides it needs to be somewhere else.
SHAMAN: "Hyenas usually gang up on the weak. But those two lions aren't weak, and they're smart."
GM (in a mock upper-crust accent): "Why don't you go after one of those Harvard lions?"

The monk sneaks up for a closer look at the camp. He spots several gnolls, and a tent that appears to be occupied.
MONK: "It's [GM's] game, so there's probably some mega-gnolls in the tent. Five of them, and they'll combine to form a giant gnoll."
DRUID: "It's Gnoll-tron!"

The party found a roc's nest, but were taken by surprise when the roc returned and attacked them to defend her egg. Unfortunately they ended up killing her. The fatal blow was a fire breath attack from the monk.
SHAMAN: "We need a huge roc pot to cook this thing."

The party members decide not to destroy the roc egg or sell it. The shaman uses 'lesser planar ally' to summon a janni to take it to Elysium to be hatched and then set free.
GM: "Would you like to name it?"
TENGU MONK: "Flappy."
Long stare from the other players.
DRUID: "We're never letting you name anything ever again."
TENGU MONK: "What? It was my mother's name!"

Finally, the party faces off against a creature with the torso and head of a humanoid woman but the body and claws of a scorpion.
GM: "The woman says something in her weird scorpion language..."
BLOODRAGER (pretending to speak for the scorpion-woman): " 'Roll for initiative' ."

GM (after forgetting a detail in his description of some enemies): "The clockwork constructs have halberds, too."

Player: "So they're halborgs?"

On Sunday my GM threatened to ban tablets from the table because I had become obsessed with looking at character images on Pinterest with my iPad.
(shame face)

Owl bear in Kingmaker, also Munguk the hill giant (he rode the owl bear!)

Oh yeah! We befriended Munguk in our Kingmaker, but we've never freed him from whatever holds him to the fort where we found him. We also befriended a black dragon, and our fighter keeps trying to make friends with all the fey, even the evil ones.

I have a basic idea of where I want to take a character in advance, with the progression planned, but I am open to change my previous plans based on how the character develops during the adventure and what best fits the story once it is being played.

That's kind of how I work, too, but I like to have a few options pre-selected so I don't have to spend hours poring over rulebooks.

In a D&D3.5 game, the GM gave my wizard a sentient, ambulatory book that could convey messages from her mother (also a wizard) to her. It couldn't speak since it didn't have a mouth, but it could write messages on its pages. It couldn't do anything harmful to anyone aside from kicking them in the shins, but it was a handy way for the GM to give the PCs information, and he imbued it with a lot of personality.

In another 3.5 game early on, the PCs had to go fight some kobolds. The beguiler ended up charming a kobold into staying with the party, and the paladin eventually took the kobold under his wing and converted him to good. We nicknamed him "The Finisher" because he was usually the one who executed the final fatal blow on any monsters we fought.

In one of our current Pathfinder APs, the shaman's spirit animal is a monkey, who is actually the spirit of one of his ancestors so the PC addresses the monkey as "Uncle." The monkey has more HP than my wizard and keeps 'borrowing' her 1st-level wand of magic missile to use it himself.

I've described some of my 'embarrassing' personal habits before, but here's an update:

A couple of months ago I bought a light-weight drawstring backpack just for carrying my gaming stuff. It's got a Celtic dragon printed on the outside.

Inside said backpack is my character binder for the current campaign; several bags of dice; a Q Workshop dice-rolling cup (the Elvish one, because I'm playing an elf); a case of miniatures with various spell-effect and monster minis; a miniature wooden dice-rolling tray my spouse bought for me (it can only hold really hold one or two dice at a time - he misread the measurements); a pencil case full of pens, highlighters, sticky notes/tabs, index cards, and printed Simply Spells spell cards; and a plush toy white cat to remind me not to forget my wizard's familiar.

The spell cards have become a thing in and of themselves. My wizard is an elementalist, specialty the wood element, so she gets some druid spells added to her spell list. She also gets an extra slot per level which she can only use to prepare specific spells, a bit like a cleric's domain spells. I took an arcane discovery that gives her additional benefits for spells that are on both the druid and wizard lists. I've written those extra bonuses on the spell cards. To identify the spells that are for the extra slot, I've marked them with green highlighter. I keep forgetting to print off the druid spell cards, so when she gets a new druid spell added to her spellbook I just hand-write it on a bright green index card. And now I'm trying to figure out how to identify spells that have been prepared with metamagic feats by attaching small sticky tabs to them.

I think I'm more organized in my gaming than I am in any other facet of my life.

I mean, the campaign starts with the PCs at the height of their power and ends with them at 1st level. And yet that would seem a logical, desirable progression, NOT a negative thing.

The tricky bit is finding a way to redefine "progress" and "success" so that they don't mean "going up in level" and "getting more stuff."

It's a subtle idea. Probably too subtle to actually work. The more I try to explain it, the more confusing it sounds, which is usually a good clue that I'm heading in the wrong direction.

Maybe they are great heroes who have been granted god-like powers, but they have to take on a task that either ages them significantly or causes them to deplete their finite abilities. In the end they might return to ordinary lives, or perhaps they pass on/ascend/reincarnate as a reward for their labors.

I'm the opposite of a killer GM.

I want my PCs to win.

As a GM, I regularly fudge rolls... but exclusively in the PCs' favor.

Unless the player does something actively stupid, or a PC death would be dramatically perfect in the narrative, I am extremnely reluctant to kill a PC... and pretty much don't.

