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Finished up the first arc of my Age of Worms PF conversion. Usually we break the APs up into three arcs (2 books each) and switch back and forth between DMs. AoW seemed to more naturally fall into 4 arcs though since it is 12 (shorter) adventures.
Slight spoilers for AoW...
#1 - Book 1-3: Diamond Lake arc
#2 - Book 4-6: Free City and back to Diamond Lake arc
#3 - Book 7-9: Travel arc
#4 - Book 10-12: Rift and finale arc
Anyway! That means it's back to the very excellent "Return of the Runelords" game. Starting book 3 and enjoying the break to be a player again.
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BTW, in Strange Aeons my crazy elf bomberman Alchemist Doctor Ogol is back and alive, since we'd been playing the disease rules wrong ( and too harshly). Hopefully this time he'll stay around. I'll be cautious. We decided that muscular Half-Orc who was to be my replacement character was a collective fever dream the others had. ^^
Strange aeons...
I missed a certain roll by 1! One! In case you wonder what role, crit confirm with a dream vorpal scimitar on something you should be running away from.
From the inevitable drastic dreamland murdering that happened after he failed, my character picked up the custom psychosis of thinking he is actually a Balor who was somehow polymorphed into a human. I mean, he nearly vopal decapaciated a SPOILER REDACTED in the dreamlands, clearly, he must be more then human? Right? Right?
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Strange aeons...
I missed a certain roll by 1! One! In case you wonder what role, crit confirm with a dream vorpal scimitar on something you should be running away from.
** spoiler omitted ** Did not get turned into a laughing stock by getting boinked by a level 9 character.
From the inevitable drastic dreamland murdering that happened after he failed, my character picked up the custom psychosis of thinking he is actually a Balor who was somehow polymorphed into a human. I mean, he nearly vopal decapaciated a SPOILER REDACTED in the dreamlands, clearly, he must be more then human? Right? Right?
My wizard is catatonic!
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Night Below
Our heroes descend into the catacombs below the Ice Hive in search of Diamonds they need to resurrect the dead wizards they discovered.
Unfortunately the Armiger got pulped by an Ice Elemental fairly early and they retreated. Left with no other options they went to the Temple of the Insectoid Krik Where the Undead priests of their dead god offered the group a choice. they could attempt the difficult and expensive ritual that might return their friend to life or they could do the fair simpler (and cheaper) option of turning him into an undead. They discussed the options and realized the party Druid could cast Reincarnate on the dead wizards (because who cares if they don't come back in the same bodies).
They had the Undead priests cast a Raise dead on their friend, but as they did the Necromantic arm graft he has went berserk attacking everything around them. The Stonelord held the arm down long enough for the newly resurrected Armiger to get control of it.
After a day of recovering they returned to the Catacombs, battled numerous undead and returned to the Frozen city with a sizable amount of treasure and a crown of diamonds.
They set out now for the Deep Gnome Settlement to Reincarnate the dead wizards (who's bodies are being kept there under Gentle Repose spells)
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We did not play this time being that our game day would be on Easter.
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In our Kingmaker, the efforts to mine the moon for alchemical materials has been met with a minor setback in the form of a larval Cthulhu. But that has been dealt with and definitely can't foreshadow anything else like that ever happening again.
The manufacturing town that the materials go to has also grown to the size of Absalom, securing the kingdom's prominence on the world's stage. Now we wait for real First World problems to arise.
We played this Sunday.....the party got split up, so my Monk, the Druid, and the Shaman is group A and the Inquisitor, Arcanist, and his undead minions, and called dragon is group B. This won't end well.
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The Every Other Saturday gaming group I'm in convinced the GM of the WotR AP (we finished it 7 years ago) to run a one shot of our WotR characters to kill Deskari a second time before the one year of game time ran out.
Ideally, this was supposed to be a fun thing to tie up that one loose end so we could finally put all the WotR plots and such behind us.
We were expecting this one shot to be fun, tough, and we were also expecting to win.
After all, according to Paizo, they assumed the PCs would take care of Deskari once and for all so he's dead dead.
Instead, the GM turned this cool little adventure into a Pathfinder Demon Lord "What if I (the GM) did this or that instead?" combat simulator where he made it impossible for us to win.
