Best Version of DnD?

[TheAuldGrump]

I have been informed that I tend to play rascals, ne'er do wells, flirts, religious zealots, and elfholes.... (Swashbucklers, wizards, paladins, and magi, for Pathfinder. Nearly all some flavor of Good.)

 

The kids game went exactly as planned - and was followed by the party fleeing from a dragon that was a good deal less powerful than the one that they beat just a few weeks ago.

 

They also took a whole lot of damage while running away, mostly from the breath weapon - if I hadn't had the dragon turn off when they reached the edge of the swamp, it might have been a TPK.

 

If it sounds like I was being either overly cruel (chasing them with a dragon), or overly kind (letting them get away), then don't worry - in a few weeks they are going to need to talk with the dragon - who is a cranky old curmudgeon, that does not like trespassers. (Which is why he chased them off, rather than killed them - to warn others away from his swamp.)

 

The Auld Grump

[BlazingTornado]

Apparently what I end up doing a lot is "playing the good guy".

Which is true. None of the characters I ever rolled up inched south of the Good axis, in alignment terms.

 

And despite being forced to play the true neutral halfling thief in a terrible game of Lost Mines Of Flapdoodle, the DM still had to at one point remark "Why is the thief the voice of conscience for you guys?".

[Sylverthorne]

6 minutes ago, BlazingTornado said:

Apparently what I end up doing a lot is "playing the good guy".

Which is true. None of the characters I ever rolled up inched south of the Good axis, in alignment terms.

 

And despite being forced to play the true neutral halfling thief in a terrible game of Lost Mines Of Flapdoodle, the DM still had to at one point remark "Why is the thief the voice of conscience for you guys?".

 

If, at any point, the thief and the paladin start agreeing on something on moral grounds, /somebody is doing something wrong/. Like suggesting skinning sapient creatures to sell their hide for profit, for example. That happened. Our HEALER suggested doing this.

 

I've played a number of characters, of a variety of alignments, but it appears even the most lawful of lawful good have a strong practicality streak in them that occasionally prompts some .. interesting interpretations of what is good and right in the world. Including letting said rogue and healer enjoy the consequences of their actions when they decided to set up our oracle-sorcerer up on a blind date with a winter wolf.

All involved survived, by the way.

[Unruly]

7 hours ago, Cranky Dog said:

 

I've lived with the other extreme.

 

Players who always play the same character concept, over and over and over again. Most often, it's big male players who play tough warrior chicks with swords, or tough biker chicks with guns. And I use the term "chick" and not female, because their characters' temper and personality is quite atypical of women.

 

Oh yea, that gets annoying real fast with certain people and the characters they play. Oh, you're playing a "Chaotic Neutral" gnome wizard that's wandering as far away from the party as possible, using mage hand to pickpocket, starting fires, and stealing everything that isn't nailed down? That's such a wild break from your usual a "Chaotic Neutral" elf wizard that's wandering as far away from the party as possible, using mage hand to pickpocket, starting fires, and stealing everything that isn't nailed down. Whoops, looks like you wandered too far and got your Wizard dead. Time to roll up a - wait, you've already got one? And it's the wizards identical twin brother who also happens to have the exact same personality, mannerisms, skills, spell list, and stats? Go figure...

 

Me, I try to vary things. In my current game, which is sort of an episodic thing with a rotating DM and player/character roster, I've got a wizard, a thief, and a bard rolled up. The wizard is an old hermit of a mountain dwarf who strolls around wearing heavy armor, talks very rarely, and tries to use magic only when necessary because it makes him feel old to not be able to do things without it. The thief is a Half-Elf who's more than happy to frame other people for her crimes and just wants to be rich through any means necessary. The Bard is a smooth talking former counterfeiter who largely gave up the game after he got overconfident and his wife ended up dead as a result, so now he throws himself into dangerous situations because he wants to die but can't bring himself to commit suicide.

[TheAuldGrump]

10 hours ago, BlazingTornado said:

Apparently what I end up doing a lot is "playing the good guy".

Which is true. None of the characters I ever rolled up inched south of the Good axis, in alignment terms.

 

And despite being forced to play the true neutral halfling thief in a terrible game of Lost Mines Of Flapdoodle, the DM still had to at one point remark "Why is the thief the voice of conscience for you guys?".

I had a very similar incident - human Thief character... but the GM was talking to the paladin, who was breaking open coffins in a lich's tomb and looting them..... (My character was about sticking to the mission, killing the lich, and getting out.... looting tombs is a good way to get dead. And, sure enough, the paladin finally broke open the wrong coffin, and had his soul sucked out.)

 

The Auld Grump

[Unruly]

I just realized that my bard is almost a dead ringer for Ixidor from the Onslaught cycle of Magic the Gathering. He's even got  the same penchant for illusions. All he's lacking is the ascent to godlike power.

