#ttrpg stories

[thearcanecat]

Update on the Hatchetfield One-shot I ran!

The game started off with a talent show. Richie did magic tricks and roped Pete into helping. They had a few mishaps but overall it went well. Grace recited digits of pi and then started a sermon and had to be escorted off stage. Stacy did cheer with the rest of the cheerleaders. Steph played piano and actually won the talent show. Her reward was a pair of purple glasses and a coupon to Pasquali’s.

The glasses let Steph see Sigglette, who was routing through Pete’s bag and stole his chocolate bar. Pete’s player actually brought a chocolate bar so that got passed around the whole session depending on which character had it. Richie, Ruth and Ted all encouraged Pete to talk to Steph. He eventually got invited to go to Pasqualli’s with her. Grace’s parents were disturbed by the swearing in other student’s songs and went to go complain to the Principal. Steph went to talk to Snigglette, who was invisible to anyone who hadn't touched the glasses. This is something I would change if I ran it again, since it took longer than I expected for the glasses to get passed around. I would just let the party be able to see her from the beginning. Steph got the chocolate bar back, and told Snigglette she should talk to the cops if she was in trouble. Snigglette followed Steph to Pasqualli’s. Richie and Ruth decided to follow Pete, but didn’t actually have a ride so Pete had to drive them to the restaurant so they could continue stalking him.

I made a word search with eye-themed words in it. Steph’s player had the most fun with that. Stacy put the glasses on and was able to see Snigglette. She fed her breadsticks. Pete also got the glasses and after Snigglette mentioned Blinky takes away food as punishment, called the police. Grace, seeing people talk to thin air, though they were high and threw holy water at Steph. This caused a scene so basically everyone in the restaurant was watching them and Grace got kicked out. She met Max, who tried to flirt unsuccessfully. When Max entered Pasqualli’s, Richie hid under the table. Max bullied Pete, who eventually left the restaurant. Richie and Ruth snuck out with him as well. Officer Bailey finally showed up, and upon seeing no purple child in distress, left, because the police in Hatchetfield are not good at their job.

Everyone went home. Stacy asked Richie to tutor her and he took three hours to respond to her email. Ruth and Pete were coaching him in what to write but had opposite advice. Stacy was asleep by then but Richie got a simple “yes” in response. In the morning, both assumed it was a glitch in the system.

At school the next day, rumors have spread about each character. During calculus, they receive a creepy math problem with their names in it. At some point they got a different paper after realizing someone was off. They tossed the creepy paper in the trash, but Snigglette picked it up. Pete gave Richie, who then gave Grace, the glasses so that everyone could see Snigglette. Stacy started feeding Snigglette candy. Richie started theorizing and trying to figure out what was going on. Purple writing started to appear on his notebook, introducing itself as Blinky.

Stacy and Brenda went to the bathroom during passing period and Steph could see graffitied rumors on the wall that Brenda couldn't. Steph saw a purple figure in the mirror, but no one was there when she turned around. During lunch, Max, now with purple tinted eyes, leapt up on a table and started shouting rumors about people. Richie and Pete ran to the library to escape him. Max was eventually sent to the counselor's office.

In the library, Richie and Pete tried to research Blinky. They found a few newspapers from 1824, but nothing much. They decided to try the public library instead. Butas everyone left school, Max stood in front of Stacy’s car, continuing to spill secrets. Richie hid from him under the car, and rolled from car to car to escape. Stacy and Steph, not used to being on the receiving end of Max’s bullying, were frightened. Grace ignored Max’s continuous flirting attempts and went to babysit Tim. Pete had a vision of hitting Max over the head with a nearby metal pipe and Stacy had a similar vision of hitting him with her car. Pete threw the pipe, not trying to hit Max, just to get his attention, which worked. Pete managed to lose him in the school, ending up in the counselor's office with volunteer counselor Dan Reynolds. He pretended he just needed to grab a college pamphlet and then left. I don’t think I did a great job roleplaying Max. It’s not a character trope I’m used to playing, so I don’t think he came off as threatening enough, which messed with some things later down the line.

Pete and Richie went to the public library to do more research. Steph and Stacy went there to try and study. Grace ended up there because Tim needed to check out a book. Richie found more newspapers about Willabella. He also found that there was a Black Book that had been checked out 15 years ago, but the name of the person who took it was corrupted. They used Snigglette’s ability to reveal it. It shifted between two names, Holloway and Holliday. Googling Holloway got one article about Miss Retro’s shutting down and Holliday had nothing, although Grace recognized it as the name of the last guidance counselor.

Miss Tessburger tracked down Steph and told her that a rumor was spreading that Steph was pregnant. Tessburger tried to take her phone, but was unsuccessful. My dice really betrayed me today. I rolled like 5 ones. Miss Tessburger left, and soon after all the players received a call from a mysterious person. Surprise, surprise, it’s Blinky! He threatened to spill more of their secrets but couldn’t get much in before Snigglette shut down all the phones again. That ability turned out to be the only one they used the whole session.

The party got off track for a bit here, because Blinky was supposed to give them more directions but they shut him down really quick. Richie, Pete and Steoh decided to go to Miss Retro’s. Stacy and Grace went home. Their parent’s have all heard a terrible rumor about their kids. Stacy heard that one of the cheer squad said Stacy was blackmailing her. She tried to vent to Brenda about it, but she took the other girl’s side. Grace’s parents had heard she slept with Max and were terrified she was going to go to Hell.

At Miss Retro’s, Steph managed to pick the lock, only to immediately trigger a trap and get thrown several feet with minor injuries. Inside, they found the Black Book and the Blade of Truth. All the players loved the props, which made me very happy. They characters were very cautious with the Book, rather unwilling to complete the ritual given that Max didn’t feel like enough of a threat to justify it. Richie did have an interesting idea that since the spell is designed to bring retribution on someone who has wronged them, they could ask for the target to be Blinky himself. They didn’t end up going this route, but I really liked it and would have allowed it.

