Werewolf: episode 1 Wakey Wakey

World of Darkness is very different from DD4e (I can hear the more experienced RPGers laughing at me already); no really going from a D20 system to 10 D10 and rolling a different number of D10 based on the dots you have in the skills required for whatever it is you want your character to do is kind of like Culture Shock. Luckily it's easy enough to get the hang of after a few runs.

A few nights ago (?) Eric had Jex and I do a trial run. My character isn't much in the way of combat so she rolled to hide and got an exceptional success (5 die landed on numbers from 8-10), and then sat back and YouTubed while the big huge Scottish Guy and a very Handsome other guy fought with a Gang member in some random back ally.

Tonight we got into the story. I'm going to tell you about the characters though because they are my favorite part. Shaun's character goes by the name of Jacob, is a charmer, he's hot, good with words, and flirts with everything that is humanoid. Missy's character is shy and really likes spiritual things, and seems to know something the other characters don't, either that or he has a crush on the old one eyed werewolf who was explaining things to us, and has a name that sounds like a cable company. Jex's character is a big Scottish guy named O'Connel who is very difficult by nature, big, and tactless. My character is supposed to be Icelandic-American computer nerd named Thorhilur (Tori because no one can pronounce it right), who's in love with remote controlled everything, Inuyasha, and being ninja-esque. She's also pitiful and is emotionally on edge since the 'first change.' She screamed, and shook, and held her breath, and pleaded a lot tonight.

The story is simple, since Jex and I will only get to be around for one or two, maybe 3 if we're lucky, more sessions. All 4 of us changed at the same time, super good Omen. The Pure (our arch nemesi) also have an Omen of 4 (which in Japan is super bad luck). To see which is the real Omen we have to go into the spirit world and perform a test for this huge armored bear spirit with steak knife claws. Oh did I mention Missy's shy guy glows and swirls when he's in the spirit world... yeah.

On the next episode: Be bewy bewy quiet. We'we hunting wabbits.

Salty Dogs: Vol III The Final Chapter

In preparation of moving Jex has tried to get our DD4e campaign to a good stopping point. So we've had two really good, long, sessions with Missy and Shaun recently. Hopefully tonight or tomorrow we'll get to play World of Darkness... but I won't get my hopes up.

Here's the ending to our little story.

The dice were against us! They were! Rolling everything under a four during an entire encounter is proof enough for me. I started counting on failing and only using my one invigorating fighter power (crushing surge) so that I could get what we've dubbed "bubble points" (they're temporary life points/hit points).

The story though is actually pretty sweet.

While Mara is dragging the NPC Zeni across the dirt road of Dead's End the Bard Aard (Shaun) is freaking out, the Halfling we met in town (Missy) isn't quite sure what to do, so she starts locking the doors on Zeni's side of the town so that maybe she'll have to go to the Sheriff's office. Well then Aard tells Mara telepathically to 'trust him' and attacks her, pushing her 5 spaces away and breaking her hold on Zeni. He tries to play good cop bad cop but it doesn't work. Mara's pissed but she decides to try the whole diplomacy thing. Mara and Zeni have the same personality according to Aard the Shard Bard so when Mara almost talked Zeni to their side (mara has a -1 to diplomacy btw) everyone was really surprised. But that fell through. We kept going back and forth between trying to be diplomatic and trying to knock the crap out of the NPC. Zeni was so bent on beating Mara even once the encounter was kind of over and she found the door was locked she chased her and stabbed her in the back.

In response Mara stomps across the street the flings open the door to the armor shop, which connects to the general store who's door was locked. There on the other side stood Casey in all her 3 foot tall glory. Heavily armored Mara was more than enough to conceal the little Rogue. Mara told Casey to run before turning and flinging her arm at the open portal. "There! Go through and unlock your freaking door, it's not like there's people clamoring to buy your shiz. Leave me the hell alone!"

Zeni stomps passed her and says: "If I see anything amiss I'm coming after you."

"Whatever." Mara huffs and starts to walk away.

Well, the Bard had used his 'shard swarm' teleporting power to get into the general store (and Shaun's so good at NOT metagaming that he kept his knowledge that the fight was over between Mara and Zeni out of his character's head) and in an attempt at drawing attention away from Mara he breaks the window. Upon hearing the window break Mara face palms and Zeni comes after her.

