My friend and I played a half-orc and a warforged whom we called the "Brobarians," for an obvious reason. I think their actual names were somewhat more innocuous. Any DMs/GMs on this thread? I love hearing about other people's campaigns and worlds. (Who is the God of Blood and Clockwork?)
I DM from time to time, and I'm co-creating a campaign setting with my moirail :-) I could go on for ages and ages, though.
I am entirely a DM. I have never actually completed a campaign from the characters' side of the table. One ended in a coup that made me DM and the other collapsed when Rogue1 and the Cleric had a messy breakup and people took sides. Blood-and-Clockwork is part of my four-part pantheon. His cohorts include... The Laughing God, trickster and God of Air The Rose Sister, lady of Light. A grim, dark subset of her Clergy killed... The Jade Sister, Nature and Sky Goddess with wolf avatars. She took it badly and now half the continent is enveloped in the Blight. ...Which is to say I'm Homestuck Trash, but literally no one else I know in meatspace is, so I can put all the hidden references in that I could possibly want. Yes I know Dave is HEAT and Clockwork but Husband wanted to be able to have his unironic battle cry be "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" so I'm smashing Dave, TZ and KK together. This is the very tiniest early seedling of a campaign plot but there you go.
eyyy, I'd been wondering if there was a thread on this subject :D glad it got revived before I made a fool of myself by making one! I've been a player in a couple campaigns, (including one that actually ran from start to completion over several years!) and I'm a sort of aspiring DM- I have an online, RP-heavy campaign concept I very much want to run (3.5e with a couple Pathfinder elements hamhandedly forced in). I DID run it for a few months about 3 years ago, but sadly then my chronic pain started, scheduling between players got hard (two of my players lived in Sweden, with the others in the US!), and one of my players turned out to be a bit of a douchebag ;I After it was put on what would turn out to be permahiatus since my pain wouldn't let up, I realized (or felt) that my extensive world setting document (I made my own Material Plane on account of I know fuckall about existing settings like Greyhawk and whatnot and tweaked a few other DnD things, like the godly pantheon and adding/tweaking a race or two, but the other planes remain intact) was, in fact, not nearly extensive enough- my notes on a couple of the largest countries in the world boiled down to 'this country is ruled by an emperor I guess :V' or something similar, and little more. I've made quite a bit of progress on several of the less fleshed-out area, but now I'm kind of in this trap of 'oh god no matter how much I write it's never gonna be ENOUGH for me to start the campaign confidently'. HRM. but I am happy to yammer about my (prospective) game or other DnD stuff with you lot c:
The great thing about a forum full of spergtypes is that nobody judges you for infodumping about your special interests. Uh, let's see. I have one 3.5 campaign that's been going on for almost 4 years now (slowed down when I got to college, since I only ever have time to DM during vacations, and even that requires a lot of prep since it's all homebrew). The setting is post-apocalyptic Greyhawk-Eberron mash-up. A huge magical war five hundred years ago unleashed the "Rain of Black Fire," a catastrophic negative energy pulse that killed most life down to the microbial level outside of areas that were hallowed or otherwise protected, and created massive numbers of undead. This had the side effect of severing the Material Plane from other worlds and the gods that dwelt within. Now, mortals (mostly mongrel humans with a smattering of elf and orc blood) struggle to survive in tiny enclaves -- either pockets of viable ecology tended by druid circles or communities sustained by magically generated food. The largest and most powerful polities in this wasteland are Necropolis (several hundred humans, ruled by ancient vampire spellcasters and defended by sapient undead Necropolitans made from loyal humans when they die) and Steelheart (a raucous city of warforged gladiators, explorers, and artificers, with an influential cult of an Uncreated God). Divine magic is incredibly rare, and spells that require access to other planes (summons, teleportation) simply don't work. This was PLANNED to be a gritty gray-and-black-morality Dying Earth tale. However. The guy who plays heartless gleeful sociopaths in standard high-fantasy games decided to play an escaped Neutral Good gladiator who dreamed of overthrowing the vampire lords. Two other players wanted to be a CLERIC and a FAVORED SOUL, totally independently, who wanted to bring the gods back. They had good character concepts. I didn't have the heart to say no. Now, after many shenanigans, the warforged city is embroiled in a war with the vampire city, at terrible cost to both sides. The PCs (currently down to fighter, cleric, and scout, all original players) have been stabbed in the back by half of their allies and made a lot of stupid decisions. They are now almost out of spells, on the loose in Necropolis's dungeons/played-out mines, pursued by all the undead that aren't fighting the war outside their gates. They have to survive till dawn so that the cleric can prepare the spell that will let them escape. They might all be about to die.
Tonight, our Bard, who has up until this point managed to escape every fight completely unscathed by shouting Current-Event Soundbites, bits of Pop/Rock One-Hit Wonders, and literally crippling insults from clifftops and walls decided to climb a tree at the start of the battle to continue his usual strategy. Unfortunately for him, the Corrupted Dire Boar we were fighting wasn't a fan of Chumbawamba and charged the aforementioned tree. Moth failed his save, and took his first-ever damage by falling out of the tree right onto the boar's tusks and rotten, oozing-sore-covered face. His player later described him as It was a good night.