They went back home. Richie’s rumor was that he got a virus from downloading anime that locked his parent’s out of their bank accounts. Pete’s was that he made drugs in the chemistry lab. Steph decided not to go home, and slept at Stacy’s instead.

The next day, they shared all the information they had gathered. Grace asked about Miss Holliday, since she had talked with her before. Grace found a letter of administrative leave, addressed to Holliday. The party used Snigglette’s ability to see all her emails, finding ones addressed to Duke, and one incoming email from a WCross that just said “found ya.”

The thing is I specifically made Holloway absent, because she’s my favorite character and I knew if I put her in I would get distracted and have her solve all the problems. The party was supposed to go to the counselor’s office and need to distract Dan, but they never did that so I gave them the Book earlier, at Miss Retro’s.

They talked to Duke, because Grace also had a connection to him, since he was trying to get her to see what her church was really like. At this point, I was trying to move things along so they didn’t spend too long with Duke. He mentioned that Miss Holliday had written him a goodbye letter and then vanished a few ago. Most of the rest of the party’s questions triggered the memory curse, so he couldn’t give them much more. But Snigglette broke into his phone and they got the letter and address of Miss Holliday.

Back at Miss Retro’s, they found Holliday’s dead body stabbed by the Black Blade, because they were going in a weird direction and I was trying to get them back on track and had already committed to not having her be in this. Case in point, Richie asked about trying to revive her with the Black Book and I had to stop myself from going on a tangent about all my headcanons about the immortality deal. But then Richie had the idea to use the Blade of Truth, since it’s the opposite of the Black Blade. Creative idea, so I rolled with it and let him ask one question of the knife, which it would answer. He asked if there was a way other than the ritual, to stop Blinky. The answer was to bore Blinky so much he gave up. This was a potential solution I had in mind, but it was the one I least expected them to go for. I really wanted them to do the ritual but Max hadn’t been established as enough of a threat to risk summoning a Lord in Black.

But they were back on track and decided to be very boring. A bit anticlimactic, but a rare happy ending for a Hatchetfield story. Richie didn’t watch any anime and just read history books instead. Grace stopped trying to cancel Prom, and didn’t evangelize to anyone. Pete stopped going on Instagram and posting fun science facts. Steph got tutored by Pete and had to only focus on math and avoid any flirting. Stacy shut herself in and watched crime dramas instead of hanging out with friends.

At the end of the week, they all got another call from Blinky, which they ignored. He then appeared in his human form and tried to chase them down. They pretended he didn’t exist and just talked over him, which infuriated Blinky until he finally just left. They beat a Lord in Black by just ignoring him. I love it.

The players were interested in a session two, so I might run an Abstinence Camp themed one with the same characters. Overall, I had a lot of fun. It has been a year-long endeavor convincing enough of my friends to watch Starkid to run this. I liked the sandbox feel, where the whole town is open for exploration. Having phones isn’t in the Kids on Bikes ruleset, but I really liked how it let people communicate even when the party was split. Watching people puzzle out the lore was fun, that’s something I’d want to be more prepared for next time, having satisfying answers rather than just killing off Holloway. This was my first time running Kids on Bikes, so next time I want to ask for more rolls and encourage people to spend their Adversity Tokens. Richie had Unassuming, which he used a lot. Grace and Pete both used Intuitive, but besides that, not many Tokens got used. They never got low on Psychic Energy Token either and only used one ability. I think it would help if I played less of the Powered Character. I played Snigglette when introducing her and when they had lore questions, which was pretty often. All of us are most familiar with D&D, so no one was used to co-controlling a character. Next time, I would just hand out the cards and let people go from there, even if it ends up straying pretty far from what I had in mind for the character.

Notes on the One-shot

Props

#hatchetfield #starkid #team starkid #ttrpg #ttrpg stories #kids on bikes #blinky #bliklotep #nerdy prudes must die #peter spankoffski #stephanie lauter #stacy npmd #grace chasity #richie lipschitz #max jagerman #the arcane cat can talk

[rollforfelicity]

This Saturday at 2pm EST I'm discussing TTRPG stories from across the internet (or, let's be real, across Reddit) with DreamyEtude and CaptainFreestar! We'll laugh, we'll cry, we'll grimace, come join us!

(And don't forget, if you have a story you want us to discuss, you can email [email protected] OR send me an ask!)

#ttrpg stream #ttrpg #streaming #ttrpg stories #ttrpg advice

[aquadestinyswriting]

For https://www.tumblr.com/aquadestinyswriting/743860231901249536/fanfic-writers-directors-cut?source=share

⭐stars⭐

~@duckingwriting

Hey thanks for the ask.

I have a bunch of WIPs on the go at the moment, but the one I'm dying to talk about most right now is probably one I'm still outlining.

I've made no secret that my writing is based on an old D&D campaign and the WIP I'm outlining is based on events that took place in it. It's the one about the attempted assassination/kidnapping at the Plot Hook, during drinks to celebrate the genesis of what will later become known as the Special Recondite Unit (or SRU). I've been having a lot of thoughts about what Selene's thoughts were at the time, because in the actual session she was seemingly quite calm about the whole thing and really only started getting upset when she was essentially placed under house arrest for her own safety.

Having listened back to the recording though, I'm starting to realise that Selene was utterly terrified the whole time. It's not the first time there's been an attempt on her life; she made a lot of enemies that she wasn't allowed to track down and take care of once she became the Grand Magus of Toreguarde. However, the fact that they're not just after her, but Elowyn (her adopted niece) as well... That's not on.

There's also the little issue that due to having had a case of Burnout not that long ago in the timeline, Selene can still cast her most powerful spells, but that comes at the cost of causing herself quite a bit of pain while doing so right now (something I only recently decided would be a thing, so as far as the game canon goes, she just does a remarkable job of hiding it until she's alone).

