Demonac (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} demonac) wrote,@ 2005-06-26 08:35:00 |
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| Current mood: |  neutral observer |
D&D night (I wish I had a digital voice recorder)
[The following RPG gaming-session account uses character names rather than the names of the actual players in order to protect their identities, so that I don't have to ask their permission. You may begin to see why I have no trouble coming up with material to cover in AGC (although, AGAIN, my webcomic's characters do not represent any real individuals, but are mixed up composites using traits and manerisms taken from many RPGers I've gamed with over time, sort of like Shang-Tsung fights using the souls of a thousand fallen warriors). Anyway...]
GM: Before we begin, on the balance front, because some players have concerns about all the combat rebalancing, I am looking into the possibility of making a dramatic increase in the hit points of every monster you encounter, but then letting you make use of all your usual fighter-crazyness that we have been restricting.
Ahzeron: You mean like the ability to attack?
Balcoth: Or the ability to wear armor?
GM: Some of us feel that you are already quite capable of effective attacks. But anyway, what do you guys think of that idea?
Ahzeron: Well, that depends. How much of an HP increase are we talking about?
GM: Probably an increase of 40-65% to the hit points of every mob you ever face. What do you think?
Balcoth: [Stares incredulously for a moment]NO!
Ahzeron: [Silently contemplates, attempting to calculate whether the lifting of certain nerfs would net a profit under that scenario]
Verian Seth: [Keeps his mouth shut, since he is not remotely a fighter type, and also since this plan arose from a suggestion he made to GM, and yet doesn't sound much like his actual suggestion]
Omit: [Sits pensively toying with half a fan casing, trying to balance it on his head like a coolie-hat. He feels that his character has been nerfed, changed, and re-nerfed so many times that there is nothing left but a blob of molten flesh based sadly on d6 hit-dice]
Ahzeron: Oh shit, I forgot my character sheet.
GM: You LOST your character AGAIN?
Ahzeron: Not lost, I know exactly where it is. It just isn't here.
GM: [Sigh] As is tradition, we will start with Ahzeron rebuilding his character who was again forgotten, and we'll begin by asking Balcoth to refresh our memories on what happened last week.
Ahzeron: We didn't play last week. We were at OTHERFRIEND's crazy crap-draft event, where Omit was crushing all of us because he decoded the card-sleeve colors and was able to pick up all the best face-down cards in the auction for practically nothing cause he knew what they were.
Omit: [Shrugs in a trying-not-to-appear-smug fashion]
GM: Whatever. Balcoth, please remind us where we left off by describing what happened last session.
Balcoth: I dunno. I don't remember.
GM: Balcoth will feign ignorance, as usual. Perhaps I can jog your memory by starting with some small questions. Can you give a brief description of your character, Balcoth?
Balcoth: A Dwarf.
GM: Yes. Could you elaborate on that? Are you a skilled archer? A priest who performs miracles of faith? A practitioner of arcane arts, or a master of psionic prowess?
Balcoth: I'm a fighter, with levels in Dwarven Defender.
GM: And how did you come by your proficient knowledge of the wilderness?
Balcoth: What?
GM: You also have one ranger level. How did you come by those skills?
Balcoth: Well I didn't misteriously pick is up just because it gave me a bunch of bonuses.
GM: Okay, well what is your motivation? What are your goals?
Balcoth: To kill things and take their stuff.
GM: Do you have any preferences insofar as what kind of things you kill?
Balcoth: Things with better stuff?
GM: Okay, but given the choice of two things, with equal quality stuff and money and such, which would you go after?
Balcoth: The one that's easier to kill.
GM: Alright, perhaps we'll forgo the rest of the questioning. But I need to warn you all that certain individuals - I'm not pointing any fingers here - but certain individuals are going to have to act more appropriately within their characters alignments in the future. Including a Dwarf that is supposed to be "Lawful Good".
Balcoth: What have I ever done that is against my alignment?
Verian Seth: [Laughs]
Ahzeron: [Does a much better job of styfling laughter]
GM: That guy tried to surrender, and you tortured him, lied to him, and then spend minutes hacking and butchering his corpse.
Balcoth: I didn't lie to him! [Yet Balcoth conspicuously knows EXACTLY what GM is referring to] I never said we'd let him live if he talked. I said I was going to kill him, and I didn't care if he talked or not. His talking was just delaying the inevitable.
