Episode 22: Macroaggression

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(from the 5e Monster Manual)

The cult strikes back, and then the party re-strikes back. We have Asa and Alex in the same room this time. Lots of quality banter this time. They really are OP for this content, which leads to some amusing moments. Less karaoke this episode.

CAST

  • Daniel (DM)
  • Jim (Dave the bard)
  • Tim (Bart the pally)
  • Moose (Keith the TWBB)
  • Alex (Jep the necromancer)
  • Asa (Phirrip the beastmaster ranger)

ALTERNATE TITLES

  1. I Disbelieve the Helmet-Inn
  2. Bone-tent
  3. Lumbermancer
  4. It Bursts from the Ground and Immediately Dies
  5. Welcome to the Surface
  6. Welcome Topside, Varmint
  7. I Live in a Home of Bones
  8. Like a Thick Gary Oldman
  9. Loincloths & Laurels

Episode 21: Our Favorite Albums

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fighting in the fire cult tower

Alex joins us — vengeance on the fire cult — we talk about our favorite albums.

Musical shownotes after the break:
We took a detour @ 1:42:12 to talk about our favorite albums ever, no matter how embarrassing. A lot of them were from when we were in high school; so please do excuse us.

We also mentioned Mallory Ortberg from the Toast, the best humor writer today. 

Episode 20: Slaying Dragon Turtles for XP and Profit

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snapping turtle image from Wikimedia Commons

This session was not recorded.

We played at a FLGS with an abnormal player configuration. 
The plan to kill the Hezrou went off well. 
Then some cultists ran to the lower level with our characters in pursuit. They overheard the passwords and recited them to the mezzoloth who guarded the stairs. 
They did not go down the stairs. The mezzoloth was cool with them. He was just doing his job. They hung out. 
Then they decided to kill the dragon turtle in the lake. 
One zombie used as bait. Skeleton archers with water walking shot at the thing when it surfaced but soon were destroyed by its steam breath.
The party retreated and reconsidered. 
Where can we buy poison?
3 days north, city called Yartar. It’s mobbed up.
They go, meet Davkas’s contact Side Job (Job as in Job Psalms Proverbs). They give a +1 dagger and 850gp for two barrels of mixed poison. And 50g for 3 fresh corpses to raise. 
They tripped on mushrooms. The necromancer saw a roiling black ocean of flesh. When he went to walk on it, hands emerges from it to form a bridge. He crossed. Davkas saw himself back in prison, but it was a very very small prison. 
Back in the dungeon, the poison is injected into bladders. The bladders tied to zombies. Remaining poison injected into zombie bodies and sewn up mouths.
The corpses kicked into the lake. 
The dragon turtle consumes them and dies within the minute. 

It was good poison. 

They plunder its hoard and end up with a slim profit and a bunch of XP. 

Episode 19: Dungeon Oysters

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a wild ettin has appeared

The audio quality on this episode is really bad.

We did a double-hangouts, and something was wrong. 
Cast: 
  • Daniel (DM)
  • Tim (Bart the pally)
  • Jim (Dave the bard)
  • Asa, via hangouts (Phirrip the beastmaster ranger + Pookers)
  • Josh, via hangouts (Winston the clizzard [cleric/wizard multiclass])
If you brave the audio quality, you will encounter the following mildly amusing highlights:
  • Two large heaps of dank memes
  • Welcome to Maths & Maths
  • #saveTheSlots
  • #notAllHags
  • WHERE’S THE QUAY?!?
  • “The time is now.”
We cleared out most of the level 2 water dungeon and allied with a sea hag.

Episode 18: Now It’s the Adventures of Dave and Bart

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Dave’s bardic inspiration lined up, ready to go

I use the term adventures rather loosely — farming ghouls for XP — ghouls are way nerfed in 5e — an empty room explored at length — Daniel refuses to draw a map — Tim annoyed at this — Pally tank game mad strong — dodging while restrained — nothing fancy, just doin werk.

