A thread for D&D nonsense šŸ‰ āš”

Off Topic!!!
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Alright, initial brain dump of my current campaign, because itā€™s Saturday morning and I have a fresh cup of coffee and no one is awake to stop me.

The world is a wild-west era world, guns, cowboys, panhandling, saloons, etc., but entirely mundane in that real magic doesnā€™t exist. The PCs start out asleep in a sleeper compartment of a train on the way to the very furthest outskirts of the frontier, heading as far away from civilized society as possible for their various reasons. One of the PCs is a simple man named Clem who has a large family back home. Clemā€™s always wanted to be a doctor, but heā€™s never had the book-learning to get there. Instead heā€™s worked railroads and mines. The other two PCs are sisters, one a burlesque dancer and the other a pickpocket. Serena beguiles the marks with her singing and dancing, while Cass robs them blind. Everything was fine with their little con until they got in a tussle with a mob bossā€™ son and killed him in self defense. Ever since then theyā€™ve been on the run.

All three wake up for reasons unknown in the middle of the night. They poke their heads out of their respective sleeper compartments and see an old man in a robe - strange attire for the frontier. They confront him about what heā€™s doing and he waves a baton toward them. This baton glows a different color for each of of the PCs, and the old man is practically giddy about it. ā€œInteresting interesting,ā€ he says, ā€œcome with me and Iā€™ll explain everything.ā€

They reluctantly follow him through the diner car and the fancy sleeper car, back into the luggage compartment. There the man explains to them that heā€™s looking for a small ornate box, and that there is much to explain, but they need to find the box first. Naturally, the rogue finds it and immediately pockets itā€¦ Just as a shadow falls across the luggage compartment and attacks. The old man apologizes to the party and ZAP, theyā€™re gone from the train in a blinding white light.

Once they can see again, they find themselves in the lower branches of an enormous tree. At the base of the tree is a child, humanoid in appearance, and clearly hiding from the handful of humanoid bandits approaching. Curiously, the bandits are humanoid, but not human - one is a badger, another is a skunk, and a third is a wolf. The party leaps to action, two jumping down from the tree to protect the kid, ultimately dispatching the bandits.

Itā€™s then that the party realizes that they, too, are humanoid but not human. Cass, the rogue, is a ferret, Serena the burlesque performer is a frog, and Clem the hard worker is a dog. The child they rescued? A young preteen mouse named Oliver. Oliverā€™s family was on their way back from the big city when they were attacked and killed by the bandits - Oliver was sure to be killed as well if it had not been for this party of heroes stepping in to recue him.

The party escorts Oliver back to his small village only to find it razed to the ground, on fire, and with no survivors. Shell-shocked, Oliver and the party start making their way back to the big city to inform the authorities of everything that happened. Turns out Oliver is about 12/13 years old and has no other family, and that magic is very common here. The group establishes that this (animal form) is not how they typically look, and theyā€™re not sure whatā€™s happened here. Oliver, a kid, is not a lot of help in figuring things out on this front.

On their journey to the Big City, they happen across a cluster of dead bushes. Serena, unknowingly a sorcerer attuned to dragons, senses the panicked thoughts of a fairy dragon, and the group ultimately fights a handful of blights and frees a sprite and a pixie, as well as their tiny fairy dragon named Spot (of course). Turns out the Sprite, the Pixie, and a Dryad are a polyamorous throuple who have been tasked with protecting a world tree sapling.

The partyā€™s new friends offer them a shortcut to the Big City through fae spaces, and they portal through a tree into some kind of in-between planes fae region. They are gifted some fruit that restores their health and then pop out of the tree at the end of their shortcutā€¦ Right into the private chambers of the king. While the king is sympathetic that a village has been destroyed, he canā€™t just let people show up in his chambers unannounced and armed. The whole party is naturally thrown in prison.

However, a few hours after being locked away, a wall in their cell slides away to reveal a Monk (who is a fox, great roll on this one) who is there to bust them out.

ā€¦ And Iā€™ll leave the next piece for a follow-up post.

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I canā€™t look at Magic Missile spells the same way after playing Tiny Tinaā€™s Wonderland. At one point in the ā€œfantasyā€ game Mr. Torge the Bardbarian casts a ā€œmagic missileā€ and a bunch of ICBMs with ā€œMAGIC MISSILEā€ painted on them fly off and nuke the Dragon Lordā€™s fortress.

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This reminds me of a cart chase in a mine where my wizard decided to cast shrink on the cart the soldiers were in while it was zooming after them.

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In one of our old campaigns our party found a group of trolls were in the room at the bottom of a chute in a dungeon we needed to get past. The plan we came up with was to cast Resist Fire on the cleric, soak him in oil, light him up, and have him slide down the chute. The flaming lunatic appearing in their midst was enough of a distraction that the rest of us were able to get down safely.

Imagine our surprise when eight years later the Princess Bride movie stole our idea. :grin:

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See, this is why I f*cking love D&D. Creative problem solving of the hysterical caliber.