Luckily, Casey and another NPC who looks like he could be Mara's brother, Telecor, are able to get Zeni off of Mara, who at this point is literally at 1Hit Point. After everyone decided to beat the crap out of Zeni she went down fairly easily. They brought her into the Sheriff's office and were like, BLEH!

Clide, the deputy that's been keeping the towns people from dying of the plague, asks the group if they'd be trusted with a secret. My character is like "no." Hooray for Shaun's Bard being all persuasive and stuff. In the end they all go down and the Sheriff is all chained up in a cell. He asks the group to be deputies and they're like "sure, why not." Except for Mara, who does NOT want to stay there and is like "Meh, let me sleep on it." They get locked in the cells and talk it over a little and then decide that it'd be a good thing to do. Hearing a noise Casey unlocks the cells and they all go searching for the noise, but don't find it.

The next morning they wake to the Sheriff (who's a big minotaur) all chained up with an apparatus in front of him that has 4 ropes, a frame, all attached to a sword. Clide tells us that all we have to do to be Deputies is kill the Sheriff. Everyone's like "Okay." Except Mara, who doesn't like it because the Sheriff is asleep. She tells everyone that she'll kill him if his eyes are open, but she's not an assassin. Clide won't wake him up. Mara won't kill the Sheriff if he's out like a light. So, she says. "Fine, the rest of you kill him, Clide lock me up down here till this stupid plague finishes me off. Whatever. But I won't kill a sleeping man!"

This is not good enough for Clide. Who then locks us all up and leaves. Then Shaden shows up and is all like "you guys are stupid. You should've killed the Sheriff. blah blah, i'm a dick, blah."

Aard 'victim of the faewild's Casey and Mara so that we surround Shaden and we try to kill him. But he goes all shadowy on us and gets away. Another smoke bomb gets dropped in and Mara can't get the trap door open even though she cracks the wood.

When they awake with an even nastier headache than before, a progressed plague, yay -4 to all rolls; no one is happy and all the locks are jammed so Casey can't work her magic. Out of nowhere the armless asian man from the infirmary shows up and gives us hall packages of nasty bread and water while saying: "I'm sorry my friends to see you so down, perhaps what I have to give you will lift you out of your sorrows. I'm sorry the only silverware I could find was a butter knife." When he leaves and everyone opens their pouches Mara's like "Yes! yes Yeeeesss! * Maniacal laughter*" Inside there's a crude, thick, kind of metal bar/flat head screw driver. And Mara knows exactly what to do with it. She excitedly tells the Bard (who was expecting magic levitation bread or something) to use it to get the pins out of the jail door so they can escape.

The Sheriff wakes up and asks what's going on. The Bard, who loves a melodrama, tells him. The Sheriff, with the aid of his creepy spirit falcon, gets us out then we all go searching for Clide. We find one of the missing guys in the rubble of the lower end of town. Keep searching, then find Clide fighting with the nasty tempered bar keep. Aard just loves his 'victim of the faewild' ability and teleports Casey and Mara to either side of him. But Clide gets away, not before Jex can throw in 'I shot the Sheriff, but I didn't shoot the deputy' to call Shaden to the fray out of nowhere.

We pummel Shaden, take a quick breather because in the process of pummelling him we used up most of our special powers and lost one of our party. After taking Telecor to the infirmary Jex called 'the low beds' we take off after Clide in a surprisingly tactical manner, considering our group's history of 'let's kill it!'

Casey is being all sneaky sneaky in the dark. Mara is trying to be. Everyone gets to an upper room above the stalls and Mara uncovers her Sun Rod. THERE! Right next to her is Clide he starts to say something like "finally you fools have~" and Mara is like "Gah!" and hits him in the face with the Sun Rod. Being as how Sun Rod's turn on and off via tapping the light goes out and everyone's confused. The Sheriff throws his Sun Rod in a corner, yay, now we can see.

Then we fight Clide, who not only likes to hit Mara and only Mara, but also has a whirlwind vortex of fail around him that keeps us from doing much damage.

He's near his end and says something like: "This isn't over." And jumps out the window only to be knocked flat by the creepy spirit bird.

Mara runs out to see if he's dead or not. She can't really tell until he says her name. She leans down to give him a few choice words before smashing his head in but he tells her about the cure for the plague and that he was really the one behind everything and gives her a message to tell the Sheriff. She says she'll fix everything for him. Suddenly he asks about a Scepter, if she's had any visions about one. When she says no he tells her not to touch it that he has a feeling it's... and the Sheriff's boot crushes his face and kills him.

