Universal Chat Thread

[Maniakkid25]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

So, I mentioned in my intro thread I was running a D&D game, and I'm just so happy with how it's going right now! They took my bait perfectly, it's so awesome!

So in the story, I had a plot event where a random NPC came in injured and was snatched away by some meanie guards. I've also been leaving a lot of bread crumbs by way of tattoos enchanted with an Abjuration-type enhancement (If you don't know the schools, Abjuration is "Protec"). The players (rightly) recognized it as a bit tyrannical, and have been going around asking the locals what they think of the situation, and it's exactly what I wanted from them EEEEEEEEE! They have plans to overthrow her, and it's so perfect; it's exactly how I wanted my story to go, I'm so glad it worked! Now I just need to get to the plot twist; that'll really cook 'em! Get excited; I know I am!

[Mr EliteL]

Haha, well done getting your plot to go in the right direction. Did you have a backup plan if it went a bit wrong?

[Maniakkid25]

I'll be honest, I didn't, but I tend to flow with what my players do to begin with. Plus, it's super early in the plot, so I still had more plot events I could show them to show them all is not well. I'm just super happy that they immediately did exactly what I wanted. It's so perfect. I love it so much!

[Mr EliteL]

Ah, you had more situations that were going to happen anyway, so that would also help get them to choose to begin their overthrow of those in charge. Well hopefully, but they're already there so yes good on ya.

I suppose you'll continue with the events, perhaps they'll try prevent one of them too if the opportunity arises.

[Maniakkid25]

Oh, I've got a few ideas I'm hanging on to in my back pocket. My favorite is that one of the players gave me a plot point without me even suggesting anything for them to do.

So one of the players wanted to play a high noble: a princess or her handmaiden. I initially said no to the princess idea, but then I thought about it for longer than 5 seconds, and remembered my own story plans. "Actually... I can work with princess, yes. But how do I get you at my start point? This is gonna start in a podunk little town in the middle of nowhere."

WITHOUT ANY PROMPTING OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT, I SWEAR TO GOD, the first thing out of their mouth was "oh, there was an assassination attempt on me that I survived that left me there." Now, this was in DM's, but I had them in voice chat at the same time because we were doing a session zero to toss around ideas and the like. And I literally had to stop the DMs to say out loud to them "Same brain cell!" Because holy crap, I could not have planned that better! Didn't plan on a plot point, got it anyway XD!

Between that and one of my other players wanting to be part of a super secret hero organization within a church structure, and ANOTHER one of my players just so happening to pick that they were pacted with a Devil (long story: Devils are Lawful Evil, Demons are Chaotic Evil, and they hate each other), and one of my recurring characters is a Devil, this party just plopped a greatest hits of plot points into my lap, its so incredible! I love it here!

[Mr EliteL]

Ha ha, yes a lot going on there. They look to be in an even better position to do some rebellion than I thought.

Ah, so the player who's pacted a Devil is going to be pact with your recurring Devil? By the looks of it if there are Devils then the bad guys are probably in cahoots with Demons, or at least secretly.

[Maniakkid25]

*Furiously takes notes*

No, but seriously, I wasn't planning on involving demons; it just happened that a player chose something that let me work in my longtime character, Morgan Stern. The idea in D&D-type universes is that he's literally Lucifer, but he's been kicked out of Hell. See, in D&D, Asmodeus is actually the ruler of Hell (Demons are from the Abyss. It's a whole thing), and that has never sat right with me, so I made Morgan, who got usurped for his rule and thrown into the mortal realm, and wants it back. So, when a player said "Hey, I'm making a Devilpacted Warlock; it's homebrew but are you cool with that?", the light bulb immediately went off in my head.

Play that The Boys clip where Homelander says "It was perfect."

[Mr EliteL]

Man my post kinda sucked and needed correcting, just edited it but think you got the point anyway.
Ah, quite interesting you have that kind of a character handy to include. I don't know D&D lore, but dang you can make something quite big there.

Ah frick, our town's internet cables have been stolen again. Utter nuisance, if I just got my hands on the pricks, I'd--*sigh*. At least I started playing my Nintendo Switch again to pass the time for a while, and mobile data still works for now.

[Gizmo]

I haven't been on for a while

[Mr EliteL]

Yo Gizmo, good to see you back. How've you been?

Internet came back yesterday in our town, so all is good....until next time it happens, which will make it a third time. Hope that doesn't happen anytime soon.

[Maniakkid25]

My game continues to give me good dopamine hits! One of the players had to miss this session due to their real-life constitution score being a 6 (note: this is a D&D joke), and it's a shame because he missed A LOT!

