Rituals for the thieves guild

Many organizations have some pomp and circumstance when getting together. Secret handshakes, code words etc. In Tim Shorts game recently we did a bit of a side quest,and met up with some members of the local thieves guild. Skord my character is a member of the guild and was also the "meat" of the local militaristic wing of the church.

When we met the thieves, Tim suggested I do a bit of world building.  He asked me to describe how I let the thieves know that I was a member.

Here's the steps. Now obviously only members will know them and do it in the correct order.

1.  I outstretched my arms with my wrists forward. Showing that I was a free thief.
2.  I pulled back my armour exposing my heart and chest, showing that I owed allegiance to the guild.
3.  I got down on my hands and knees and pulled out the dagger given to me by the guild. It has a gold filigree around the hilt. I stabbed the dagger into the ground.

Have you even came up with a secret ritual for your game?

Got a bit of the burnout

Just looking back on the year of gaming. Honestly I managed to play a lot! Which is always good. I'm also looking forward to the new year and more gaming. I have a few ideas for the upcoming year. They do however involve less writing and drawing of maps. I've come to the conclusion that I really enjoy running games and playing in them. Creating has become a lot more difficult this last year. Partially because of the changes in my life. As most of us "creators" can attest, I've got a google drive filled with half baked ideas. I'm intending on downloading all of it and cleaning up my drive.  Hobby wise I think I'm going to find something to do with my hands, possibly build guitar pedals. I'd like to have something a complete that I can hold. If that makes any sense.

I'm obviously going to continue to blog, it may however be more play reports, random tables. Less reviews. It seems that I've become a bit less frequent than I used to be. I guess my focus has changed a bit in the last few months. (new job and responsibilities).

Gaming wise, I'm taking a holiday break and then I'm getting going in January with my Wednesday afternoon bx on roll20.  Eventually I'd like to run 2e in greyhawk on roll20.

The Monday night miserable bastards game is every Monday, and I play skord the spear. A fighter who likes to solve problems with a war hammer. This game is so much fun. Our gm is mr. Tim Shorts http://gothridgemanor.blogspot.com/ (who just restarted his old blog, check it out).

I'm considering ditching my isle of dread game and moving to a 5e game at home. My two players are into crunchy, and levelling up frequently.  I haven't decided if I'll run the starter set, a homebrew game or maybe saltmarsh or princes. Kinda leaning towards a home brew game.

I'm looking forward to a bit of a break and then I'll get back at it!

Wonderful session

Just finished a wonderful session with Tim Shorts and the Monday night miserable bastards crew. Best part was we ended on a cliffhanger.

We had just found a abandoned village, some of it had been destroyed. We fought a few skeletons, then went into an old house. There we found a skeletal baby (I believe), which had eight large gold bricks.

After that a booming voice said "now your mine"

Perfect!

I really like playing bx or lighter games on roll20. Tim has a really good way of going about things, and handling specific mechanics. It's almost invisible.

Typically with ability checks (which don't happen often) we roll d20+level+stat mod.

It's basically bx with ascending ac, and mostly d6 damage. As well side initiative.

There's honestly not much I'd change, if I wrote some rules.

I recently had a discussion about ability checks and mechanics with a player on roll20. I may have been using them far too often.  I was also using roll under. Tim doesn't typically give us a dc number. More so we roleplay it out. And on occasion we will have to roll.

Another thing I saw recently was using percentile dice. I may start doing that actually. Pick an amount and have a player roll.

Anyways just some brief thoughts.

At the crossroads

There comes a time in the life of an adventurer when they consider making a deal with the devil at the crossroads.

The Deal
Your soul in return for the a limited wish from a Devil.

Alters the past, present, or future to cause a wish to come true, but within limited bounds. The wish cannot grant treasure, for instance, and only part of the wish may occur. The caster may wish to erase an unfortunate adventure, for instance. Wishes must be careful: the referee may grant a wish in such a way as to kill or handicap a character. 

(Source https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Limited_Wish)




Consequences

• Automatic alignment change to Chaotic Evil (or Evil) 
• -2 Constitution
• Eternal Damnation 
• Any silver you are carrying disappears. (including weapons) 
• Cleric healing spells will only heal half.     

Benefits 

• +1 Charisma 
• Your limited wish is fulfilled for (1d100 days) 
• An imp follower (HD 2, can cast invisibility/charm once per day)
• +1 to all saving throws vs spells.
• Receive nightvision (or extended range if you already have it) 

Mechanic 

Shortly after the deal is made the following will start to happen daily. (roll on table once per day) 

1. Disassociation 
2. Terrible nightmares (affect the amount of Hit points/Spells returned from non restful sleep)  
3. Waking illusions (images of yourself dead, hanging from a noose, lying in a pool of blood, etc)
4. The appearance of Hellhounds, they follow you wherever you go but do not approach. 
5. The taste of food has changed, everything tastes rotten.  
6. Your shadow has disappeared and has a mind of its own. 
7. Your fingernails drip blood.
8. You no longer have a reflection. 
9. Intensely hungry for the oddest of things.  
10. You hear voices speaking in ancient tongues. 
11. You trip or fall for no reason. 
12. Itchy
13. Your vision blurs
14. You wake up very achy, -1 DEX and CON for the day. 
15. You cannot find the correct words today, everything that comes out of your mouth is mumbles. 
16. Shaky hands (-1 to all attack rolls) 
17. A low mournful sound echoes in your ears, it does not stop.  
18. Anything you touch catches fire. 
19. Re-roll one stat permanently.  A large black mark appears on your wrist.  This is the sign of the devil. 
20. A mist envelopes you, and as such you become ethereal.  You cannot be harmed, and you cannot communicate.  

d100 days

GM:  Once the deal has been completed, roll 1d100.  Mark this down.  These are the amount of days that the limited wish spell will actually work.  