Mara bolts up and is all indignant. "What the hell was that for, he was telling me stuff."

"We have no more need for his lies." The Sheriff replies.

Mara gets in his face and stabs him in the center of his chest with a finger. "You could use a little more mercy, and a lot more tact."

They all go to the Sheriff's office and Mara tells them about the cure. After a few misconceptions and a lot of character interaction Mara finally finishes the brew and drinks some.

It tastes like mint, then butt, then rancid butt, then back to a nice mint. Mara then takes some to Telecor, because her companions don't trust her alchemical skillz. The Sheriff is all like "meh, you're wasting your time." and Mara's all like "I didn't ask you!"

Everyone gets better, the bad tempered bar tender is suspicious, and now our little group can go one of twenty differing ways. Damn.

Mara goes back to the Sheriff and tells him what Clide said: "About acting on Faith despite all opposition." and it gets all emotional. Mara then leaves and proudly announces to the Bard that he should be proud of her because she made it through something emotional without making fart noises. All is well in Dead's End, and now, we have the world before us.

Sweet.

Salty Dogs: Vol II

Something actually happened last time we played!

Clide, one of the deputies asks us to get some of the plant life he uses to make medicine that slows the effects of the oozy black doom. The Bard got hit in the face with a Mushroom Bomb thing. The other deputy, Shaden, took us to the cave. We went in, we searched, we gathered, we fought an energy monster and got the crap blasted out of us by a cave in that smashed the crystal that spawned the hologramesque being. Then we got out and were shoved into a jail cart and smoke bombed till we passed out.

Yay us... thanks to everything we have migraines from hell and -2 to every roll.

So, we find out that the plague has only been around for a month. It started just after some adventurers left. No one seems to have given them much mind because no one really remembers them. Shaden is missing, but the horses and cart are still present. The Sheriff is sick now.

All this being said, it falls to us to go and ask a very uncooperative Tiefling woman to come talk to Clide.

She wasn't being very cooperative.

My character isn't a happy character on the best of days. Mara+Migraine= Death to all who cross her. Zeni, the Tiefling crossed her.

Now my Character is dragging an NPC across the town by her Horns, literally. I think she might die.

Salty Dogs: Vol I

Recently my husband has DM'ed his first 4th Ed. campaign with a couple of friends of ours. We're the Salty Dogs, or so the Dwarf decided without our consent when our characters first woke up.

It's been fun. We had a Castle Crashers-esque beginning running from a flaming dragon while water was washing through the Dwarven tunnels like giant stone plumbing.

My character attacked the cliff wall to try and slow the fall when they all got swept off the side of a cliff face. We saved an outlaw before we knew there was a law. Got attacked by birds. The Druid did it's creepy swarm thing. Ignite Blue! The Bard gave a rousing binary version of cutting words in a mechanic's riddle infested lab gone ammuck. The Druid died and turned into mulch, Clip and Clop got left behind with the war forged as the Bard and the Fighter escaped on a huge rocket powered version of Cloud's motorcycle from advent children.

Now we're trapped in a disease infested place very aptly named Dead's End. This slow experience, trying to get difficult, western type, strong silents to give us clues on how to get the 'sam hill' out of there isn't my Fighter's forte. Her Int is -1 and she's more of a 'beat you now, tell me later' kind of girl. The Bard isn't having much luck either, and pissed off one of the more forthcoming characters, even with a 35 on words of friendship. lol

((It's at about this point that my friends and others not really into the D&D universe become very confused.))

With as fun (or unfun as the desert bleh of a town has been) as this is I'm going to start another D20 system.

World of Darkness.

Shaun, Sparky!!!!, sat down with me and Jex last night and gave us a once over of the character sheet and basic principals.

Seems to me that World of Darkness is going to be more RP than Battle based. I don't foresee much in the way of what some would call a 'dungeon crawl'. So it's going to be a nifty new experience once the well spoken of Eric comes to grace Texas with his presence.

I'm going to be a WereWolf!

Oh and my husband has been toying around with the idea of me starting to DM a campaign maybe with the two of us or him and my Brother-in-law. I'm nervous about that.

A Year Later

Duran checks the door for any traps.

There don't seem to be any.

Then he flings the door open and chases after the man in spiky red armor.

Alright roll a acrobatics check because there's an explosion. Actually everyone to this square here *points to grid on the white board where my character is standing* roll acrobatics checks.