So, picture this: you're an extremely powerful wizard who is terrified for her own life and that of the only family you currently have left (because almost everyone else either up and left and/or died, and your partner's not due back for another 2-3 days). You can't just fireball the assassins to death like you want to because that would probably destroy the pub and catch your niece and her friends in the blast as well, so you use a couple of utility spells to help instead. Besides, your niece and her friends are winning anyway, so no big deal. Unfortunately you have to cast a Dominate Person because the lead assassin is being an ass and not giving up despite losing. It takes, things calm down and you help to get all the bad guys down to the nearest police station using a Teleport spell. Casting at least two or three high level spells, which shouldn't be a huge deal considering how powerful a wizard you are, has left you feeling very tired, a little ill and with extremely sore fingers. You are doing your very best to not outwardly show any of this to avoid worrying anyone, especially your niece. Then you realise that said niece, who's life you probably saved with that Dominate spell, is pissed at you for using it. Then she has the gall to unilaterally decide that, for your own safety, you need to be confined to your office for an indeterminate amount of time with eyes on you at all times despite her also being included in the contracts the assassins had to kill you both... Well, one included your death and the Domination of your niece; presumably so the bad guys could use her to kill you if the assassins didn't manage it, which, frankly, is way worse, and probably gives you ptsd flashbacks to a very similar situation that happened a couple of years prior.

Given all of the above, I think Selene's a little entitled to lose her rag a bit. However, she manages to shove her anger, fear, pain etc way, way down and complies. But not before getting into Elowyn's face and outright dead-naming her while telling her the two of them will have 'a little chat' later. Then she Teleports out because Gods forbid she lets on about having issues casting by *le gasp* walking back to her office.

Needless to say, this is one of those WIPs that is at once going to be a tonne of fun to write, but so damn stressful at the same time. D&D; giving both players and the GMs trauma and strong feelings* about fictional arguments and scenarios for 60 years!

*Only if the GM and players get extremely invested in the world and characters, which we did.

#writeblr asks #aqua rambles #ttrpg stories #writing meta #I have to wonder what the neighbours thought was going on when we had stressful/heated sessions #some of them got pretty loud

[incoherentmuses]

it is once again Time For OSHA posting because no-one can stop me. i have so many stories from The Shattering it’s frankly ridiculous, so here’s another, from early in the campaign, an event the players christened:

Reverse Vore-ing The Purple Worm

picture it. you’ve sent your players into a Cool Underground Dwarven Complex. It’s half mines of moria and half strip mall. one of the dwarven ladies has taken to hero-worshipping the paladin, and you’ve successfully stripped the party of a significant amount of their funds via shitpost magic items in the giftshop.

(those cheap ass stones of farspeech became integral to the game and it was my own fault so now they can send gifs and get drunk texts from their IC wives so this is the life i live)

however, Plot Must Be Found, but before the dwarves will be of any help, they want the party to do something for them. part of the lower levels of the complex—Dul Kidrak, by the way, one of the cooler names I’ve invented over the years—is infested with goblins. please could the PC’s clear them out so the dwarves can get on with some rebuilding?

sure! goblins, schmoblins, this is zero problem for the budding OSHA guild, at this time iirc a whopping level 3. maybe four. it’s been a minute, and i levelled them too fast in campaign one. mistakes were made.

they venture down to the lower levels, and quickly find themselves embroiled in combat with a collection of goblins. they are, naturally, stunningly overpowered already and chew through them at speed. however, i was prepared for this and had outfitted the goblins with a secret weapon: a reduced-threat purple worm. partially because the monk has Purple Worm Trauma in his backstory, and partly because the idea of a goblin having a pet baby purple worm was very appealing.

so the worm shows up and the party go ‘hm, well, that’s a problem.’ but dnd parties are nothing if not Improbable Solution Factories, and so a Solution they did find. the solution first involved Draghull getting partially eaten by the worm so. you know. strong start.

was this on purpose? it’s been a few years, i can’t remember. knowing OSHA, probably it was. at any rate, the paladin being eaten is something of an issue, but never fear, Owyn is here!

‘i cast enlarge on Draghull’ says Owyn, proceeding to turn the gold dragonborn paladin into Baby Godzilla.

said Pacific Rim knockoff then proceeds to hack and slash his way through the purple worm from the inside out, eventually emerging from its tail like the worlds shiniest chestburster, covered in goo and screaming.

this kills the purple worm. naturally.

success all around, the dwarves are happy (the goblins less so) and the PCs get the help they want.

‘but muses!’ i hear you cry ‘none of that was vore at all! i am sorely disappointed by the lack of eating-based fetish in this overwrought dungeons and dragons story!’

now here is where you’re wrong, i reply, taking your face gently in my hands. there was vore. Draghull got eaten. and then he came out of the worm, instead of being digested by it, and because my players are my players, this phenomenon is called Reverse Vore and it is a firmly enshrined, Patented OSHA Tactic™ that they will use given half a chance.

so go ahead and take that one to your table. Reverse Vore your way out of anything your DM has eat you—they’ll thank you for it, i promise.

(once again tagging @controlledchaosetc and @itusebastian, lmk if you wanna be untagged, and anyone else who wants OSHA updates, lmk if you want to be tagged for them!)

#dungeons and dragons #dnd #dnd stories #dungeons and dragons stories #ttrpg #ttrpg stories #osha posting #osha dnd #not art #questionable player tactics are all fun and games until they start ‘reverse vore’-ing multiple monsters #osha have been eaten so many times its not even a joke at this point

[zbdragons]

So I've been in a ttrpg group for around a year now. Which is amazing bc I made new friends with people I knew already but wasn't really close to.