I use the term adventures rather loosely
Because this episode honestly don’t have a lot going on. Tim and Jim just put in some work. A two man wrecking crew. Methodically hitting those rooms and hitting those faces.

farming ghouls for XP
Incentives matter. If you didn’t get XP for kills, we wouldn’t have bothered. So, if this part is boring, thank Mike Mearls.

ghouls are way nerfed in 5e
They really are. Only one attack per round, save vs paralysis at the end of each of your turns?!?!

Compare this to the 1981 Moldvay Basic set:

teach me how to moldvay

So of course Dave & Bart were like

okay 5e

an empty room explored at length
This was a badly written empty room. There are well written ones. Go read +Courtney Campbell talk about how to write good ones.

Daniel refuses to draw a map — Tim annoyed at this
I don’t know why I was so insistent about this.

Pally tank game mad strong
Really, it’s not fair. Paladin with shield, plate, and defensive fighting style has 21 AC. It’s extremely tough to hit, especially when the bard uses cutting words to debuff an attack that actually does manage to get through. Or when the bard banes everyone. And pallies can self-heal.

dodging while restrained
Funny thing, as I was listening to this ep, I was also reading this post from +Justin Alexander about fiction-mechanics relations. We had a relevant moment pop up:

Dave is hit by the One-Eyed Shiver’s ice eye ray attack. He’s restrained until he makes a Strength check. I’m thinking this is because he’s frozen to the ground or encased in ice or whatever.

Then the guy casts thunderwave against Dave. You can Dex save for half damage vs thunderwave. But I ruled that Dave couldn’t make the save since he was held in place by ice.

Whoever you think was right (wink wink), the convo is exactly the sort of situation that Justin talks about in his article. Go read.

nothing fancy, just doin werk
That’s it. We’re going to be putting up some more info about the character roster in the near future. Expect a couple special episodes not too far off from now.

Episode 17: Strong Arm, Sharp Sword

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Dave & Bart assault the water cult church

Scouting Rivergard Keep — I’m Dave; I’ve got a strong arm and a sharp sword — infiltrating the water cult — potty breaks as leet strat — stealth action game — mercenaries are great; they will work for you for money — how to kill a boss without an attack roll — the way below opens.

After our TPK in the last episode, we rolled in with one new toon, one old toon, and only two players—not for the campaign, just for this session.

The Adventures of Dave & Bart begins.

Davkas (“Dave”), Bard 6 (Jim)
Bart, Paladin 4 / Fighter 2 (Tim)

This was a very different style of play than what we’ve done before. It was mostly stealth, infiltration, and in-character roleplaying in order to blend in and bluff, mostly on the part of Jim, via his old debuff/heal bard Davkas.

After scouting Rivergard Keep, which is the first tier water cult complex, the party went room to room, blasting mobs like the seasoned pros they are.

If you want to leave a social situation, say because you’re actually trying to infiltrate and dispatch the people you’re with, excusing yourself and saying that you have to take a dump is really a dope strat, as you will see no less than three times in this episode.

In the process, they convinced some of the mercs that the cult had hired to join up with them, which has proven so far and will prove in later episodes to be an excellent tactic and reliable laugh. 
By the end of the episode, the level is clear. Next time, we descend with a fuller party to tackle the water cult proper.

Episode 16: 80d6 Fire Damage, Save for Half

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fateful annotations

Approaching the not ominously burning wicker man hippie druid festival — drug shenanigans — making the assault — 80d6 fire damage, save for half — the future.
A brutal, brutal episode.

The future direction of the show was in doubt after this one, but, fortunately, we decided to soldier on with Princes of the Apocalpyse, despite our reservations about it.

Also: if you have a wizard, get fireball at level 3.

Duh.

You can rain 16d6 of destruction on you enemies over two rounds. Who can say no to that?

As a direct result of this episode, Tim’s next character took the mage slayer feat.

That’s what I like to see.