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I started out listening to Critical Role, which is 5th edition DnD. Then I joined a Pathfinder game, which is similar to DnD but somehow I think more rules and math, but I still get some of the elements mixed up with Dungeons and Dragons and my GM has to tell me ā€œNo, thatā€™s 5th edition, you canā€™t do that here.ā€ Then recently I played one game of Marvel/FASERIP as a guest with my other friends and had a hard time with it because I was baffled by the comparative LACK of rules :laughing:

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ā€œFineā€¦Iā€™ll be the healer.ā€ Brilliant and realistic D&D ref from Reptilicus.

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Been rolling since 1998 still play every other Tuesday

DnD4Lyfe

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Iā€™m currently reading the 2nd volume of the Vox Machina: Origins comic, but Iā€™ve yet to check out CR, because I have to do everything backward.

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Donā€™t worry, thatā€™s actually a pretty good place to start if youā€™re planning on watching the first campaign or The Legends of Vox Machina show. I never did get around to Critical Roleā€™s second or now third campaigns because thereā€™s so much content and Iā€™m bad at keeping up with podcasts so Iā€™d be listening to episodes for the next ten years but I did listen to all of Vox Machina and itā€™s a lot of fun!

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I used to play 2nd edition and 3rd edition. The later editions of Dungeons & Dragons just donā€™t appeal to me.

I want to try Pathfinder. Thatā€™s basically D&D 3.75 with all kinds of original classes like inquisitor, cavalier, oracle and gunslinger(!).

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This is what got me interested in 5e.

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Pathfinder is lots of fun, you should def try it out!

And I use the 5e (and all rules) reaaaaaaally loosely. Iā€™d rather write an interactive story than get bogged down in all the minutae of detailed rules. Besides, as the DM I can toss out rules at will, and I absolutely most definitely do. Heck, Iā€™m not even playing in a fantasy/medieval style world. What Iā€™m saying is: Screw the rules, just have fun.

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I was a pre 1st edition DnD player, and played my first game with Basic DnD (red box), and moved onto Expert (blue box), and then actually took a step back after having found a copy Chainmail, and a couple of the very first DnD pamphlet style books in a local second hand book store in the late '70s. I started high school in 1981, and that is where I met my fist really consistent group of players, and they were playing AD&D (1st edition, finally!).

We played throughout high school, and not just DnD. We branched out to Paranoia (still one of my favorites for a game or 2 as a break from more serious games), Traveller (SciFi RPG), and MERC (modern military RPG). During those years, we tended to rotate a bit as GM, so I got to try my hand as GM on a few occasions, but we had several other guys who were better at it than I.

I joined the USAF after high school, and although I did play a game or two during that period, I was far more interested in other things, like women, booze, rock nā€™ roll, and women. After the military and I got tired of each other, and they finally gave me general discharge, I found another group, that included my future wife. Second edition had come out a couple of years earlier, and I become the de facto GM. Shortly after I was married, we also started playing Shadowrun (SR, a dystopian near-future SciFi rpg combined with fantasy and magic). We alternated between DnD and SR throughout 2nd and 3rd editions, and also played the occasional White Wolf game (Changeling was my favorite). Even after my wife and I moved to another state, we quickly started up a new group, and kept on playing. That was until 4th edition came out. Every single one of us hated what was done with 4th ed, and after a couple of sessions we went back to the interim 3.5 ed. Fortunately Pathfinder saved us, and after moving halfway across the country again, we found another great group, who were also playing PF, and our 2 kids were playing by then as well. There were 2 other GMs in that group, so I got to spread my wings a bit as a player again. I also got to introduce them to SR, for which I was the exclusive GM, as it can be a very complex and overwhelming system rules wise.

That group lasted right up until the pandemic. We tried 5th edition, and while I agree it is better than 4th ed, I still had a lot of problems with it (and was not the only one). We quickly went back to PF, and for the record, the 5th and 6th editions of SR were not good either. So, recent years have been very light when it comes to role playing. My kids have both been playing 5th edition with different groups, mostly online during the height of the pandemic. And my 2 oldest grandkids, who are 7 and 8 years old are getting interested in role playing. I ran a 2 hour PF session with my granddaughter a couple of months ago, but she wasnā€™t quite ready for it, but the interest is still there, I just think she would do better with a lighter rules set. We have a few of those kind of systems laying around (FAST and QWAGS come to mind), but could also dust off the old basic set like we did with our kids.

Anyway, sorry if I derailed this thread a bit. @Amanda_Gregory your campaign sounds very creative, and a lot of fun. I may steal the anthropomorphic animal idea for a campaign with the grandkids, although I would likely change up the setting quite a bit.

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That can really be the key to running a good game. You have to know when to shortcut the rules, and just do something that is fun and keeps the game rolling. It can be a challenge if you have a rules lawyer in your group (been there a few times), but I have found that a good way to fix that issue is to actually have them run a session or two. In my experience this has cured every rules lawyer I have played with of their unwillingness to bend the rules, or hand-wave them entirely.