Verian Seth: [In that previous session, Verian Seth had carefully observed his Lawful Neutral alignment. Knowing that his allies would not allow the evil Priest of Vecna (god of secrets and lies) to live, he had instead tried to shake him into talking by matter-of-factly discussing the state in which we would leave his corpse, specifically vis-a-vis the matter of whether or not we would leave his head intact (allowing the use of Speak with Dead divinations), and whether it would be better or worse for him if we were to leave his head intact for his evil Master to find, who would himself likely cast Speak with Dead and ask some uncomfortable questions of the disembodied skull before deciding whether or not to bind the soul for grievous tortures and such for failing. Balcoth, perhaps missing some of the subtler implications, nevertheless got into the idea with great gusto, loudly voicing his opinion that we should just kill the fellow now, divine what we need, and then crush the head beyond any hope of divination (or ressurection).]
GM: Your goodness, and law-abidingness, as described by your alignment, might actually require you to accept an individual's surrender when he renders himself defenseless and throws himself upon your mercy.
Balcoth: He was trying to kill us! If we surrendered to him, do you think he'd spare us?
Verian Seth: [Launches into a balanced philosophical debate, comparing the practicalities with the responsibility towards lawful behavior felt by our characters. This is acknowledged by the other players mostly by uninterested grunts or grunts of anger, not actually directed at Verian Seth]
GM: There is also the concern that the Heironium, the lawful good cleric who was with you at the time, would have objected and been obliged to fight you had you followed through on your plan to kill the innocents you were trying to save.
Omit: [Suddenly sounding much more involved, some might say outraged] Actually he was chaotic good!
GM: I thought he was lawful. Oh well...
Omit: [Omit actually MADE that cleric, planning to use him as a backup character if he died] No. And you played him like the biggest jerk in existance! I was getting really bitter... You played him like some kind of idiotic holier-than-thou, "O! Bend over and worship the god most high", "Come join the One True Faith" kind of moron cleric. Clerics like that don't survive in D&D!
Ahzeron: Yeah, it's kind of like in that other module, trying to figure out how GM's monk made it up to 15th level acting the way he kept suggesting we should act. The best was when GM's monk asked why nobody ever gave his plans a chance, and Verian Seth said "Because all of your plans involve getting on your knees and having someone stand behind you with a sword so that they can cut your throat before you scream from the pain of ritually disembowling yourself." [This describes the standard proceedure for comitting Sepukku, playing on GM's love of Samurai culture to strike a nerve]
Verian Seth: Yeah, I might remember having said that. [Keeping in mind that the current GM wasn't actually functioning as GM during that particular module, Verian Seth would have preferred not to draw attention to his previous smart-assed comments]
Balcoth: It's your stupid cleric's fault that the other group of peasants died. He wouldn't let us save them.
GM: Well it's possible that the reason Heironium was giving you trouble is that you were going to kill all the peasants you had just rescued... Omit.
Omit: Those peasants had the IQ of PLANTS! They deserved to be left on their own to die in the desert.
GM: You know, you didn't provide them with a whole lot of evidence as to why you killed the priest who led and protected them throughout their pilgrimmage.
Omit: Whatever, I offered to take care of them while everyone else went on ahead to save the first group.
GM: And I wonder why the cleric didn't trust you, since you had been plotting to KILL THEM with Balcoth for AN HOUR.
Verian Seth: Or to leave them to rot in the desert, or to torture them, or to give them AIDS or something...
Balcoth: If they'd just listened to us the other group of peasants could have been saved.
Omit: It doesn't matter. Heironium isn't coming back. I shredded his character sheet into confetti.
GM: But why? I liked him...
Omit: Because you abused him! I created him and you played him totally wrong, like he was a complete jerk!
Ahzeron: Yeah, he got voted off the island.
Anyway, at some point after ALL THAT, we STARTED actually playing, at least for a little while before getting into some other "debate". End result: GM feels he is the only one being reasonable, and that he is being persecuted by everyone else. Ahzeron was falling asleep by the end (which, despite how it always offends GM, is less a factor of game boredom than an inevitability of Ahzeron's schedule). Omit is still heavily disenchanted with the profligance of "nerfs" as he sees them, which have caused him to readjust his characters class levels and feats at least 7 tims, including 2 full respecifications where GM allowed him to even change his stats. Verian Seth was busy using his character's massive intellect and mastery of all knowledge skills to extract and justify information which it is highly unlikely (but not impossible) for his character to posess in-game, and Balcoth has adopted the new tactic of proposing that obnoxious monster powers are worthy of banning (specifically those which could penetrate his carefully tweaked defenses) and refusing to allow the game to progress until GM either bans them (which he won't do because it is ridiculous) or at least promise to further investigate the issue at a later date. So here I sit, recording this small part of what transpired, and awaiting the Blue Ribbon Comittee on whether or not the spell Blink should be banned for its ability to ignore the Uncanny Dodge class ability.
Oh, and which one am I? [Since the players are referred to only by character name, and none of them is named Demonac] I'll leave you to guess.