But we've had trouble keeping a campaign going. I've made tons of characters, which is good because it allowed me to really look into the wiki and learn a lot since I had never played pathfinder before. I kept trying to make different fun, interesting and original concept everytime, but tbh since we never went past one or two sessions, sometimes never even starting them, for our last one I wasn't really feeling it. I didn't want to pit too much effort in making my character sheet so I went for what I felt was a simple concept.

A half orc berserker, who value strength above almost everything else, and flirts by fighting.

Well we played yesterday. And he was sooo fun to play. And everyone loved him. And we've already started a semi regular schedule for this campaign so I have good hope that this is the one that will take off ??

I would say that sometimes simplicity is the best but I think it's actually the himbo effect that won everyone over. Also maybe bc by joining a random competition first thing in the session, and accidentally destroying the rented wooden sword, I won an amazing item that already made our life way easier.

#the item was a robe of useful items #in which we got amongst others a portable ram a mule and enough war dogs to make a small pack #pathfinder #ttrpg stories

[alaughingcrow]

I am having.... a time, in DnD.

I am doing my best to play a character who is incredibly sketchy despite not being actually evil.

And I am putting the details under the read-more because this got long.

Like imaging you're in a group, alright, and this guy joins and he's got a big brand scar on his face - like the kind they do to criminals to ID them/keep them publicly ostracized. And he's a priest - but he won't tell you what god he serves, you just know it's to do with dead things (specifically: Grave Cleric - big on grave rights and things staying in the grave) and the symbol of his office is a pair of manacles that he never takes off his wrists. Also he's missing the front half of his tongue. He very occasionally makes some reference to having elf blood but he looks very human so you figure it was a few generations back. This is weird but not unrecoverable territory to open a campaign with.

You get stuck in a pocket dimension with this man (Barovia, we're playing Curse of Strahd). You find out he has a daughter he's never previously mentioned and you've never seen despite working with him for months. He makes a deal with a witch to ensure her life. (this witch also very explicitly bakes other children into pies, one of which he has eaten but this was pre-cannibalism confirmation (though post suggestion of cannibalism)). A few days later he resurrects a guy and then just kinda has the ability to drain his life force if he wants to.

He dies, in a cursed ass looking temple because this is Barovia. This is a sad but normal occurrence because this is Barovia and everything here is terrible and/or wants to kill you. Except then this giant spider made of smoke crawls out of his mouth and resurrects/transforms him and now he looks like an actual half elf and his brand's gone but his tongue is back (if a bit weird)(his eyes are dark voids now too - no distinction of pupil/iris/sclera). You ask him about this and he just... doesn't explain shit. (the answer is he's a warlock now but again, you don't know this (you also don't know his patron's the goddess of murder)).

Little while later you save a gang of kids from a bunch of werewolves and one of them is this sketchy wizard kid who tricks the ranger into letting him copy his memories (which involves the ranger getting hit with >50hp in psychic damage). This kid then disappears in the night and shows up the next morning with a pair of reanimated corpses. For no reason you can perceive, the Grave Cleric is just... fine with this. Apparently he helped dig them up. (You were not there for the discussion on the ethics of reanimating corpses not inhabited by souls).

And for some fucking reason you do not stop to question this. Or talk to the other party members about this. Or ever think that maybe you shouldn't trust this guy.

Like I am out here doing shit and the rest of the gang is like 'yeah this is normal'. Except for the Barbarian who's mostly just decided it's not his problem to deal with.

#DnD #D&D #d&d story #dnd story #dungeons and dragons #dnd shenanigans #ttrpg #ttrpg stories #curse of strahd #gods are weird #clerics will kill you #this one won't #but you have more than a little bit of evidence to the contrary #cleric #dnd cleric

[hypnagogic-marshmallow]

Things my snimbo (snake himbo) did during the Clothes Shopping Session last night:

-poked at his bestie's cool new tentacle tattoo

-learned what the word 'pastel' means

-made friends with the fantasy space equivalent of a bed bug

-made friends (?) with a fantasy space pill-bug man named Phil (who wears a sweater vest and lil glasses)

-narrowly avoided being hatecrimed by a racist shopkeep

-gave a pair of knee high socks to his cool new friend with Legs

Things my snimbo did not do during the Clothes Shopping Session last night:

-purchase clothing

#ttrpg #ttrpg stories

[frogblast-the-ventcore]

Home On The Strange

So, here we go.

Home on the Strange was the first successful TTRPG campaign that I ever ran - I'd tried running some games of Shadowrun in college, but that system is uh, iffy, to say the least, even if the setting is amazing.

I'd started watching an excellent YouTuber named Seth Skorkowsky, who praised Call of Cthulhu as a TTRPG system, so I got really into the idea of running a game of it.

And then I watched Cowboys and Aliens for the second time.

And thus was born the seed of Home on the Strange.

Setting:

I eventually settled on using the Pulp Cthulhu additional ruleset, to fit the tone of Cowboys and Aliens best.

I decided on a homebrew setting in Wyoming, and created Serpent Springs, Wyoming to serve as the hub location for the campaign.

I decided on a year of 1899 for the campaign, to potentially use themes of "the end of the Wild West" and the upcoming turn of the 20th century. Didn't really go there outside NPC backstories, though.

And then I mostly copy-pasted the plot of Cowboys and Aliens, replacing the generic aliens from the film with the Mi-Go.

I actually made an entire map of the town center, the information on which went little used.

In general, I overprepared for the campaign. But I blame that on my hyperfixation setting itself firmly to "learn everything about late 1890s Wild West".

But I digress. Onto the cast next!

Cast:

I'd gotten a group of five players for the campaign, and after character creation we had the following player characters:

1. Minerva "Missy" King: local prostitute/saloon girl, the cast's social expert, eventual Monsterfucker. She had the most inconsistent luck with combat rolls I've ever seen, and eventually flipped off Nyarlathotep to his face (indirectly).