Here is where it all boils down to whether or not your character is going to have a bad day. You beg the little 20 sided die in your hand to roll something better than the last couple of 5's you'd rolled earlier in the game. And it listens to you, giving you a whopping 6.

Now comes the math and the understanding of where to look for what on your character sheet. Finding my way around the character sheet was easy enough, it was the math that was killing me.

So I add the 3 from my little bit of acrobatics and come out with a 9. Not quite enough to doge the large bit of door frame Duran had esploded.

Your character takes *the DM rolls his dice and nods in a self satisfactory way with a slight 'hm'* 5 damage and is dazed.

Putting myself into my character's shoes is easy, figuring out what she would do in the situation is hard. Going with my gut instinct I just listen to the shouting as the other characters gang up on the poor soul, who had also had a bad roll of the die but couldn't break the 4th wall in time to ask for a redo.

When it comes to be my next turn I do my bit then the DM says: "Okay did you save?"

Did I save what?! I didn't know D&D had save points! What do they look like? Does the DM draw them on the map?!

Nope, wrong. You roll your dice to see if your character snaps out of the bleary fuzz induced by the chunk of wood that slammed into her skull.

Ooooh. *rolls the evil inanimate object* get's a 10. Yay! I saved!

Alright you all look up to see a man standing on a platform, kind of like a balcony but less ornate, he's in a bluish cloak, you can't make out more than the basic shape of his long face. Does anyone speak primordial?

I raise my hand.

The DM raises a curious eyebrow. A halfelf that speaks primordial?! (Yeah it was either that or draconic, I flipped a coin) With a shrug he points to me and says: "You hear him calling on the forces of nature to kill the intruders."

Oh lovely. Having my character inform the party that bad things are about to happen I pull out my calculator. Not really, I never had the foresight to bring a calculator. After carefully choosing my attack and getting into the best position I could with the 6 spaces I could move I roll the 20 sided ball of evil to hit the baddie. Hit! Okay so I roll the 8 sided dice for my first weapon, the 6 sided dice for my second weapon, another 6 sided dice for the mark I put on him, plus my strength which is 4, plus 1 for each weapon and my bracers. *BIG SIGH*

That comes out tooooooooo.... 17?

My husband leans over my shoulder: "21" Oh, 21!

Confused?

I was.

It's kind of like learning how to ride a bike. Now that I have the hang of it I understand most of the language and what to look for it's really fun and I can go a lot faster.

Sometimes I still have a faux pas or two when looking up an item or armor or feat (because there are 20gazillion feats that sound like they do the same thing but DON'T). But hey, the perks have so far outweighed the draw backs.

I like to play around in the world my friend has made with a character in better shape than I have been since I was 13. There I get to fling around a sword and kill stuff without getting arrested for disturbing the peace, and man slaughter. Deep down though I feel like I'm building a story with the people around the table. Each of us adding our own unique flavor to the plot and dialog. I love it.

Frustrations Galore

Prior to playing D&D I dabbled in some online forum RPG's with friends. Back when Gaia was still free and still full of cool people. So, in all my human wisdom and hardwiring I thought it'd work out just fine to use the same concept in a table top RPG.
One thing I seriously overlooked was the little things like Dice, Level restrictions, and turns. And it frustrated me to NO END. As things happened around my character I'd want to have her react, but it wasn't my turn. Other characters were yelling at her to do something (i.e. RUN!), but it wasn't my turn. I had this great idea and everything was perfect, but it wasn't my turn. AAAHHH! and just in case you missed it: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

On a forum RPG there isn't really much of a turn based system. Yeah you wait for other people to post to answer a question or react to a described attack, but when you post you can have your character respond to everything the other character did. Not so with D&D; unless you have an immediate reaction move, which at this point I didn't even know existed.

Rolling Dice: I'm not a god-modder. I make a character and stick to it. If they have a weakness it is a real debilitating weakness. If s/he dies, well then, they die and I can tuck them into one of my stories later. For me rolling dice killed the character at first. I mean how on earth can a play a character who's fairly accurate with a sword if I'm having a bad roll day and can't get above a 4?! (In Mr. Silver's words: "Punish this die.") So I spent a lot of time on the feats figuring out what to take to help Cynica be the 'accurate' character she was built to be. (I hate feats!)