@Aviari @Wiwaxia Are you two in the same campaign? That reminds me of the time my players went back into a mostly-cleared dungeon with some new allies and inexplicably left the fighter outside (his player wanted a nap. they have a bad habit of going into things unprepared). The erinyes devil turned on them and tried to kill them all to seize the artifact at the top of the tower. The fight ended with the cleric (who has the Diehard feat, so can choose to stay conscious while in negative hit points) casting his last cure minor wounds on the scout to stop him from bleeding out. The effort dropped the cleric from -8 to -9, but because of the same feat, he remained stable. I described it as "casting the healing spell with one hand and holding his guts in with the other." This party is intimately acquainted with pain already.
When the GM starts making repeated snarky comments about how you never take damage, you should prooooobably watch out.
@Aviari @TheSeer Cool! I'd love to join a Kintsugi game, but I have to finish at least one of the 2 IRL campaigns I'm running first. That might take a while. >.< @Allenna Sort of. I like the pantheon and all the little details of the world. The problem is that for me, that gets paralyzing when I actually sit down and try to think of a game to run in it. There's so much history and metaplot that you can't walk to the local tavern without tripping over a 20th-level NPC. I'm playing in an online PbP game set in 3.5 FR, though, and enjoying it so far.
What edition are you planning to run? I've got a handful of half-formed character concepts in a folder somewhere... eta: also if it's open table drop-in style I won't make the mistake of committing to too many games and then never being able to schedule any.
I think that's the thing I really liked about it. It felt more real that my part wasn't the only game in town. But my DM at the was pretty creative and was running a hybrid 2.5 house rules sort of thing. This would also be the campaign where I got eatten by a dragon but
@The Frood Abides Bastardized Pathfinder in Roll20. We dumped feats for custom bonus ability tables, mostly.
Tutorial Session with my brand-new group was last night. We picked up Rise Of The Runelords, the original Pathfinder adventure, and everyone made their characters. It went mostly as expected: The "Do It For The Lulz" guy who plays a caster in everything rolled a CN Teifling Sorcerer. The sweet natured, meme-king body builder went with a CG Half-Elf Fighter (who ended up with a tragically low INT score) My husband, the most experienced one with the "I'm going to make one of EVERY CLASS" alternate character problem, rolled a new, special archetype of LN Human Ranger, bringing his total character sheets to 14* And then the one other girl in the group takes one look at Oreads (Half-Earth Elementals)... "I wanna be a rock monster!" "Ooookay." "I'm gonna be a bard." ... She plays the banjo. I am so fucking excited you guys. *Edit: 15
Ok so I'm gonna tell everyone about my friend. Let's call him J. J has five loves in tabletop gaming and to a lesser extent life: Magic, Dragons, Magic, Elves, and Magic. His one goal in every game is to obtain magic, and if he has magic then it's to obtain more magic. He usually plays Sorcerers or Wizards, and if it's a low/no fantasy setting then scholars, magicians, or questionable scientists, although he has had a few gun for hire types in the past. J is what we lovingly call a "fucking game assassin." Here are a few anecdotes: 1. Game based on the Alera series, with some setting modifications: Manages to trick the gods into making him another god, proceeds to nearly destroy the universe with uncontrolled gravity powers. 2. Labyrinth game: In his first or second session as part of the game, manages to stumble ass backwards into the exit, becoming the ultimate champion of a session that he had just joined and all the other players had been doing for the better part of two years. 3. Low fantasy 80's based game: He, his boss, and another bodyguard all are going to make a deal with a paranoid drug lord with control over a neighborhood adjacent to the boss's area of influence. They walk into his backyard for the meeting and see him shooting at some seagulls. J decides hey, he probably really wants those seagulls dead, and I'm sure if I help him with that it'll make a great impression, so he pulls out his TWIN FUCKING DESERT EAGLES and opens fire in this guy's backyard. Ensuing firefight/chase gets both J's character and the other bodyguard killed, and the boss just barely gets away with his life. This last one is our favorite- we all snidely allude to it when it won't hurt too much, or when we think J's about to do something stupid. ("Alright, so, I am going to hook up the AI to the alien technology that we just found..." "What, and then are you going to take your twin lazers and open fire on a space bird?" "Ok, fiiiiiine.") So, on Friday I started my first game dming, using @Wiwaxia 's SBURB system. J is playing the Mage of Time, because of course. His character is themed around alchemy, so I gave him a world full of sigils and books of alchemy and arcane ingredients and such. ....I'm an asshole because his quest is basically giving up on all the alchemy and the idea that it will solve his problems, and actually getting out there and doing his quest.
I think if you're not playing Skaia as that kind of asshole you're doing it wrong? SBURB is supposed to get into the players' heads, right? I see no reason that wouldn't include the players' players' heads (recursion? In my Homestuck?) if the players have fixations or issues or whatever that come through in the role playing.
