Monday Thoughts

Goblin's Henchmen posted up on mewe that he intended to do the one page dungeon contest.  I haven't done it in a few years, so I think I'll take another crack at it this year.  If you are interested (you only have 3 weeks so get on it!) https://www.dungeoncontest.com/

I will probably use this map.

I posted on mewe about GM Prep, and have had quite a few good responses.  You can check it out here.  (A new group called Game Mastery).  https://mewe.com/group/5ca696741c76860bafe71c61

I had a super wonderful time with what I'm calling the "Global Crew" on sunday morning playing black hack with Matt Jackson.  We had about 3 rooms or so left to go.  And we managed to complete the adventure!  The ice queens' reign of terror is at an end.

We started off in a room with a large pool that we had to cross, it was basically sloped inward so I had to make a pile of dex checks to try and get across (thankfully colin was smart enough to tie a rope to my ass and stake it down). 

After that (honestly feels like a blur, we played for three hours).  We managed to get across the room, and then had to fight some evil water/ice demon thing.  As a typical thief I headed for the hills leaving Colin to fight the darn thing (Seriously sorry Bud!).  We finally get to what we believe is the last room, I open the iron doors and see the following:

A large room with skeletons hanging from columns, each skeleton has a jewel connected to the column.  At the very end of the room is a set of stairs leading to a sorta audience chamber, on it is a throne.  The Ice Queen is sitting on the throne and bid's us welcome!

I being an asshat, decide to moon walk into the room, do a spin o rama, and end up on one knee with my bow aimed at her head.  I yell "your reign of tyranny is over bitch!".

The rest of the guys nonchalantly walk in the room and check it out.  Turns out we are somehow connected to these skeletons and the queen starts referring to us by ancient names.  Somehow in her head, we are loyal followers.  This has to do with these weird ice bracelets on our arms. 

I decide to make a run for her crystals that are also on columns beside her.  grab one, get super friggin electrocuted!

In the meantime the rest of the party is attempting to negotiate and not having much luck.  The wizard grabs one of the crystals by a skeleton, dies and becomes an NPC in league with the Queen.  I blast her with an arrow which she deflects with this wall of ice (so much for that plan). 

I make a bee line for the other crystal and smash the shit out of it.  Colin I believe destroyed the other one, and it a large wisp of ice and smoke she is banished to the nether world.

Unfortunately I had to leave at the final climax of the adventure due to "ice-based religious practices."

"

(*last game of the season. the home team shit the bed 6-2). 

All in all it was a wonderful experience, I really enjoyed playing with a bunch of old schoolers, and Matt is a wonderful GM! And somehow Jax managed to survive! Hopefully he can return for another adventure.  By the sounds of it we might be playing a Isle Of Dread kinda game next.  Matt has been working on a mashup and I'm excited!

Side note funny conversation:  Just before the game Matt was talking about having saw a movie on the weekend, and went out for wings afterwards at "Buffalo Wild Wings".  I haven't been there in a long time!  Coincidencely a friend of mine had posted on facebook that he wanted to go to Texas Roadhouse and he posted the map/route to get there.  ETA was 3 hours 248 KMs.  So I referenced that in the convo "DAMN IT I WANT WINGS, BUT THAT'S 3 HOURS AND 248 KMS!".  Colin goes "Don't feel too bad Shane, it would be about 14 hours on a plane for me" LMFAO.

Ice Queen Image: https://www.deviantart.com/thornevald/art/Ice-queen-279979379

Black Hack "the old school" session part 2

Alright so I think I sorted lost track on how many sessions we have had.  I believe the Gonzo session with Matt was 2 - 3 sessions.  And now the more old school vibe session has been at least 2.  Unfortunately I don't completely remember everything that happened in session 1, but I'll try my best here.  More of this will be session 2 (at least the action bits).

First and foremost it was a fucking blast! It's really nice to game again, and on a regular basis.  As well the black hack is a very easy system for me to grasp (I'm not a fan of getting bogged dow with mechanics).