2. Colby: Town doctor, innately curious, eventual magic-using Snakeman.

3. Sam Walker: sheriff's deputy, first to fail a SAN check, eventual single-handed killer of the "final boss".

4. Constance "Connie": local semi-hermit, sharpshooter, and grumpy old lady, also eventually became a Snakewoman.

5. Violet Brown: another sheriff's deputy, skilled at weaponry and charm, already a Monsterfucker prior to the game start due to her intimate relationship with Sheriff Jane, whom she eventually married post-game. Her player dropped out about 1/3rd of the way through due to not vibing with the non-combat aspects of Call of Cthulhu.

Major NPCs:

1. Sheriff Jane Rodgers: Civil War veteran, holder of highly progressive ideas for criminal investigation, excellent gunslinger, Fancy Lesbian Werewolf™, eventual wife of Violet.

2. Chief Deputy Jacob "Jake" Langford (aka Ara'ssa): Rattlesnake-inspired serpentman, former leader of a criminal gang called the Rattlers, part time bounty hunter, mammal chaser, husband of Woodrow Langford, ex-Fang of Yig (a serpentperson who is a direct servant/occasional vessel of the Great Old One Yig, in exchange for increasing one's willpower/ability with magic. Very much the Power Bottom Himbo to his husband's Catty Gay Service Top.

3. Chief Deputy Woodrow Langford: Just a Guy™, former second-in-command of the Rattlers criminal gang, part time bounty hunter alongside his husband, Catty Gay Service Top to his husband's Power Bottom Himbo. Very skilled at many things of the illegal varieties.

4. Delilah Wrangler: Current leader of the Rattlers gang, lover of Old Garrison, possessed of bright red hair after a magical incident with the Rattlers and an underground K'n'yan city. Eventual wife of Missy King.

5. Old Garrison: Giant old-man Grandpa Ghoul, born in the mid-1750s, fought in the Revolutionary War. Lover of Delilah Wrangler, owner of the Biggest Iron™, very much inspired by Goris the albino deathclaw. Eventual husband of Missy King.

6. Buzz: conscientious objector Mi-Go who eventually helped the PCs stop his people's kidnapping of innocents and razing of towns. Outfitted in the Mi-Go equivalent of MJOLNIR armor from Halo.

Note: I may have missed some.

Next post will be the first part of the recap.

#rpg stories #call of cthulhu #tabletop rpg #ttrpg stories #ttrpg stuff #pulp cthulhu #home on the strange

[dungeonsandblorbos]

Fire. Air. Water. Earth. For nearly 50 years, Avatar Kyoshi has fought to bring peace and order to the four nations. Despite her best efforts, much of the world is still in turmoil. After the fall of Chin the Conqueror, the Earth Kingdom fell into disarray as his former generals turned on one another and skirmished for territory. Fire Lord Zoryu continues to work a quiet but persistent political maneuver to snuff out the power of the Fire Nation’s great clans and consolidate influence under his own personal banner. The seas, for a time made clearer by the destruction of the pirate fleets of the Fifth Nation, now find themselves facing an ever growing number of a new generation of marauders who see opportunity in chaos and are determined to find their fortunes amidst the confusion…

#had our first session of our avatar game today #and our gm busted out this fantastic intro to set the stage #it does not quite set the tone however #because it's only our first session but we've already committed to so much chaos #bo and li have decided to let an elephant rat loose on the ship #as retaliation for aila's harsh leadership style #aila just started a bar fight by pouring her drink . . . on the person who bought her the drink #meanwhile onartok is just chilling buying tea and stationery #our ship is called the confusion for a reason #aila ruike #avatar legends: the rpg #avatar the last airbender #atla #atla oc #ttrpg stories #hot gay pirates in your area!

[bemotu]

A Cold Freezing Night

Cold was an understatement; that night was frigid, so unusually freezing even for a city like New York. People in the building had brought out reinforcements– heated blankets, space heaters, and the like, anything to brace the winter that had seemed to slip its way into each apartment. At some point in the night, a spark caught; the occupants of the apartment it started in rushed out as soon as they noticed, carelessly leaving their front door wide open for the fire to spread. I was asleep when it happened, peacefully dreaming of whatever six-year-olds dream about when I felt myself being quite literally ripped from my sleep; I don’t think my eyes were even fully open when my mother pulled me out of bed, rushing us out the door.

I could smell the smoke, feeling it burning at each individual membrane of my sinuses, the sensation making me tear up a bit out of discomfort. Amidst the panic of the residents of my floor, including my own parents’, I became separated from them. I stood disoriented and scared on what I think was the 4th floor hallway, the walls and ceiling quickly becoming engulfed with smoke, the distant crackle of fire feeling like it was growing closer; I ducked to the floor, remembering what I was taught in class during fire safety. It felt like hours passed, but it must have only been less than 30 seconds in reality, when the room felt a heaviness lift from it suddenly– I could feel some sort of heat ahead of me, looking up hesitantly to see if the fire had finally reached me, waiting to swallow me whole…

But it wasn’t the fire, in fact, the smoke seemed to have lifted completely. I stood, eyes wide staring ahead at this light in front of me… a figure, something almost otherworldly– No words in any human language would be able to accurately describe this incarnation of sunlight that I stood before. It had no features as far as I could tell, but I could feel it looking at me, peering into my mind, body and soul. It never spoke, never made any noises, but something in me almost like a soft voice coming from my subconscious was reassuring me I had nothing to be afraid of; It didn’t stop me of course from being incredibly intimidated by this ethereal being. Time seemed to once again pass slowly as we both remained in place for god only knows how long… Until eventually, it extended its arm, reaching its hand out in front of me. Unsure of what to do, I paused, staring at it like a child stares at the moon upon seeing it for the first time. The same soft voice from within me reassured me once more, telling me that I could take it’s hand, that nothing bad would happen… So I did. And then the world went black.