We defeated Deskari after a tough fight the first time 7 years ago, but the GM went way out of his way to make sure we wouldn't defeat Deskari again. Get this, after several preliminary big mythic demon fights, we get to Deskari's area and he's got to guys there to help him. One was his Mythic Anti-Paldin champion (that's fine, at least he's a Deskari worshiper) and the other guy is Deskari's "high priest" - a Mythic Worm that Walks Oracle with the Succor Mystery. Say what??? It's bad enough that the GM made an Oracle worship a Demon Lord (which they're not supposed to if you look at the Demon Lords entry on the D20PFSRD but he also gives him the Wall of Suppression spell that he also set up so we'd HAVE to go through it (we tried to TP to the other side but Deskari had a Dimensional Lock that re-directed or TP into a pit of lava that we then had to TP to the original side of the Wall of Suppression which FORCED us to go through the wall and lose all our magic spells and stuff). Seriously? An Oracle with the one mystery that could use divine healing on Deskari that also just happened to have the one spell that would totally reduce our chances of winning by well over half? And for what?
He wasn't going to use Deskari again as we've been playing a bunch of other APs since then, and not once had he even hinted we'd ever see him again or even go back to Sarkoris and adventure there again.
In short there was NO REASON for him to thwart our tying up this one last little loose end.
The better story was for us to finish off Deskari and be secure in the knowledge that Sarkoris would eventually recover what it used to be and live happily ever after.
Instead, the GM proved he was able to make a Demon Lord invincible and essentially what we accomplished over a 1.5 year amount of RL time was rendered meaningless as now Deskari can conceivably come back and re-open the Worldwound...a decidedly WAY worse story.
Ugh.
Added a mini-adventure to book 5 of Jade Regent after reading about this guy: Jakabu
The party thought they were attending a traditional spiritual ritual and were surprised when a Kaiju showed up. And then the ritual was sabotaged by the hopping vampire bad guy set up in the Eastern Journey Adventures/Road to Destiny plugin...
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Wall of surpression is typically subvertible by moving around it
No kidding.
The GM set it up so that it was essentially impossible to do. We even tried to use the stone shape spell to start "digging" through the side walls, the "ground" and the "ceiling" to go around, under, or over the wall of suppression but it would have taken way too long to do. If we kept insisting on going around it (over it, under it, whatever), Deskari and his "friends" would have kept using the extra time to call more and more allies into the area we had to get to to deal with them.
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I'm sure he figured some way to prevent it from just being dispelled or disjunctioned too.
So no one (there were only 4 PCs) had Mage's Disjunction. Of course, the GM knew that. But we did have two castings of Greater Dispel Magic. Both were cast one round after another and, conveniently, neither roll was enough to overcome the caster's Caster Level.
Why were you playing with this GM again?
I know, right?
It's kinda complicated.
21 years ago, the GM's wife (I'll call her Ann) introduced me to the woman who became my wife. Even though we moved 2,000 miles away some 13 years ago, we still keep in touch by playing PF every other Saturday night.
It would feel weird to just completely stop playing with them.
When Ann is the GM, the sessions are generally more relaxed and my wife and I usually have a better time playing with them.
And to be fair, when Ann's husband (I'll call him Steve) runs the game, he's not NEARLY as much of a hard ass about trying to kill us. In fact, most of the time when Steve runs, we're almost never seriously challenged as a party. He almost goes out of his way NOT to kill us.
That certainly wasn't the case this time, though.
I've been thinking about just not playing whenever he runs. This means my wife probably won't play because that means she'll have to run the technology. She doesn't want to do that.
If I take this step, I think there's a distinct possibility our friendship with them will be over and I don't want that.
But, to be perfectly honest, my trust in Steve as a GM feels like it's broken and I'm not sure it can be repaired.
I tried to talk the rest of our group in trying the scenario again and I gave some BS excuse about how I messed up playing my Paladin so it would give Steve some cover if he felt like HE messed up (without having to say so) and could do it again but with a different result. But no, he emailed me back and made it crystal clear another time would be even harder, or, in this case, more impossible.
I just replied to the whole group to forget about it.
Honestly, I wish I never asked Steve to run the "Finishing Off Deskari" scenario in the first place.