Colin, Alex, Steve, and Vance all joined in (and I f I missed someone I'm very sorry).  We had a good core group of classes, with basically one of each.  My silly thief Jax Whindlehen (who is a carry over from the gonzo session) is impetuses at the very least.  Unlike a typical old school thief, he likes to see what things do.  He doesn't always sneak into a room, if there's a button he will push it, if there's a door he'll open it.  It's just him.  Which of course makes for the cleric (thanks Vance!) having to save his ass on a regular basis.

So we get to the mountains and this northern village which has been under the icy thumb of a snow queen.  (cue the frozen jokes).  The feel of the game is very "north of the wall", with wildling types etc.   We basically found out that we need to stop the snow queen.  And off we go to the lair!

Once we got in the dungeon, we found a bunch of tunnels, and tombs.  I managed to find quite a bit of gold (that always makes a thief happy!).  One of the tombs had some undead, and thankfully the cleric managed to banish them fairly quickly.  I can't quite remember what his god was, but it was entertaining (I think it was a random roll in the back of the book). 

We got into this room that had a waterfall and a drain below us, which was odd.  But we kept moving.  Finally we made it to this room where there were 6 wildling types arguing.  I believe Matt expected us to straight up fight.  But in the last game, instead of negotiating when we were supposed to, we fought.  So this time I decided I'd attempt to negotiate.  I stepped into the room that had some Iron doors open and basically said "Ola me amigos!"  Which threw them for a loop.  One of them was chipping away at some ice (looks like there was something behind it). 

After a successful charisma check, they sorta seemed to be cool with us.  Although they were pushing me a little bit.  I side stepped and went down a hall way.  The rest of the hero's didn't know what was happening with me, and went into the room.  All of a sudden this huge 14 foot tall twig golem burst out of the ice and a fight ensued.  There was a pile of rubble around the room, and at one point I had to haul people over it into the tunnel.  The widlings followed.... err ran right past me! hahaha.  Prior to this one of the ladies had grabbed what appeared to be a cloak that was embedded in the ice. 

We made it down a hall way, with the monster sufficiently trapped (the hallways were too short for him to get thru!).  We get into this room that's basically a giant hockey rink of ice with these hug icebergs.  After a few successful tests we moved one of the icebergs blocking our way, only to find another.  This process kept going until a major fail happened.  Colin (Jin) and I fell thru the ice and down into the drain waterfall area.  I got knocked right out.  the other's managed to get thru. 

After a bit of time passed, I was awoken to Jin screaming at me to get up.  Damn it we have to go back and take on that golem.  A bunch of the wildlings fell down with us, and a few died.  The rest we made a deal with to fight the golem. I grabbed the magical cloak from the dead lady and moved on.  It appears to basically keep me super warm! wooo. I hazard to guess this will help us.

We go back, beat the crap outta the golem with a few successful rolls and then meet up with everyone at a rope bridge.  As we cross (I went first I believe) ghosts of peasants started filling the chamber around the bridge.  It was very much an indiana jones bridge over a huge deep dark hole.  The cleric thankfully banished enough of them to get us across the bridge without any casualties.

And that my friends is where we left off.  Not too bad for 3 hours of play.

Can't wait for the next game.

Black Hack Playtest Part Trois!

So we finished up the black hack adventure that Matt was running last night.  It was filled with epic silliness.  We were originally supposed to go to this bubbling tower in search of a magical creature.  We did find one, a unicorn, however we kept looking (cuz you know your in a tower so you want to check the whole thing out).

After finishing up looking around the 2nd level of the tower (which was made by some wack a doodle architect!*) we decided to go and check upstairs.  Being a typical murderhobo thief I went first with my bow ready to shoot anything that moved.