Level Restrictions: So a level 2 character can do three things, unless you're human then you can do 4, suckah. This was very frustrating with a recent character in a new campaign. My character is older than the usual new character, mid 30's give or take. So I wanted her to be a quick study, you know all full of wisdom and stuff from just living life. This is not so, for there are no feats you can take to double the experience gained from an encounter; at least none that I have found.

Then there came the description of the deed. I wanted to go all out like I had previously on the forum RPG's but decided to just kind of lay low with a little "She slashes with her long sword and slams the hilt of her short sword into his eye." Then I'd lean over and whisper to my husband something like: "Kobold's do have eyes, right?"
The describing I've learned greatly depends on the group you're playing with. Some players get super into it with their bards and actually try to sing. Others don't and only announce their attack roll, and go on from there.
But at the time I'd been told these great stories about how Valien's player actually sang and this and that. So I was really nervous about how to describe Cynica; I mean, honestly, how many ways can one fairly quickly describe slashing or stabbing before it becomes boring then the encounter turns into nothing but a series of numbers. I like visuals!
At any rate half my nerves were just being new to everything while everyone around me had played since the 9th or 10th grade.

So these were my learning curves. To this day I still have a few faux pas now and again. But I'm glad I did it, all my little mistakes taught me things. Like read an entire description of a magical item twice to make SURE it says what you think it says. *laughs*

Chapter One: Enter the Noob

Hey, my name is Rem and I'm new to the world of Table Top Games and gamer society in general.
And this is my story.

It all started early 2010, I'd just married my bestest friend and one true love Jex, met my in-laws for the second time ever, and was introduced to my man's highschool posse. The week before the fated night, whose date I can nerry remember, I'd sat down and tried my best to learn all the lingo required for character creation. Prior to this sit down with Adam (our DM) the only knowledge I had was my floundering through the D&D 3.5 players hand book. From that little jaunt all I remembered was there were too many numbers and "why on earth would anyone EVER consider making a wizard?!" Now I was knee deep in D8's versus 2 D4's and why which would be good in which instance, feats (ZOMBWTFM8!!!!), Nat 20's, initiative, who has higher Dex goes first, AC; I thought my little brain was going to pop and spew little 'OMG' shaped confetties. In the end I had a boss killer named Ko'ee that I was very proud of.

On that fateful night as I met the stragglers of the posse and a couple new faces something horrific happened: My character wasn't on Adam's laptop. In a fit of rage, confusion, and sheer panic I tried, with the help of my sweet Jex, to recreate my character in right around half an hour. Everyone assured me that I had time since everyone was printing out character sheets. I thought otherwise: How on earth can I recreate 6 hours of stuff I can barely remember?!
At long last I had a new character. A half elf like my first; a dual wielder, but a Ranger instead of a Fighter. Hoping against hope that I could some how get Ko'ee back I picked a random name and just kind of threw her together off the top of my head. Thus Cynica Trissade was born. Honestly I didn't think she'd turn out as well as she has, she's a little too much like me at times but hey you go with what you know when you have to come up with something on the fly.

Once the game started I was enchanted. I've always been one for playing pretend and swinging sticks at big imagined bad guys and monsters. Dungeons and Dragons for me was a way to continue doing that into adulthood. Imagining my character twirling around with her swords and interacting with the other characters brought back the adventuresome feeling I'd been missing since returning to America; where everything is either dull or expensive. Granted I was the slowest one there, I had to keep reading over my power cards and math is not my strong suit (I'm a language and art kind of girl, and yes I am aware that art is math based and no that doesn't help anything). I was pretty unsure of myself when it came to how to role play and how much to describe one's character's actions in game. There were some points where I felt like I was flopping around like an ungainly teenager who just hit a growth spurt the night before.

I'd overlooked the importance of Dex when it came to one's Armor Class, so my striker had a whopping 12 AC. Yeah. Me in all my newness couldn't figure out why the Warlock had a higher AC than my character. "I mean what the heck man, aren't Rangers supposed to be used to this kind of thing." Then came the epiphany that it wasn't your class that determined your AC it was your Dex and the other one paired with Dex (see, still a noob even after nearly a year). Luckily I have an awesome DM who let me go back and tweak Cynica till she worked better. Also luckily my first D&D campaign is 4th edition. If I'd tried to play that night with the 3.5 character creation method I would not be here and loving Table Top RPG's as I now do. 4th edition is really noob friendly and for that I will be forever grateful.