In Lost Mines of Phandelver, there is a side quest where you encounter a necromancer doing something in the ruins of a tower. No details are provided about what exactly he's doing and the DM's guide says he's closedmouthed about it, but he's willing to cooperate with you for either the name of the mage who built the tower or assistance with some raiding orcs. So I made him a grad student of necromancy on an archaeological dig with a magical NDA.
Had the first game on Sunday, and it went really well. I'm so happy with how the group came together and interacted, and I'm excited for tomorrow when we pick up where we left off. I'll spoiler stuff because I'm probably going to go long on the gushing, a bit. Spoiler: The Setting So, y'know the multiverse? It broke. Badly. Now, instead of a more regular cosmology, all there is is a bunch of micro-planes, connected by portals, rivers, and other weird ways. The players are all from one particularly large microplane, known to its inhabitants as the Cradle of Civilization, as they're very unsure that anyone else really survived all the devastation, given how they're made up from folks of many different planes and universes, themselves. At long last, however, the Cradle is opening its proverbial doors to allow even the average citizen to leave and go exploring for new places to live, settle, and explore. Especially that last one. Spoiler: The Characters Seven(!) of the players were able to make it to the first session. The characters were: Cadastra - A gnome cleric from a wealthy family, formerly a shipboard navigator with seasickness that got drunk one night and ran the ship aground, going off to become an acolyte instead. She bears the Sphere of Safety. Gimble - A gnome fighter that grew up on the streets and really wants to leave town, fast. He stole the Perfectly Normal Deck of Cards, you see, and needs to lose the heat somewhere else, fast. Faelar - A firbolg bard who was told by his people to go share his music with the world as part of a quest, and certainly not as a way to get rid of him because he can be a bit blunt and obnoxious. He's wielding the Stellar Sword, a rapier that stores power each time it does damage, until it shatters (either by surpassing its charge limit or by getting a Crit Fail) and releases a massive burst of power. Fax - A dragonborn druid that was literally raised by wolves. He wants to go out into the multiverse and restore some balance to things, and is bringing along the Stone of Wood that he found. Please - A gnome wizard. Definitely a gnome wizard. Ignore the way he looks to be a goblin monk, he's a gnome wizard. Just a strange one. He's got a tome of ancient secrets from his departed mentor that he's obsessed with keeping secret, but also can't understand any of. I... forget which item he pulled, somehow. It's not yet relevant, anyway. Soturi - A dwarven barbarian and chef, much like Senshi from Delicious in Dungeon. He's got the Radiant Rod, which he largely uses to stir with. I'm sure this will cause no problems down the line. Click (like, the sound, not the word) - A kenku rogue and urchin who is still under the age of majority and has been flockless for quite a while. She's kind of looking for some family of some sort, but also just trying to survive in the wide world with her Redstone Shortsword (which will burst explosively in an enemy's direction when she rolls a crit fail with it). Spoiler: The Game As should be expected, we didn't get anywhere near where I thought we would in the first session. A lot of the time was spent establishing the characters as they tried to figure out the best way to not pay their way to the Broken Forest Plane, which almost all of them failed to find their way around doing because the guy with the portal is possibly a dragon. Fax did get free passage by working on the boat, but he was hoping to fail that persuasion check and get into a fight, since he had -1 on his roll. Instead, he's the only one that passed, and then later failed to get a discount on a hat from a merchant by insulting the hat when the guy was wearing the same one. The shipride over to the next Plane, they find out about a missing team that went out a month earlier, and the stupendous reward their mother is offering anyone who brings them back. Also, Please tried to make a smoke bomb out of the minibar and wound up having to spend the night in someone else's room. They get to town, learn a little about where to go looking at the store and inn, but Fax gets himself kicked out of the inn after Please and Cadastra go up to their rooms. Fax has a problem where he conflates "investigate" and "interrogate" and the patrons took exception to that. The rest of the party went with him out of town, where they wound up being attacked by Twig Blights in the middle of the night... which they pretty easily obliterated. Next time, they'll start as they leave town, heading toward the Sunless Citadel.