Edited March 22, 2017 by Unruly

[Dilvish the Deliverer]

6 minutes ago, Unruly said:

I just realized that my bard is almost a dead ringer for Ixidor from the Onslaught cycle of Magic the Gathering. He's even got  the same penchant for illusions. All he's lacking is the ascent to godlike power.

"all he is lacking, so far, is the ascent to godlike power"

[Unruly]

As much as I'd like him to, I doubt I'll be allowed to have him develop the ability to literally shape the world around him and bring images from his imagination to life as living, breathing things capable of their own natural reproduction. I mean, we're talking about being able to create things as powerful as demigods. If that ever happens, my bard will no longer be my bard but an NPC. Otherwise I could simply imagine things into and out of existence at will. And since we're based in Sigil, I don't think the Lady of Pain would like that a power has taken up residence inside her city.

[BlazingTornado]

1 hour ago, TheAuldGrump said:

I had a very similar incident - human Thief character... but the GM was talking to the paladin, who was breaking open coffins in a lich's tomb and looting them..... (My character was about sticking to the mission, killing the lich, and getting out.... looting tombs is a good way to get dead. And, sure enough, the paladin finally broke open the wrong coffin, and had his soul sucked out.)

 

The Auld Grump

Mine was more of a "We really should rescue the player character currently being gang*expletivedeleted* by some hobgoblins" which somehow, the Lawful Good Fighter and the Chaotic Good Wizard thought wasn't worth their time. I mean even ignoring alignments it's a dick move to just abandon a player's character to their very invasive doom.

[TheAuldGrump]

4 hours ago, BlazingTornado said:

Mine was more of a "We really should rescue the player character currently being gang*expletivedeleted* by some hobgoblins" which somehow, the Lawful Good Fighter and the Chaotic Good Wizard thought wasn't worth their time. I mean even ignoring alignments it's a dick move to just abandon a player's character to their very invasive doom.

Heck, for something like that, even the few evil characters that I have played would speak out.

 

Sounds like the players were not very immersive in their role play....

 

The Auld Grump - though my few evil characters tend to be of the 'end justifies the means' persuasion.

[BlazingTornado]

35 minutes ago, TheAuldGrump said:

Heck, for something like that, even the few evil characters that I have played would speak out.

 

Sounds like the players were not very immersive in their role play....

 

The Auld Grump - though my few evil characters tend to be of the 'end justifies the means' persuasion.

It was... really hard to immerse. He just kept throwing random nonsense at us at the cost of the main plot. Whatever tiniest hanging thread of the module's proper plot had vanished maybe three sessions earlier.

[TheAuldGrump]

Ah, so a case of the GM getting the players that he has created....

 

Ugh.

 

I still remember my very first game - where the GM let his best friend cast Charm Person on the entire party, and pretty much play the game all by himself.

 

When we told the GM and his best friend to cut it out the GM replied with 'No. What are you gonna do, have the game without me?'

 

In turn, we answered 'Yes.' And kicked both the GM and his buddy out of the game.

 

Which is how I ended up becoming a GM for the first time - even though I was younger than any of the other players. (The power of being the only one that wanted to GM.)

 

Gods, my first game was bad... but about a million times better than that yahoo's.

 

The Auld Grump

[BlazingTornado]

Yeah.

 

The game ended up abruptly stopping just a few sessions afterwards... We moved from Wednesdays to Saturdays to accomodate a player's new schedule, then never had a session there because of "exams" and that's the last I heard of the DM and another of the players. That was almost a year ago, exams in jolly old England sure take longer than those in Canada.

 

Meanwhile, I'm still at a loss as to what to run. My players are going to finish Rahasia at level 4... I wanted to do Dwellers of the Forbidden City but I just cannot find good battlemaps for it, and there's three or four monsters that just do not have 5th edition statistics, and nobody seems to have homebrewed them either.

[Sylverthorne]

Make some? Nobody complained when I said 'fraggit, I'mma map this stupidity my own self' and handed them the finest in hand-drawn graph-paper madness.

Well. They complained, but mostly because I /could not get the damn graph to line up/. I made the next one gridless, and that worked a little better, other than there were still places where the corners were hinky as balls. :/

 

Monsters are harder than maps. Which reminds me, I need to stat me some alarm peafowl and attack geese...

[BlazingTornado]

This is played on Roll20. If this were in person I'd probably always just use one of those re-drawable grids or something...

 

I've sadly cultivated some expectations with proper battlemaps for Keep on the Borderlands and Rahasia...

 

I've found homebrews for the Pan Lung and Yellow Musk Creeper and its zombies... Nothing for the Tasloi though.