DragonCon 2015: Tower of the Stargazer (Part 1)

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tower of the stargazer cover

DragonCon 2015 — we are bad at cons — post-hoc dining — LotFP character creation takes 2 seconds — blasted moonscape — always caution.
Pretty short episode here; we were just in to DragonCon, and couldn’t even be bothered to arrange a proper table.

In a break from our usual fare (well, not a huge break, as Lamentations of the Flame Princess is still basically just D&D), we booted up an early +James Raggi LotFP module: Tower of the Stargazer. Jim & Tim created a cleric and a specialist (rogue/thief) with +Ramanan S‘s generator, and we were off.

There’s not any combat in this episode—so, in another sense, its very different from our usual fare. This was all careful problem solving and navigation of imagined physical space. Plus some fun character interaction between “Spec” (awful old man specialist 1) and his Anglican deaconness daughter, Sam (level 1 cleric).

And the caution is well-advised: there were at least a couple times in this episode where it could have been save vs death time. But, because of clever play, the dice never had to come out.

DragonCon: http://dragoncon.org/
+James Raggi‘s +Lamentations of the Flame Princess (NSFW): http://www.lotfp.com/RPG/
Tower of the Stargazer: http://www.lotfp.com/store/ToweroftheStargazer
+Ramanan S‘s LotFP character generator: http://character.totalpartykill.ca/lotfp/
Reel Art (I think): http://www.reelart.biz/

Episode 15: Kill 40 Orcs

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mid melee
Killing 40 orcs — survivors — Emerald Enclave funereal customs — the notches mean ten.

This one is almost entirely combat, very wargamey combat. 40+ orcs disposed against our PCs on a farmstead. You will hear me count a lot.

This is the conclusion of the sidetrek “Iceshield Orcs” from Chapter 6 of Princes of the Apocalypse, in which the party heads to the northeast of the overland map to protect farmsteads from a band of orcs.

initial setup

I talk about this some in the episode, but I’ll discuss more at length here. The text essentially instructs you to make this part of the module meaningless. The orcs are supposed to toss some javelins, melee for a round, then retreat. You’re supposed to make sure the PCs feel threatened without actually threatening them.

Then dawn arrives, and the elves show up, and the day is epically saved!!!11~~~1

HISTORICALLY ACCURATE ELVEN WARHORNS

When we set up the defenders, we might not have given the full complement listed in the book, mostly because:

  1. I didn’t want to deal with it
  2. It would pollute the XP distribution

And so we treated the allies as terrain-with-morale.

Maybe I’m being too hard on it. If I handed over some NPCs to the players to control (as the module suggests), it would be more of an even fight, such that the orcs might not want to push their advantage . . .

BUT (emphasis mine):

You want to create tension and make it seem like the outcome teeters on the brink of disaster [but this is supposed to be an illusion]. Near the end of the battle [determined by what?], the elves show up as described in the “Relief Arrives” section. 

…

The orcs repeat this pattern several times, perhaps breaching a spot here or there before the defenders push them back. [How do we know the defenders will push them back?] Then they start trying different tactics.

…

“Relief Arrives”

At dawn, the orcs make a final push. It should seem like they might overwhelm the defenders [but I am supposed to make sure this doesn’t happen? how?] in several spots, and get inside the compound. Suddenly, the melodious tone of an elven war horn sounds, and a company of twenty-five elven soldiers . . . arrives to help.

(page 166)

The way this page talks, this section of the game is effectively a cutscene, maybe a QTE you can’t fail, in which case, what’s the point?

I can understand this if you’re just narrating the events, which is fine I suppose(?) if there’s not some illusion of player agency here. It’d be just like narrating an overland journey or presenting the sense of place of a new city, but that’s not what’s going on here.

IN ANY CASE…

We ran it as a straight up fight, everything on the table. I (with my admittedly limited) tactical ability played the orcs as hard as I could; and, even though moving so many units through the motions was a bit tedious, it was educational to see more clearly the roots of the hobby—and why you’d want things to die in a single hit most of the time.