After that, everything was fuzzy. I remember hearing muffled yells and being lifted up by thickly gloved hands, bits and pieces of the ambulance ride to Maimonides, the feeling of a cold, heavy bracelet on my wrist, one that hadn’t been there before. From what I was told, I was unconscious for the remainder of the night, but completely unharmed. Despite being in that building for a grueling 13 minutes or that fact 7 other people lost their lives that night; even with the soot on my skin and singed pieces of my nightgown, there was no evidence of any burns or smoke inhalation. Doctors told my parents it was nothing short of a miracle, but knowing what I know now, that’s the last thing I would’ve called it.

I woke up early the next morning, long before the sun had even begun to rise. My parents sat sleeping in hospital chairs, probably exhausted after the traumatizing events that had only taken place hours before. I was hooked up to some equipment, don’t ask me what it was because I couldn’t tell you, but the bed was close enough to the window for me to scoot over and look out. The window was cold against my fingertips as I leaned against it, peering out onto the street below. It was so peacefully empty, the only presence of life being the few nightshift nurses out on a smoke break, wrapping their cardigans around themselves to shield from the light flurry of snow that had started.

As the fog of sleep lifted from my brain, it instead began to rapidly fill with thoughts. I unfocused my eyes, pressing my forehead against the cool window– At the time I questioned if what I saw in the hallway was real or if had just been some near death hallucination; of course I know the truth now, and how that was probably my first time in the labyrinth, but for a long time I questioned everything, making excuses for it all. The bracelet was just a gift, the light being was a hallucination, all the nightmares just a symptom of ptsd, the things I saw for years after… I was just crazy.

But I wasn’t in that moment. Then, I was just a kid, confused but grateful to be alive, enjoying fidgeting with the sword charm on my new bracelet as I watched the snowflakes outside floating around… And if I squinted just right? I could swear, they almost looked like small white butterflies.

#short story #creative writing #motw oc #my story #writing #ttrpg stories #it really requires more context #fire #little white butterflies

[persnickety-peahen]

i'm gonna do it

i'm gonna make a sideblog for the exclusive purpose of posting about my blorbos (my PCs, friend's PCs, and a handful of NPCs from my own ttrpg campaigns) and regaling y'all with ridiculous/heartwarming/cursed ttrpg stories bc i have entirely Too Many Thoughts about them to keep to myself anymore and i need some way to relieve the pressure

i have no idea what to name it though so i haven't made it yet and yes i will be taking suggestions

#help me name my sideblog please #my blorbos #i love my blorbos #so much #that i must subject you all to them #ttrpg #dnd #ttrpg stories #dnd stories

[agentldiddy]

I just had a funny moment in dnd It is the last session of our current campaign in @cu-riogach's custom system (which is based DND, but I find it easier to just call it dnd than explain the full thing), which he'll probably talk about sometime. We are being sieged during a resistance, and the king has sent an army against us. The barbarian and fighter are mincing enemies, the druid is committing warcrimes as a swan--later hellhound--and my wizard felt a disturbance in the force. So, he went to investigate and found a professor from his old college days that hated his guts. He had come because my character killed authorities (in self-defense, though the party can be considered terrorists). He told my character to pay for his crimes, so my character casted blur to prepare for battle. With that, the ring of protection and healing he has, and the flame-retardant robe he got after dying that time, he should be prepared. Unfortunately for the elf, the lightning spell the professor casted insta-killed him. I think it was the same one that killed him the first time. The professor turned around, confident. "Seems like you are only worth cheap parlor tricks." Just as he ascended the staircase, a knife struck him in the back. Behind him was Serent, freshly revived due to his ring of healing. "What was that about cheap parlor tricks, you six-piece chicken mcnobody?" And before the professor can fully realize how badly his over-confident and arrogant ass fucked him, Serent used his secret weapon.

A secret magic item that he got long ago that he has been keeping handy for a special moment. Just like this. The Spell Scroll of Instant Piss. What it does, is instantly transform a target into a steaming pile of piss. A bit goofy for a mostly serious campaign, but still. And so, the professor vanished, reduced to a pile of urine, killed with all of the honor and dignity he deserved in death: none. The wizard then walked back to the battle, making sure to step around the puddle. And spit in it too, just to put insult to injury.

The epilogue later made my wizard the court mage of the fighter, and one of the most renowned wizards of all time, for 6 centuries (because elf). I like to imagine him flipping off his professor mentally each moment he achieved, mocking his last words.

#dnd #ttrpg stories #later in the session #i casted a fireball on a huge chunk of the army #and reflavored it as the extreme penis blast #the dm gave me an additional 10 damage on it

[rollforfelicity]

In my home game of Monster Hearts, The Witch character got drunk at a party and was talking to another drunk partying teen, and got the sudden urge to tell her that he had magic powers. "Hey," he said "You know that TV show Merlin? I'm like that guy."

She looked at him and was like "Are you telling me you're gay?"

#monsterhearts 2 #ttrpg stories #the monster fuckers

[aquadestinyswriting]

Dirk for that weaponry ask

Thank you very much for the ask.

Are there any famous stories in the story?

Oof, where to start with this one? There are quite a few, honestly because those stories within the story are based on the ttrpg campaign previous to the one I talk about in my wips. But I think I'll go with my favourite (tagging @druidx so she can add in anything that I missed in this retelling):

So Selene was part of an adventuring party that was tasked with taking care of a Dracolich that went by the name of Karylax. Karylax had killed a friend of Selene's mentor, Yastromo, and was generally causing mayhem. So off goes Selene, along with the rest of her party, to face and find a way to permanently kill him.

The party eventually manages to get to roughly where the beast's lair is located and try to figure out how to get to him since it's in the middle of a swamp, they don't have a boat and, understandably, don't want to risk wading through the water.

