Tabletop QOTD 2020-06-17
Borrowing from the idea of the Pluspora Check-in get some tabletop conversation going. If you have any questions that you want to get on the list to be asked, let me know. Also, if you'd like to be added or taken off the list of participants, let me know.
Last time, we asked "In your opinion, what sets the truly great games apart from all the rest?"
In contrast to this, "What sets the truly memorable sessions apart from the rest? Do you have any examples of a session that sticks out in your mind?"
Memorable sessions usually consist of unplanned moments when something truly extraordinary happens.
#BoardGames
I have a few, but my most memorable one was in Shogun (Samurai Swords), where one player was decimated in the beginning, having only one army left, though it had a good composition. Normally, that wouldn't matter, as attrition hurts any army that cannot be replenished. But everyone else was rolling terribly that night, and he ended up somehow almost winning.
#RPGs
In one Rolemaster campaign based in Middle Earth, we had a series of bad choices that kept making the situation worse and worse.
It started with a 66 crit on our paladin that destroyed his helm, but did no other damage. Right after that, we found some loot- and in there was a helm. It turned out that it was a helm of opposite alignment.
The paladin's opposing deity which he now worshipped counseled him that a turning pont was coming and that he should hide his changes. I'll have to give it to the player- he played it well, and in retrospect, he threw out a lot of signs that he was no longer LG, but LE. But we ignored them.
The fellowship was ambushed because of information that he gave, and the split that happened because of Boromir happened because of this betrayal instead. We were tasked with taking up for the original fellowship and finding and shepherding Frodo and the hobbits. One of the nazgul attacked the party, and that's when the Paladin revealed himself, killing the hobbits, and throwing Frodo to the Nazgul, who took off with him.
The rest of us tried to recover from that, and get to Sauron before the ring did. We thought that we were fast enough, but we weren't, and ended up fighting Sauron at the height of his power. As we teleported in, he met us immediately with an amped up shock bolt of all things that incinerated one PC. Another attacked, and actually did damage- he cast 'Be Not' on that PC. The rest of us fled.
The only thing good about that encounter was that the PC that had 'Be Not' was one of those players that talks endlessly about his character's exploits. Whenever he started with "I remember when Renegade..." we'd interrupt him with "Who?"
#Tabletop #QOTD
@Eric Franklin
@frasersimons
@Board Games Forum
@Curt Thompson
@Douglas Bailey
@Jesse Butler
@Keith Davies
@Martin Ralya
@Martijn Vos
@Nathan V
@Marsha B
@Stuntman
@Moe Tousignant
@PresGas (OSR) Aspect
@Craig Maloney
@Patrick Marchiodi
@Nathan Norway
@silverwizard
@Stephen Gunnell
@Joseph Teller
@Charles M
Last time, we asked "In your opinion, what sets the truly great games apart from all the rest?"
In contrast to this, "What sets the truly memorable sessions apart from the rest? Do you have any examples of a session that sticks out in your mind?"
Memorable sessions usually consist of unplanned moments when something truly extraordinary happens.
#BoardGames
I have a few, but my most memorable one was in Shogun (Samurai Swords), where one player was decimated in the beginning, having only one army left, though it had a good composition. Normally, that wouldn't matter, as attrition hurts any army that cannot be replenished. But everyone else was rolling terribly that night, and he ended up somehow almost winning.
#RPGs
In one Rolemaster campaign based in Middle Earth, we had a series of bad choices that kept making the situation worse and worse.
It started with a 66 crit on our paladin that destroyed his helm, but did no other damage. Right after that, we found some loot- and in there was a helm. It turned out that it was a helm of opposite alignment.
The paladin's opposing deity which he now worshipped counseled him that a turning pont was coming and that he should hide his changes. I'll have to give it to the player- he played it well, and in retrospect, he threw out a lot of signs that he was no longer LG, but LE. But we ignored them.
The fellowship was ambushed because of information that he gave, and the split that happened because of Boromir happened because of this betrayal instead. We were tasked with taking up for the original fellowship and finding and shepherding Frodo and the hobbits. One of the nazgul attacked the party, and that's when the Paladin revealed himself, killing the hobbits, and throwing Frodo to the Nazgul, who took off with him.
The rest of us tried to recover from that, and get to Sauron before the ring did. We thought that we were fast enough, but we weren't, and ended up fighting Sauron at the height of his power. As we teleported in, he met us immediately with an amped up shock bolt of all things that incinerated one PC. Another attacked, and actually did damage- he cast 'Be Not' on that PC. The rest of us fled.
