KrinnPhindalin
Level 3 Conjurer
Player in Lord Gronan's Games at GaryCon VII, VIII, IX, and X
Posts: 65
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Post by KrinnPhindalin on Apr 1, 2017 11:20:13 GMT -6
I think the overhiring of mercenaries was based on fear, not a desire to squash the fighters' fun. Maybe I should run an ODD74 only game. That would be fun- this is Jack by the way. In the books, it says hirelings are determined by the charisma score. I picked up the books and started my campaign. I have 12 maps and their respective descriptions to make in the next 2 weeks before my game starts. Thank you for the ideas and the games! Also, in testing my world with my brother, I used random encounter tables and rolled 3 straight dragon encounters, one of which was an elder dragon. When my inexperienced brother (who was a lvl 3 magic-user) tried to kill it, there was an easy 1 hit TPK from a breath weapon.
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Post by MonkeyBees on Apr 1, 2017 14:42:53 GMT -6
grodog’s GaryCon IX Convention Report (long) <snip> ...and encountered a prism ward (a lights-driven crystalline monster from Expedtious Retreat Press’ Malevolent & Benign) <snip> Allan. Aha, so that's what that thing was, I'll have to try to read up on it. It certainly gave us players fits! Thanks for the great game Allan, events like this made my first GaryCon a lot of fun.
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Chainsaw
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Posts: 303
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Post by Chainsaw on Apr 1, 2017 14:45:11 GMT -6
grodog’s GaryCon IX Convention Report (long) <snip> ...and encountered a prism ward (a lights-driven crystalline monster from Expedtious Retreat Press’ Malevolent & Benign) <snip> Allan. Aha, so that's what that thing was, I'll have to try to read up on it. It certainly gave us players fits! Thanks for the great game Allan, events like this made my first GaryCon a lot of fun. Allan's the best!
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Post by grodog on Apr 1, 2017 15:57:57 GMT -6
Honored and flattered to have you, Allan! Keep your PC, because I developed a ton of new ideas for content and presentation. Unless work conflicts with next year's convention, I'll be running this all four nights again. Thanks Donovan! I'm definitely packing Sirisa and her maps for NTX! See you in June ...and encountered a prism ward (a lights-driven crystalline monster from Expedtious Retreat Press’ Malevolent & Benign) Aha, so that's what that thing was, I'll have to try to read up on it. It certainly gave us players fits! Thanks for the great game Allan, events like this made my first GaryCon a lot of fun. I'm glad you had a good time, monkeybees! I do try to mix in monsters from M&B and Monsters of Myth, as well as lesser-known original AD&D monsters into my games too (mottled worms, intelligent mimics and yellow molds, etc.), to keep players on their toes. Allan.
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Post by scottenkainen on Apr 1, 2017 22:05:27 GMT -6
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2017 18:11:36 GMT -6
Mike was great though. Way nicer than his online personae. My online persona is perfectly nice as long as nobody says anything stupid. I remind you of the guy at my D&D game who decided his character name was "Name Unpronounceable By Humans," so I promptly dubbed him "Turd Bucket."
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Post by smubee on Apr 5, 2017 22:06:41 GMT -6
Mike was great though. Way nicer than his online personae. My online persona is perfectly nice as long as nobody says anything stupid. I remind you of the guy at my D&D game who decided his character name was "Name Unpronounceable By Humans," so I promptly dubbed him "Turd Bucket." That's the guy that played as some sort of bug! ... an interesting character to say the least.
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Post by scottenkainen on Apr 6, 2017 6:52:10 GMT -6
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KrinnPhindalin
Level 3 Conjurer
Player in Lord Gronan's Games at GaryCon VII, VIII, IX, and X
Posts: 65
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Post by KrinnPhindalin on Apr 6, 2017 21:28:56 GMT -6
My online persona is perfectly nice as long as nobody says anything stupid. I remind you of the guy at my D&D game who decided his character name was "Name Unpronounceable By Humans," so I promptly dubbed him "Turd Bucket." That's the guy that played as some sort of bug! ... an interesting character to say the least. If I was able to, I would play a Grippli cleric that heals things with his tongue. If only I got Jason Buhlman's permission to play a Grippli in every pathfinder society game ever... Anyways, I will write frogs into every adventure I play in/write, as you all figured out by me spending 100gp on a frog to put in my pocket. Anyways, I should not be up this late before school, so good night!