My sister has joined my other game, in which she plays the cleric Kinwa* who decided to go on a pilgrimage as an excuse to leave his position as youth minister. His god is all about healing and self-sacrifice, while my paladin's god is the goddess of wealth and acquisition, so theologically we're pretty diametrically opposed. Snide comments may have been exchanged. Meanwhile, our rogue started applauding when the Big Bad finished his grandstanding. Big Bad did not object to the applause, mind you; he concluded that the rogue was clearly the leader of the group, and thus the most worthy of being his archnemesis. *yes, that's a fantasy spelling of quinoa; she made a joke about wanting to play Mightily Oats from Carpe Jugulum and things escalated from there
Today in DND: our horse killed a bugbear My character never even got to wake up Because the horse killed the freaking bugbear first.
In a setting that is basically "magically accelerated industrial revolution results in privatized space race", the players' mission is to search for magic, wealth, etc IN SPACE! For their wealthy backers. Character categories: Official Hired Specialist of some kind, being paid to go on this mission. Criminal Stowaway, escaping the frankly terrible criminal justice system INTO SPACE! Non-Criminal Stowaway of some kind, there because they're not missing this, goddamnit, they don't care if they're getting paid! And any other suggestions I like. I am open to them. The players will tell me which they chose without telling the others; as far as the legit employees know, everyone there is meant to be there. This is the Celestial Spheres game I was talking about earlier. The "spaceship" (I need a better name. Aethership?) travels via souped up teleportation spell meant to get it into the aether, at which point it would fly about like an airship. Unfortunately for the players, something malfunctions, scattering them, along with bits of the ship, across the spheres. This also kills the captain, who was the only one who knew the full roster. Not that they'll know that until they've rolled a d8 to determine which sphere each ends up in. The first objective? Finding each other. The second? Getting enough valuables of vague definition to satisfy their greedy and stingy backers - at least, if they want to actually be paid when they get back. Ofc, the criminal stowaway(s? I hope there's at least one) don't want to go back too soon... (Any similarities to a certain podcast is entirely accidental; I honestly forgot it exists while working on this.)
The chances of them intreguing and/or angering a Being who then puts tethers in their souls is somewhere around 87%
Also, at least one constellation of stars are auditors. This may or may not ever be relevant to the players, but it makes me happy to know.
Blades in the Dark has an SRD I can try out for free so I'll try that! thank you! Also its the only one that seems like it has any sort of territory management which is something I rlly want
It is indeed an officially licensed Leverage (TV show) game, yes! I haven't played it, but prokopetz has recommended it a few times for classical Ocean's Eleven/Leverage style heist games before, and I've found most of his recommendations for thematic styles of play to be pretty decent, all things considered.
Rlly I want a heist game where my accountant best friend can play accountant for the team but also I don't know anything about money or math so someone else sets a system for that up for me ;;;;
blades in the dark is probably what you want. it's set up so that you don't have to play through any details you don't feel like, you can just gloss them in general terms. like, you don't even have to plan your heists, just declare the rough strokes of it -- who, where, what, and which skills you're using to get there -- and then let the dice do the rest. though imo planning heists is the best part.
My paladin is effectively the group treasurer. Her goddess is the goddess of wealth and acquisition. Our wizard is now in debt to the mob. I'm pretty sure that gambling is practically sacrilege as far as my paladin is concerned, and gambling and losing definitely is.
I'm creating a character that is an exiled princess trying to reclaim her throne, except she's evil and a brat and also accidentally got an intelligent, blessed sword instead of the Evil one she wanted. I'm having a hard time deciding the details- mostly whether she should be human, elf, or other, and whether she should be an Eldritch knight, an evil paladin type, or a hexblade worlock, in order from least to most magicky I'm p sure. I thiiiink I'll go for elf because I love shitty bratty elves but I'm not sure. Any suggestions?