The only thing good about that encounter was that the PC that had 'Be Not' was one of those players that talks endlessly about his character's exploits. Whenever he started with "I remember when Renegade..." we'd interrupt him with "Who?"
#Tabletop #QOTD
@Eric Franklin
@frasersimons
@Board Games Forum
@Curt Thompson
@Douglas Bailey
@Jesse Butler
@Keith Davies
@Martin Ralya
@Martijn Vos
@Nathan V
@Marsha B
@Stuntman
@Moe Tousignant
@PresGas (OSR) Aspect
@Craig Maloney
@Patrick Marchiodi
@Nathan Norway
@silverwizard
@Stephen Gunnell
@Joseph Teller
@Charles M
Patrick Marchiodi
in reply to Chuck Dee • •Eric Franklin
in reply to Chuck Dee • •On the RPG end, the memorable sessions are more divided. The first group of memories are times when the party pulled off something that was notable - the 13th Age session when we all thought the magical items the GM was giving us were a trap so we handed them to a random Goblin, creating a 14th Icon in the process - or that has become a running gag (ask my L5R group about forks sometime ... ).
The other memories are when something out-of-character happened that impacted play in some way. The last D&D session before the DM moved across country for college, for example. The Epic Snack Run. The time my car earned the nickname 'Vortex' by arriving second.
Eric Franklin
in reply to Chuck Dee • •UnclePirate (Stan McCann)
in reply to Chuck Dee • •Hey @Chuck Dee, add me to the list. This looks like fun.
Chuck Dee
in reply to Chuck Dee • •UnclePirate (Stan McCann)
in reply to Chuck Dee • •@Eric Franklin My friend, Curtis also designed games. We played a game he simply called "Caves" many many nights. Characters were loosely based on Traveler tweaked to fit a dungeon crawler. The dice based dungeon generator was all his. The map, monsters and treasures were all generated as we "saw" it appear on the previously blank graph paper. He also invented the dice roll yes-no table for questions in his game; we used it in Traveler games too.
Keith Davies
in reply to Chuck Dee • •Round two:
Player 2: Genesis of a Goddess [dark] The council of evil dragons sacrificed five of their most powerful members (plus the capital city of the Empire, no big deal) to complete a ritual that creates... Tiamat.
Player 1: Can he _do _that?
Me: check palette I see nothing here that says he can't.
Player 1: ... okay, I guess we know how the Empire ends.
Me: Do you?
Keith Davies
in reply to Chuck Dee • •Time passes, months in real world, and we had flying galleons, with specialty gear that he didn't think through... especially clear to me when he let us hire troll mercenaries. (Which were great because not only did they hard to kill, they were so gung-ho they asked to not have parachutes so they could aim themselves when plummeting from our galleons.)
We were flying up on the campaign's BBEG when I asked the DM a couple of questions. Happily he had the integrity to play it straight.
"Trolls don't actually die unless they are totally immolated with fire or dissolved in acid, right?"
"Yeah, three hit points per round... and if they're cut into pieces, both pieces grow. It's how they reproduce."
"Hmm. According to my notes, it's all pieces, if they get cut up more than that."
"Yeah... wait, why?"
"No reason. 'LISTEM UP YOU TROLLISH BASTARDS! Want to make some REAL money? We will pay a bonus, full bubble to every last one of you that makes it back!'"
"Rawr!"
"FIRE UP THE WOOD CHIPPERS!"
"Wait, what?"
"You said..."
"Shit. I did too. 'RAAAWRRR!!'"
UnclePirate (Stan McCann)
in reply to Chuck Dee • •A GM didn't think it through when he told a group of us to design one item that we want. Instant tower, fully furnished and equipped. It got used as a HUGE bag of holding.
Moe Tousignant
in reply to Chuck Dee • •We weren't interested in playing cards so I made up an RPG on the spot.
It was called Pirates of THE Spanish Highlands and was one of the most ridiculous and over the top games I had ever run. It was 100% improvised.
For some reason, Barnacles were the currency in the game, and when you got XP a Sea Captain with 2 peg legs and 2 peg arms would roll into the scene cartwhealing on all his peg appendages and his head. Tink, tink, tink, ouch!, tink, tink, tink, tink, ouch, tink, ARR Ye get 10 XP, tink, tink, tink ouch, tink, tink, tink....
That was one of the most fun RPG sessions I've ever had in my life and the players all agreed. From that point onward I improvised a lot more in all of my games and went from spending like 20 hours a week prepping to maybe 2 hours.