The God Of The Kobolds (d30 bag of holding contents)

Deep within the lair of the Kobalds stands a makeshift statue.  It is made of random bones, it has one moose antler, one deer horn, an arm of a human, an arm of a giant.  It is in the roughest of shape.  The skull is made from various skulls.  All cracked and dusty. Within its arms it holds a leather bag, opened.

This is a bag of holding, left here by another monster who used to inhabit the caves.  The kobolds believe this statue and bag to be their god! When they need to decide something, they will reach their hand into the bag and see what the God decrees.

D30 Things in the bag

Table written by Matt Jackson & Myself
Note: any item pulled out of the bag will also come with a handful of foul, rotten teeth, dust and cobwebs.

1.  A set of Iron keys
2.  Mummified Ogre Head
3.  Half eaten rotted head of cabbage
4. A set of copper pieces with teeth marks.
5.  A miniature woven chicken that is slightly threadbare.
6.  Black journal written in an indecipherable language.
7.  The tip of a lance, with gold filigree.
8.  An ancient large egg that is purplish in colour.
9.  A rather hefty rock.
10.  A bronze hammer and tongs.
11.   A blank map, with an x in the middle.
12.  A tattered banner of an ancient kingdom
13.  A gaudy necklace made of silver and semi precious stones.
14.  An orc nose with a nose ring.
15.  A leather document tube with an unopenable lock on it.
16.  A set of warm mitts made from sheep's wool.
17.  A fishing pole with a fish skeleton on the end of the hook. Inside the skeleton is a ruby.
18.  The symbol of an evil demi God carved into a blackened stump. (save vs spell or take 1d12 damage if you are good aligned).
19.  A eyeball in a jar
20.  A deck of tattered cards.
21.  A dice with only sixes (1d4 extra damage on any successful hit for the next week, plus regular damage).
22.  A ships wheel
23.  A silver ingot
24.  A set of strings for a lute
25.  Rusted shears
26.  An ornate bowl filled with incense
27.  A noose
28.  A hand nailed to a piece of wood
29.  A clump of hair attached to a scalp
30.  A scroll of riddles.

The craving will pass

Lately I've been having a hankering to play fifth edition. As many of you know, I suffer from gamer a. d. d.  I am currently running kotb with bx on roll20 and enjoying it. I ve also been plotting a 2e game set in greyhawk, and possibly my ten monster setting.

Recently however I've been reading a few of the fifth edition fantasy adventures produced by goodman-games.com, and this has spurred the idea of creating a western marshes style game. Possibly including a few of the adventures from the yawning portal as well.

Despite the fact that I don't really enjoy fifth from a player standpoint, dming it is fun.

Another thing I've been paging thru is the basic dm rules and monsters. The concept of creating an event based adventure, (slash point crawl) has crossed my mind. I sort of enjoy the idea of attempting to build decent challenges within a "story". Achk!  What happened to you shane?

Alas this premise may not come to pass. Just a fleeting thought.

However I haven't been blogging much lately, and this was a few things that have been crossing my mind. Have you had any experience writing an event based adventure for fifth edition? Any pointers perhaps?

As a side note to the rambling, I got together with the Monday night miserable bastards this week, and it was epic (see previous post). It was nice having a full crew.

Alright, I'm off to get people excited for the holidays!

Roasted Goblins!

(cracked a root beer) 

Finally got a chance to jump in on Tim Shorts B/X Essentials game.  (the monday night miserable bastards).  The game start with us creeping up on a troop of Goblins near a old tower.  We made a plan to dump a pile of oil flasks on the ground.  Then we backed up and the halfling tossed a few molatov cocktails.  We managed to roast most of the troop! 

One of the players totally missed trying to wack a goblin, and managed to wack one of the other players.  Thankfully he was wearing plate mail.  DING!

(Note I'm writing this as we are playing) 

FOUR ROLLS of a 1 by Joe the lawyer! How the hell does that even happen! 

What are the damn odds! (Erik did the math actually.  Crazy odds)

We looted the bodies, and found out that the goblins may in fact be working for a guy in Skorn.  It appears he's working both sides (Baron Mowbray).  And is attempting to cause trouble around houndshead, so that he can at some point take it over.  This is not good.

(well it's good for us, because you know heroes).

We decided to check out the tower.  There are small campfires coming from around the tower.  So it's obviously inhabited. 

The halfling has decided to scout the tower and surronding areas.  There was some discussion about starting a fire a little ways away to try and lure the goblins out of the tower.  We have decided against that course of action, and went full on murderhobo.

(second root beer) 

Alright, one of the players just decided to walk right into the whole area.  Alerting the goblins to our presence.  honestly was a total mistake in roll20, but hey now we are in combat!

Alright, we are going to die! 

It appears that the goblin would like to parlay.....

It appears we may have come to an agreement.

More information to come.  We are off to see the baron with an offer!