So one player had a super secret meeting with the super secret society he invented. He learned quite a bit, including the fact that there are multiple groups of people working in the shadows, and that the tattoos they have don't affect the person, but the tattoo itself. Weird. Edit: Oh, I didn't even mention that the person that told them that warned them that they weren't safe knowing this information. The player's response amounted to, basically, "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough."

Another player quite literally "stumbled" into the tyrannical duchess. See, that character is being tortured by the goddess of bad luck, and I decided to leverage that this session! I was giggling like a devious bastard when I first thought it up, and it made my players good and paranoid. Huehuehue...

I also had a pleasant surprise this session: they really like one of my NPCs! Well, technically it's not MY NPC! I stole her from a friend of mine, but she was important to the story, so I felt the need to bring her in. But yes, she was asked to aid the party in causing trouble, and she was absolutely delighted to help! And the party appreciate her so much that the princess player literally wants to get her knighted! This is actually not the first time I've had a runaway hit with an NPC; one game I ran had an NPC that a player immediately wanted to ship with. That was a good one...

The session before this one, the party managed to sidestep an event I had planned, but I'm glad I kept it quiet, because they came back around to it. Let me slip in a relevant detail about another NPC that ought to help them, as well. All in all, things are going great! I'm very happy I'm running this game!

[Mr EliteL]

Sounds like it's real fun running an RP game, still I think I'd be terrible at it though hell even taking part as a player, but I'd be better as the latter than as the host/runner. Cool it's working very well indeed though.

Very bad weather yesterday where I was, I had planned to go out by myself to the Expo in London for anime, games, films and such. However both the yellow warning weather and the fact Friday was sold out prevented me. I may have attempted it if I did get a ticket in time, though would have risked delays for trains. I had the day booked off but decided to relax inside at home.

Our BST ends tonight, going back an hour but I've already squandered the extra hour, well 40mins of it anyway so barely any extra sleep for me.

[Maniakkid25]

So I did something that I don't think I've ever done before: back a project on a Kickstarter-type website. I hadn't done it before because I never really saw a project where I was like "HELL YEAH, get me in on that!" But this time, I was like "Oh, I kinda want that; this'll probably be my easy way in."

The project is a translation of Sword World. If you've never heard of that, I don't blame you; it's a Japan-exclusive Tabletop RPG that has never seen release outside of that nation, despite having run since 1989. It was apparently inspired by Record of Lodoss War, to give you an idea of the pedigree we have here. It's a 2d6 system, so all the rolls (aside from damage) are on 2d6, and this project, according to the wikipedia page, has been in the works for a year. It looks interesting, even as a broke pirate, so I pledged for the Digital Deluxe Edition (Three PDFs -- Player's Handbook, GM Handbook, and Monster Manual, as well as support for a virtual tabletop of your choice, and some other goodies I don't care about). $175, but the site itself lets you pay in installments (interest-free, even!) if you give more than 150, so I'm fine with that.

And then I saw you can add on stuff, so I scrolled through it.

I lowkey do want the hardcovers, but there's no way to get the hardcovers AND the VTT support in one pack, and the VTT support is $35 EACH for each book, and the hardcovers as standalone add-ons are $55 per book, AND come with the PDF -- which I'm already getting. So, pass on all that. As a TTRPG gremlin, I had to get the dice set. You always need more dice. Always. That was an extra 20 clams right there (FOR DICE?!). And then I saw them: the plushies. There are three plushies you can buy, each based on a monster from the universe the game is set in. $29 each, but you can get the whole set for $77! At first, I tried to resist the siren's call, but I couldn't; they were so cute!

272 dollars total. That does not include taxes and shipping (The dice and plushies are physical objects, after all).

SO GLAD they allow payments in installments, because my bank account cannot handle that right now! Oh, and the project says they don't expect to ship until the end of next year, so I'm not even going to find out if I got screwed on this until about 2028! Great! Hopefully I didn't set $300+ on fire!

[Mr EliteL]

I haven't looked at a Kickstarter in ages, but that's really impressive the amount of stuff they're doing for every tier of backing, I can imagine how many people might be really excited. A translation of something like this is very welcome to be shared beyond the region it was created in.

Ah, reminds of an anime I watched that I really got into, however it didn't continue, and if I wanted to follow further with the story, they were in novels or something, but also not available in English or something, well at least back when I did watch it anyway. So I had to give up on it. Boo. Legend of the Legendary Heroes, yeah corny name but that didn't turn me away from the anime.