Karylax toys with the party for a bit, tiring them out by sending hordes of undead swamp creatures after them when the heroes came knocking. After the party had dealt with all the 'chaff' (I say chaff only because the stuff being thrown at us wasn't particularly powerful, but there was a lot of them), Karylax then finally shows up to finish them off.

Now, bear in mind, the fight had gone on long enough already that both wizards were basically out of spells (we played in 3rd edition d&d, so cantrips were limited), and Selene only had one spell left for the whole day by the time Karylax rocked up. Well, Karylax was being a dick and keeping to the air, which annoyed everyone because only one member of the group, the rogue, had any ranged attacks to throw at him. The rest were either tapped out wizards, or melee. So Alexis, the rogue in question, tells Selene to cast whatever spell she has left at the giant dracolich to see if she can bring it to ground level. Selene eyes up her opponent, makes some calculations and casts.

The spell she casts? Leomund's Secure Shelter, right in the middle of Karylax's exposed ribcage. Now Secure Shelter is not particularly large, all things considered, but it is still a small house, and plenty heavy enough to bring the undead dragon crashing to the ground. This last spell done, Selene leaves everyone else to deal with the now thrashing dracolich, climbs up the monster's ribs to the Shelters front door, glares at everyone else and tells them she's had enough and she's going to bed. Selene then proceeds to head inside, close the door behind her and be the only person to have had a Long Rest by the time the battle's over.

In the wip canon, this story has been told and retold so many times over drinks that it's basically become its own legend. For Selene, though, that fight gave her ptsd that she's never properly dealt with, and is a contributor to her extremely poor mental health.

#writeblr ask games #answered ask #story time #ttrpg stories #titan fighting fantasy #aquadestinyswriting #selene frigidwake #that one encounter is so memorable that everyone around the table still remembers it more than a decade later #we still get a giggle out of retelling it #because it really was that ridiculous

[incoherentmuses]

important OSHA update from last night's game:

so for a variety of reasons the boys went and hired (again) (fraudulently, lying about working for Dispater) some Wyverns from the Aerie in Jangling Hiter. they gotta fly to a blood volcano, it's a whole thing, ANYWAY

the important part is they rolled like garbage on their initial animal handling rolls, but i decided to use those tolls to determine, based on the lads descriptors, some feature of their wyvern.

Draghull decided his was 'just the biggest one they have' so he now has to athletics wrestle it for dominance.

Owyn went 'i will continue the bit and have the smallest one possible' so he has a scrawny, asthmatic, shetland pony of a beast

Izzak, knowing what I was doing on account of he went last and knowing that he rolled a NAT ONE went 'my wyvern is slightly on fire. just. all the time'

SLIGHTLY ON FIRE. SLIGHTLY. ON FIRE.

I JUST

so now he's taking 1d4 fire damage per hour of travel because consequences

(update tag list: @controlledchaosetc, @itusebastian, lmk if you want to be added or removed from OSHA updates!)

#osha posting #osha dnd #dnd stories #ttrpg stories #dungeons and dragons #these boys love to commit fraudulent paperwork across the Nine Hells #last time they pretended they were working for Glasya which was very funny given that they are ACTIVELY WORKING AGAINST HER

[arrowpunk]

So I'm in the process of starting up another TTRPG Campaign that I'll be running, and when I run a campaign I like giving all the PCs a little individual pre-campaign one-shot, so the players have a chance to get used to roleplaying their PCs in a low-pressure environment, and so that we can figure out, together, how their PC ends up where the campaign is going to start.

And with this new campaign I'm running I'm trying to focus on letting things be a bit more sandboxy and a bit less railroady, because I know that's something that I struggle with in the other campaign I'm running. I've been watching a lot of Adventuring Academy and stuff like that and trying to work on becoming a better DM, but anyways, the attempt at being less reliant on my railroads is what is important here.

Because in the one-shot I ran last night the PC I was running it for killed an extremely important NPC that he definitely wasn't supposed to be able to kill, and I absolutely did not plan for- and it was simultaneously the most hilarious and the most effectively emotionally devastating thing that has ever happened while I was running a TTRPG. But it ended up working REALLY WELL and it's like 12 hours later and I still haven't come down from the high that gave me.

Putting the explanation under a read more (Other players in this campaign, if you can, please refrain from opening it I've already given y'all the rundown of the whole thing w/ any information omitted that you aren't allowed to know yet so you aren't missing much trust me)

So the PC, Echo, belongs to @mookybear12404, who is absolutely wonderful and a joy to DM for.

Some necessary background needed for understanding exactly why what happened was both so hilarious and emotionally devastating:

Echo has amnesia, doesn't remember his life from before he became a science project for a very twisted rich family (The Nocturne Family) attempting to use him as a guinea pig to figure out how to unlock the secrets of immortality. When he isn't being used as a science experiment he's their personal assassin to get rid of anyone inconvenient for them. One day this, like, eight year old kid (Astrophel Nocturne) stumbles upon the place where Echo is being kept, and he can tell something is wrong, but like he's eight, there's not much he can do about it, so he keeps Echo company sometimes and just rambles to him about whatever he can think of. Echo never responds, Echo is mute, and has been taught that he isn't allowed to try to communicate with anyone(even tho he knows sign language) : (. Anyways, fast forward four years, this kid is twelve now, and he has devised a plan to help Echo escape. He smuggles Echo some keys, a map, and basic supplies, adding in a couple kitchen knives in an attempt to give this guy something to defend himself with. And also gives him this plush wolf, because he'll need something to keep him company before he makes real friends.

Using the supplies this kid gave him he's able to successfully escape, he keeps the wolf, names it 'Friend', and has a special pouch sewn into his backpack so he can take it with him everywhere. He also joins a bounty hunter guild and eventually learns how to make his own decisions, take control over, and have agency in his own life. (We're all very proud of him.)