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KrinnPhindalin
Level 3 Conjurer
Player in Lord Gronan's Games at GaryCon VII, VIII, IX, and X
Posts: 65
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Post by KrinnPhindalin on Apr 6, 2017 21:34:39 GMT -6
That's the guy that played as some sort of bug! ... an interesting character to say the least. If I was able to, I would play a Grippli cleric that heals things with his tongue. If only I got Jason Buhlman's permission to play a Grippli in every pathfinder society game ever... Anyways, I will write frogs into every adventure I play in/write, as you all figured out by me spending 100gp on a frog to put in my pocket. Anyways, I should not be up this late before school, so good night! I had to throw this out there- I made a Grippli Cleric in 5e who has a Giant Toad as his companion (nature domain). They are really fun to play, as healing and inflicting damage with your tongue can lead to really funny scenarios. I also made the Frog-Man monster block for OD&D for my home game starting April 29 (I'm really excited!), and they are very odd. They are attracted to shiny metal, and they are also dangerous with their giant toad companions. A level 5 Cleric and an army of Frog-Men is nothing to scoff at when you are 1st level.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2017 18:43:23 GMT -6
Don't know why it took me so long to find this. I was really quite unhappy with how this years' game turned out, and I'd be willing to talk about it. Also, I'm not all that fearsome online! I don't think I've gnawed on Smubee's head more than once or twice. I'm really glad you had fun despite the slowness of the game. As I said, I have my own thoughts on it.
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Post by smubee on Sept 5, 2017 7:36:36 GMT -6
Don't know why it took me so long to find this. I was really quite unhappy with how this years' game turned out, and I'd be willing to talk about it. Also, I'm not all that fearsome online! I don't think I've gnawed on Smubee's head more than once or twice. I'm really glad you had fun despite the slowness of the game. As I said, I have my own thoughts on it. I'd love to hear what you'd have to say about it.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2017 9:54:55 GMT -6
Well, it was a classic example, in retrospect, of clashing expectations.
Many of the players were friends of mine but who didn't know each other. Also, as referee, my style is "hands off;" for instance, I wasn't going to tell Paul, the guy who hired a dozen mercenaries, that he'd hired too many, but a player could have.
I'll start with Wendy, the woman who put herself in charge. I've played with her and her home group, and (again in retrospect) they are pretty much 100% "in character role players." Things like the referee rolling for wandering monsters gets ignored because your character isn't aware that wandering monster dice exist. Also, when they play, things are divided into scenes... rather like "in this scene we need to get some fake ID." The important thing in that group, though, is playing your character in the scene, NOT NECESSARILY SUCCEEDING IN THE TASK. The scene ends after a certain amount of time, and then another scene happens, and the task is finished whether or not it happened "on camera".
Again, this was all quite obvious when I thought of it later. When I ran OD&D for that bunch, after the first encounter, where they got shredded, they ran back up the dungeon stairs and one guy grinned and said "Oh, yeah, this is Old School -- we need some muscle!"
But it's not their habitual way of playing.
Beth, the young blond woman next to her, is ANOTHER old friend of mine from Star Wars fandom. She said later "It's a one-shot, I don't care what happens to my character, I just wanted some laughs." But that's kind of failing to engage with the whole premise, alas. So she thought the neverending stream of wandering monsters while players farted around was hilarious.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 8, 2017 12:22:19 GMT -6
And as I said above, Paul, my friend playing the magic user who hired all the mercenaries... I think mostly he was just not thinking, and not considering the effects of having that much muscle along.
Brian, my friend with the dark hair and beard, didn't say much. He was rather dissatisfied as well. He said he didn't want to horn in on the other players, but I kind of wish he had.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 8, 2017 12:23:43 GMT -6
The thing is, the mercenaries LIKE being hired in huge groups by PCs who do nothing. Wander around the first level, fight a couple wandering monsters, bumble home, and still collect your 10 GP each. Sweet gig if you can get it, but hell on the PCs.
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Post by murquhart72 on Sept 12, 2017 17:58:58 GMT -6
So a few mercenaries to provide "back up" are good. But a whole slew mean they're just going to wipe out wanderers and take the PCs gold. This is an interesting, but logical tactic I've never thought of before
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