You sound like my kind of GM.

The GMs I play with are pretty much all reluctant to kill PCs. We're usually involved in a campaign in which it would be very difficult or awkward to introduce a new character if someone suffered perma-death, and in addition we all tend to be very attached to our characters and would react emotionally to the loss. So the GMs nerf monsters sometimes, and fudge rolls sometimes, and we have a house rule that if someone can get to a dying PC with any cure potion/spell within the same round that the PC technically died then they can be saved, because the soul hasn't yet left the body even if the body has stopped breathing. One GM rules that a character saved from death in this way is exhausted for the next 24 hours and fatigued after that unless someone uses a lesser restoration spell on the near-death PC, so it isn't without impact - the PC doesn't just hop back up again and rejoin the combat. That same GM rules that critical wounds and especially wounds that nearly cause death also leave a noticeable scar.

That house rule not only allows us to keep playing the characters we love, it makes us watch out for each other and act more cohesively to keep each other safe because our characters don't feel disposable to us.

I'm the oldest consistent player in our group. We used to have one player who was older than me but he dropped out several years ago. There's an intermittent player who's slightly older than I am. The group has been playing together for over 20 years. I've watched some of the other players get married, get divorced, get married again. I got married myself. We all have more gray hair (or less hair) than we did when I first met them. People have changed jobs and homes. One player might be moving to another state and playing by Skype. But I hope we can all keep playing until we lose all intellectual capacity. I'd happily keep playing in an assisted living center.

Introduction

I previously posted a journal about another Star Wars campaign that concluded a few months ago: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2tq2t?Star-Wars-A-New-Hope-Revisited

We've now begun a new campaign, set 10 years after the previous one. One character from the previous campaign, the Jedi padawan Taanar Ryl, is returning. The other three characters are new. The remaining player-characters from the prior campaign will appear occasionally as NPCs.

It's 10 years since Emperor Palpatine died. In the aftermath, Darth Vader resumed his identity as Anakin Skywalker and assumed the throne as the new Emperor. His son Luke became Crown Prince. A New Republic formed, but many planets refused to join either the Empire or the Republic, instead falling under the control of local warlords. But I'll let the opening crawl tell the rest of the story.

Today, during Pathfinder:
Our shaman has a monkey as his spirit animal. It sometimes smokes a pipe. It also likes to pilfer things.
Shaman: "My monkey is probably smoking his pipe and looking up at the stars."
GM: "People walk by and say, 'Hey, that monkey is smoking a pipe!'"
Shaman: "Some people say, 'That pipe is nicer than mine.' Except for one guy - 'Hey, that's my pipe!'"

This idea came to me last night after watching a Cinefix video on YouTube about a 1979 Russian film by famed director Andrei Tarkovsky. The film, Stalker, is about a mysterious room that grants wishes. To reach it people must pass through a zone where the laws of physics don't apply. Being Russian and by Tarkovsky, the movie is about much more than that, but it occurred to me that one could possibly build a campaign or part of a campaign around finding the wish-granting room.

Suppose the room is located in an ancient ruin on an island that only appears once every 100 years or longer, or perhaps it appears randomly. The location of the island is only roughly known because it only remains accessible for a short time and no one has been able to make an accurate map. Then add in some time during which knowledge of the island is lost or garbled, or perhaps it's been a closely guarded secret .

The PCs could find an old document about the island, or perhaps they're hired by someone who has such a document. Perhaps an artifact is also necessary to reach the island or access the room. The island itself is fraught with obstacles. And the campaign doesn't have to end with finding the room and being granted wishes, because we all know what happens when you make a wish.

One of our gaming groups is planning a sequel to a recently concluded Star Wars campaign. We were supposed to have a character creation session two weeks ago, but my spouse and I got the date wrong. This week the GM sent a reminder for the rescheduled session. I responded that we would definitely not forget the date this time.

GM: "You'd better not or you'll be playing an Ewok and a Gungan."

I have always wanted to write some really good stories I have played in a serious way (not like the kind of stories I write on the messageboards) but I am actually not a very good writer and I am too much of a perfectionist too. So everytime I try to get at it I write one or two chapters before I get pissed off and drop everything.

Converting game sessions into fiction is HARD! I completely understand about getting frustrated.

I have a lot of friends who are published fiction writers. One thing I have learned from my author friends is that all writers are perfectionists. I've also learned that you have to just keep writing and STOP going back to re-read what you wrote before. Write the draft first, do the revisions when the draft is done. Otherwise you'll never finish. Also, don't give up, no matter how frustrated you get.

I absolutely love the 3.5 warlock, I've played several, mostly multiclassing with cleric or wizard to go into Eldritch Adept or Eldritch Theurge... I so wish I had an occasion to play a straight warlock.

and I find your assay of the 5e warlock rather peculiar... I play one and his bond is "I want to get my soul back"... he's even been traded from Graz'zt to a devil called Lilith (unless that was an arch succubus), and then, to his great displeasure, to Titania (meaning all his offensive spells were gone in favor of the much less interesting Fey pact spells and powers...he's even ready to lose his powers, but he wants his soul back, and you say that a warlock class based on pacts is not weird and creepy?

It's partly due to the homebrew setting we're using. But my warlock's patron is the Great Old One, and the GM has hinted as some Lovecraftian creepiness involved.

I like the idea but, that's a little too James Bond-ish for my table to keep serious faces.

My character is neutral good, so I've thus far been able to resist any impulse to stroke the plush cat and make sinister pronouncements about my plans to destroy Golarion.