Fast forward another twelve years, he's sitting in his bedroom, polishing his sword, when his sort-of-mentor-sort-of-dad(Kodo Finndal), knocks on the door and asks if he can come in. He's got an uncharacteristically somber look on his face, and a very thick file in his hands. He explains to Echo that they just received news that the entire Nocturne family had been murdered the night before. Nobody knows who did it, or why. It's this terrible mix of emotions because on the one hand he's elated that the people who made the first chunk of his life a living hell and took away his personhood are gone and he doesn't have to be afraid of them anymore. But on the other hand, Astro, the first person to treat him like a person, the kid who helped him escape, and gave him hope, and his freedom, is also dead.

The file Kodo is holding is a potential job that Echo can take if he wants to, Kodo and one of Echo's friends(Zettabyte) had been working on building this file for months, specifically for Echo. It's a mission he hopes will be cathartic for him, he knows that when Echo is having a rough time he tends to throw himself harder into his work, so the hope is that this particular job will help. It's a mission specifically tailored to Echo, an extraction and retrieval mission. Zettabyte had discovered a person(Longshot) in a very similar position to the one Echo had been in for most of his life. She figures, helping this guy escape, will hopefully be good for Echo.

Echo agrees, and heads back to the planet he had escaped from all those years ago to gather intel and start this mission. He goes to a local gay club that one of Longshot's coworkers has been known to frequent, hoping to gain some insight into how best complete this mission.

Now my PLAN for how this was going to play out was:

-While he's in the club his precious motorcycle is stolen (I know this seems mean of me but I needed this motorcycle somewhere else for Reasons) -Very sad for him but he's got more important things to deal with right now -Successful extraction of Longshot -Gets back to the guild -Is given a new bounty that will lead him to where the campaign is going to start and he will meet the rest of the PCs

Seems simple right???

I sure thought it did. But anyways, just for funsies, I had the person stealing the motorcycle roll a stealth check and he rolled a NATURAL FUCKING ONE. So while Echo is in the club, panicking because some guy just flirted with him and he's never had anyone hit on him before and he just accidentally snubbed this guy hard, he hears the very distinctive sound of his motorcycle engine revving right outside the club.

He sprints out to try and catch the guy before he gets away, and gets there in time to see the guy driving off on his motorcycle. He looks around for anything he can use to catch up to him, sees a couple of other motorcycles, but knows that those aren't able to get up to the same speeds his can. So you'd think this guy is about to get away scott free right? Except I'd made one crucial mistake as a DM.

I'd given Echo a gun.

Echo shoots. Rolls a 19. This guy's AC is 14, so he nails him in the shoulder, rolls minimum damage, does 3 points of damage to this guy, so I think, okay yeah this'll be fine, he'll get away and then things will be back on track. But I'm also trying to work at letting things play out and not try to force things to stick to a strict railroaded plot. So I roll to see if the guy is able to keep his control of the motorcycle after getting shot in the shoulder. This guy rolls a 4, so Absolutely not. He spins out of control, gets flung off the bike, and I roll for damage. Now I had warned Mooky when I let her have this motorcycle that if she ever crashed it at high speeds things would go BADLY. I wasn't thinking about how this might also apply to my NPC. I roll over triple this guy's max health for damage, he's killed on impact. Instadeath, no death saves, no nothing. (This guy was a squishy barely level one character).

Echo absolutely did not intend to kill this guy, so he sprints over to check on him, pours a health potion down his throat before even checking to see if he's alive. It has no effect. This guy is gone. Echo feels bad about it, but also he's seen death before, he's killed before, this isn't a huge deal for him. He still figures he should probably find out who this guy is, in order to know how best to deal with the body. So he has Zettabyte look through the camera feed she installed in his helmet and see if she can identify the guy.

She runs his face through some facial recognition programs. Is able to positively identify the guy, and tells Echo it would be better if he didn't know, to please just leave the guy there, and go. Echo wasn't expecting that response at all, and isn't going to take it, he pushes for Zetta to tell him. She eventually relents. Letting him know, that somehow, in spite of the news that this guy was already dead, that he'd been murdered the night before, somehow, this was Astrophel Nocturne, the kid who'd helped him escape, the kid he owes his life and his freedom to, now grown up.

Echo is devastated, shaking as he types, begging Zetta to give him some way to fix this, some way to bring him back, to resurrect him. To undo what he'd just accidentally done. Now the thing is, in my games, I want death to be pretty dang permanent, it's not really something that one can undo. Gives it more weight. Echo is not having this. He says that if Zetta won't help him he'll figure something out himself, and as he's typing this...

He hears a sickening crack, and crunch, the very distinctive sound of bones snapping, as Astro's neck snaps back into the correct position, and the rest of his bones start righting themselves, and all the scrapes and cuts start healing over. And a second white streak shows up in his hair. And Astro bolts upright, gasping to fill his newly mended lungs with air again, and yells "OH SHIT I JUST FUCKING DIED AGAIN DIDN'T I???"

Because the thing is, the thing is, I'd already developed this fun mechanic with Astro. He doesn't stay dead. He had been murdered the night before, his throat had been slit and his body dumped in a river, and then a few hours later he sat up, still bleeding from the wound in his neck. Death showed up, they had a fun and funky conversation that I'm not going to detail here. Death healed up the wound in his neck because honestly that's just horrifying to look at no thank you, and Astro went on his merry way, now a cleric for the god of Death, still no idea why it was that he didn't stay dead, fun brand new white streak in his hair, and no indication that this miraculous inability to die was more than just a strange one-time fluke.

Until now.

#shadows of astral undeath #descriptions of body horror #motorcycle crash #injury #death #murder #Echo #Astrophel Nocturne #Astro #ttrpg stories #Zettabyte #Kodo Finndal #Longshot #ramblings of an arrow