I get to the landing of the next level, and there's a black cat and a Oculus!** Apparently he was trying to make friends with the cat.  Anyways, shoot at things that move.  I fire an arrow at him, after he shot a beam of light from his eyeball at the cat.  (You can't blame me, I thought he was going to kill the cat.  I maybe chaotic, but I have a heart).

Tim Shorts character came up the stairs and lobbed a thermo nuclear detonator (yup we are in a fantasy setting).   I was still upstairs when it blew.  Blasting apart this crazy magical lab.

I managed to grow a new arm, and when the contents of the lab blew up all these magical potions got destroyed causing effects to all of us.  Tim's character, ever 22 minutes he splits into 2, and he has to suffer thru regrowing a tooth everyday just to have them fall out at the end of the month!

Somehow the cleric saved my ass, and while I was lying there bleeding to death I saw the black cat jump out the window.  The thing that amazed me though, was that it turned into a griffon and flew away! (schrodinger's cat?)

I guess that was the magical creature that we were supposed to find.

We left off trying to decide what to do with this awesome tower, and the unicorn who poops magic gems!  Strongly considering getting a wagon and bringing all that back to town like crazy heroes!

The session was a blast, and I'm really digging black hack.  Matt was talking about trying to do a sci fi type game with it.  Although not using any of the hacks of the hack, just the straight up black hack and re name character classes.  As I was suggesting a thief could easily be a computer hacker/space pirate (han solo type), warriors could be a chewy kinda creature etc.  It's a great system, one that I intend to play in the future.

*First level was 30 x 30, second level was 60 x 30 and the top level was 30 x 30?  Nifty! 

**Turns out this oculus was young, and didn't grow up with other's around.  He was trying to find a mate and he figured the best way to do that was to get some moolah.  So he created a magical lab in order to make some cash, and then in turn find a mate that would be willing to hang with him.  The cat was his friend.  Unfortunately we almost killed him, so I hazard to guess he's coming back for us at some point. 

Tried some black hack last night

Chatting with Matt last night on mewe, and he had mentioned that him and his friend were creating characters for "The Black Hack".  I didn't realize that they were doing it right then.  Anyways, he shot me the hangouts link and I jumped on.  Since my wife was nicely cuddled up on the couch reading "Outlander". 

note:  if your wife hasn't read this book, and she likes sex and men in kilts, I recommend grabbing her the first book. 

Anyways, I was thinking alright "let's create some characters", which would probably take a few minutes and then we would reconvene next week to play a game. Yup nope, took all of 10 minutes at the most to create a character (actually probably five minutes) and we were off on an adventure!  Bryan was a wizard named Knox, and I created a thief named Jax.  Which we both found entertaining as I didn't know the name of his character.

Matt rolled up a quick adventure premise in the back of the book (those tables in the black hack are awesome! even if you don't run the actual game, the book is worth the price just for the tables IMHO).

Apparently we were headed to a tower with a bunch of bubbles coming out of the top.  Quite possibly the location of a Beholder. 

I gotta say that the rules are wonderful.  The roll under thing (1's are a success and 20's are bad!) is super easy.  Obviously it takes a bit to wrap your head around it (depending on the game you are used to) however super straight forward. The thing I like about it, is I don't have to add shit.  When you roll advantage disadvantage, you take the lower of the 2, not the higher.  Once again, just wrapping your head around it.  I found it easy and straight forward.  Partially because I've been reading a lot of AFF and the mechanic is roll under in it.

My character picked up a rock and hucked it down a well at a goblin.  I had to roll under my DEX (which was 16).  Alright rolled a 7, bang! smoked that goblin.

I have to say, that printing off a copy of the basic character sheets and abilities of a class is a good idea.  I had it open on my tablet to the thief page.  But I'll probably print off a physical copy when I get a chance.

Looking forward to the next game.  Nice thing is Matt likes to run shorter games, like an hour or 2 at the most.  Which is good for me, as my ADD kicks in and things get derailed sometimes.

Super fun evening!