It really has left an awful taste in my mouth and pretty much ruined the story I was considering telling in a novella I started to write. Yes, I told Steve I was writing such a story way back when I first brought up the subject, and that it was telling the story of Sarkoris AFTER the death of Deskari.
I feel like I was stabbed in the back is what I guess it all comes down to.
Sorry for all the TMI, but I just had to get all that out.
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it sounds like you had very concrete expectations whereas your GM had a different idea for an outcome or a specific way to win... Did he agree that the party should kill deskari in a martial victory? Somehow I think he hedged and did not say that. So I think your anger comes from that.
I would not let unmet expectations in a game ruin a personal relationship.
I emailed the GM at the end of September of last year and it was clear I was expecting to tie up this loose end. I also made it clear the story was what happens in Sarkoris AFTER Deskari is killed permanently.
While I didn't explicitly say, "Steve, I'm expecting a win for the party", it was pretty clear that that's how I wanted that campaign to finally end.
There are many types of victories and a martial one is the simple. I also think your GM fudged a bit but I wasn't there..
No doubt.
BTW RPG sessions make for terrible books. So write your fiction as you think is required to craft a good story.
The opening page or two of the novella would have started with the final blow from the Deskari fight. The rest of the novella would have been about stuff that never took place at the gaming table. Things like restoring the Wounded Lands in Sarkoris, rescuing Eliandra at Pulura's Fall, and in the FAR future (like 75 or 80 years), an attempt by Pazuzu to re-open the Worldwound to A) finish what Deskari started on Golarion and, B) get revenge on the Paladin who killed his "son."
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Be aware that you have Real IP issues with a trademarked setting.
That's what Pathfinder Infinite is for.
Don't have to worry about copyright if I publish my novella there. The only catch is Paizo gets 50% of whatever I sell.
I'm not really trying to make a boatload of money there. I'd just be trying to establish my reputation as a writer.
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I like the idea of putting my current AP into a novella. I wonder if Paizo has ORC rules pertaining to individuals writing and sharing these fan fics.
We have also danced with GMs like yours Arkat and when they decide it’s their story alone, we wish them well and pick up the story another time with another GM. Maybe your novella just needs another chapter added to make the ending right.
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We have also danced with GMs like yours Arkat and when they decide it’s their story alone, we wish them well and pick up the story another time with another GM. Maybe your novella just needs another chapter added to make the ending right.
I’m pretty sure you’ve got the right idea because I contacted a great GM I know and asked him to re-run the ending but he said he doesn’t want to do it because he hasn’t played in or run WotR before and doesn’t want the ending spoiled. I told him I understood. We have been friends for over 40 years, so I’m just going to let that drop and try to find someone else willing to run it who also is an adherent of the “rule of cool.”
Thanks, man.
Our DM will be out of town for a while.
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Coinciding with the siege of Pitax, its king was caught unaware by four newly hired guards who, reportedly, appeared out of nowhere with news of a potential new mistress. Whether his lechery was his downfall or the actual greater curse bestowed upon him then remains unclear, however calm has been restored and the nearby kingdom of Grand Orvalian celebrates the potential for renewed, hospitable relations.
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Still on book two of Rise of the Runelords. I've changed the plot considerably from the main book. I've been working on introducing the main plot of the AP earlier. To better establish Leng as a threat within the setting the party is currently trying to rescue the daughter of the mayor of magnimar from the mines of Leng - her dream self having been trapped there for weeks by a Nightmare Dragon.
The party is level 8 but fairly large; 6 players and 2 GMNPC followers. As a result; and to better display the powers they are facing, anyone serving the big bad has mythic tiers. This week is their fight with an M1 Adult Nightmare Dragon with mythic initiative to take 2 turns each round of combat.
I've altered the leveling curve a bit to account for my divergence from the AP, so they'll be level 20 with maybe M2 or 3 by the time they hit the end of book 6.
Oh the Lamia sisters are much more dangerous than they normally are - and are playing larger roles as well. The first is a gestalt lamia/bard advanced up to 14 HD; the other is a gestalt Lamia/Sorcerer (accursed) with 16 HD that has joined the coven up in the mountains.
As I mentioned; They have some mythic tiers and mythic initiative so they act 2/round. We only meet for a little bit each week so I streamlined a lot of the smaller encounters into narrative scenes and then throw them whoppers for their boss fights.