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Itā€™s Saturday, time for a second installment of ā€œAmandaā€™s D&D Brainchildā€

So the party escapes with Tobian, the fox-monk. As they journey, tobian explains that he is part of an order of monks and magic users. Eons ago the members of this order worshipped a mighty god, who taught them how to move between universes to find powerful magic users. You see, although there are different dimensions/universes in the material realm, magic is like an ether that flows through them all. Some dimensions - like that of the PCs - have been closed off to magic so that magic doesnā€™t manifest within the mundane world. Instead, these dimensions have served more like capacitors, charging up with magic for millennia. The Order, when serving En, were tasked with exploring these worlds and recruiting powerful magic users to the order.

However, eventually The Order discovered that En was evil and had some heinous plans that involved destruction of worlds on the material plane. Many of the worlds they had recruited from were devstated wastelands, others were ethical wastelands, rife with greed and politics and selfishness. Enā€™s minions werenā€™t limited only to the magic users of The Order, but included devils and demons, shadows and zombies, all manner of evil beings.

The Order was appalled. They had been party to so much evil spreading throughout the multiverse, so by the gods they were going to turn 180 and fight back against En. They donā€™t know the end-goal of Enā€™s plans, but they do know that any world that En touches is perverted into some hideous shadow of itā€™s former self. Part of The Orderā€™s strategy is to burrow their way into mundane universes (those that have been serving as magic capacitors) and essentially activate the magical powers of good beings there. Thatā€™s why the party has been drawn into this world (and what the old robed man promised to explain later).

Then, of course, they are attacked by shadows and the mannequin-like thug-creatures that supplied the shadows. The party is triumphant, but thereā€™s one last shadow out there stalking them. The group reaches a clearing with some very ancient ruins of a monastery and Tobian has them all join hands and the snowy winter world fades away and they find themselves in a very lush monastery buzzing with activity. The monastery is in a pocket dimension that shares physical space with the ruins so that it can remain hidden, and theyā€™ve been working on a variety of fun magical things to either help the devastated worlds, fight back against En, or find more magic users to join the fight. The party (of course) agrees to help out the Order - by golly, they just got magic, they need all the guidance they can get - and are told that they need to go back to their home world and tap into the magic there as much as possible, essentially ā€œgo home and train.ā€

The party goes through the teleportation process andā€¦ Wake up in their sleeper car beds in the early hours of the morning. Was it all a dream? The group immediately connects again and review the past 24 hours, agreeing that yes, indeed all of that DID happen. The train arrives at the final destination, the rogue picks a few pockets and they exit the train. Then, in the spirit of ā€œpractice,ā€ the pyromaniac sorcerer casts bonfireā€¦ On the coal car. Because coal is flammable, they basically just burned the train down. Thereā€™s mad chaos while pretty much the whole town scurries to put out the fire. No one will be leaving town on that train for awhile.

End of second session.

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Your gaming history sounds very similar to mine (except the kids part).

I first heard about D&D around 1977 or '78 when my aunt in California sent me a newspaper clipping about it. This was before the Satanic Panic but also before most non-geeks (including the reporter) could make heads or tails of it. They said only geniuses could understand the rules; you could play a samurai penguin if you wanted; and sometimes players went crazy and killed each other in steam tunnels. I was fascinated.

I bought the 1E Monster Manual hot off the press, before the actual rulebooks had come out. I obsessed over it and tried to make up my own rules for what to do with all those mysterious numbers.

Then I got the Blue Box basic set, which took you up through 3rd level. Saw my first dungeon map: Quasqueton, from the In Search of the Unknown module.

I became a huge fan of the game, especially the Forgotten Realms setting. When the Internet came along I made a complete index to Dragon magazine:

and also a complete bibliography to the Forgotten Realms (though I abandoned that upon the arrival of the hated 4th edition and the wrecking ball they took to the Realms.)

https://www.aeolia.net/realms/index.html

I have a vast collection of game materials, novels, mini figs and stuff from the White Box up to 3.5. (I have the PHB from 5e but havenā€™t bothered getting anything else.)

I switched to Pathfinder after 4e came out, and watched with satisfaction as it overtook 4e in popularity. But now, with 5e putting D&D back on top Paizo seems more interested in their new Starfinder sci-fi game, which I havenā€™t really looked into yet.

Outside of D&D and Pathfinder my favorite systems are Shadowrun and Ars Magica.

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You didnā€™t derail anything, this is a thread to talk about D&D nonsense (and also partly because I donā€™t have a lot of people to talk about my D&D campaign with).

And steal steal the ideas! I just wanted to throw something really adorable in there (and the sorcerer is hopelessly attached to Oliver the preteen mouse). ā€¦ I will not have hurt feelings if your adorable humanoid animals arenā€™t, you know, experiencing genocide.

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I think I was in 3rd (no, it was 5th?) grade when I discovered my dadā€™s 1E monstrous manual. I was obsessed, I took it with me everywhere and was totally fascinated by it. I really wish Iā€™d told him about it, I bet he wouldā€™ve taught me how to play. Unfortunately he died a couple of years later so I never had the chance to play D&D with my dad. He would have LOVED the campaigns Iā€™m running now though.

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I had a rule person in my last group and it was miserable. Way to play on my worries of inadequacy, GAH.

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