Anyone play PnP D&D still + Stories.
Any of you fine men and women play D&D? I've been playing every week consistently for at least 6 years and on and off for a few years before that. If so, what's one of your favorite stories? Here's one of mine.
Now I'm a bit of an optimizer, but earlier in my career I usually went for fun. I was playing a 3.0/5 Swashbuckler at level 1 and we had tracked an ogre into a cave where he had a little base of operations that included 4 goblin lackeys. I took up position behind our Dwarven fighter with my hand resting on his back while one of our party members (in Goblin) attempted to seduce the Goblins through the door.
They got really interested real quick and when they opened the door our Wizard cast something that made the door explode (I believe it was something from the red covered compendium of spells, but not the Spell Compendium) killing all of the goblins. Well the Ogre didn't take too kindly to that so he dashed out suddenly.
In the panic I pushed the dwarf prone out in front of the Ogre. The Dwarf still had initiative, but his weapon had gone flying. His only recourse was to attempt a grapple, but do to his height and position there was only a few options. So that Dwarf grappled a loincloth the likes of which I've never seen before in my life.
He hung on for dear life and started attacking with a light weapon when he could. Meanwhile we repositioned and one of our party members threw a Javelin for a crit that brought him down. I couldn't let them have the glory so I (going after that party member) stabbed it on the way down with my rapier and claimed that I did all the work. On our way back into town I started making a big deal about how great we were and actually rolled a 20 on my diplomacy. The DM meanwhile rolled a 1 on the townspeople's effort to resist my showboating.
Thus began the saga of Hoebagger.
Now I'm a bit of an optimizer, but earlier in my career I usually went for fun. I was playing a 3.0/5 Swashbuckler at level 1 and we had tracked an ogre into a cave where he had a little base of operations that included 4 goblin lackeys. I took up position behind our Dwarven fighter with my hand resting on his back while one of our party members (in Goblin) attempted to seduce the Goblins through the door.
They got really interested real quick and when they opened the door our Wizard cast something that made the door explode (I believe it was something from the red covered compendium of spells, but not the Spell Compendium) killing all of the goblins. Well the Ogre didn't take too kindly to that so he dashed out suddenly.
In the panic I pushed the dwarf prone out in front of the Ogre. The Dwarf still had initiative, but his weapon had gone flying. His only recourse was to attempt a grapple, but do to his height and position there was only a few options. So that Dwarf grappled a loincloth the likes of which I've never seen before in my life.
He hung on for dear life and started attacking with a light weapon when he could. Meanwhile we repositioned and one of our party members threw a Javelin for a crit that brought him down. I couldn't let them have the glory so I (going after that party member) stabbed it on the way down with my rapier and claimed that I did all the work. On our way back into town I started making a big deal about how great we were and actually rolled a 20 on my diplomacy. The DM meanwhile rolled a 1 on the townspeople's effort to resist my showboating.
Thus began the saga of Hoebagger.
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Got back into it at the start of last year with 4th ed and was surprised how similar 4th ed is to 2nd ed.
Most memorable moment is not actually the story but a former player who had a dummy spit last year over the rules, started shouting and swearing and walked out. He went to a shop to have a cup of coffee. We all sat there stunned. Never seen anything like it in the years I've played table top/pnp games.
His view seemed reasonable and I while I didn't say anything, I initially agreed with him. But when the DM explained his view and the rules, I agreed with the DM because the DM was right. And everyone else agreed with the DM.
When he walked out, we all looked at each other for a couple of minutes. We then kept on playing with his character not doing anything. The following week he didn't turn up and our DM said he'd received a phone call during the week and he wouldn't be coming back. A little disappointing because it's just a game.
I still play from time to time, but I have always kind of assumed that hearing about someone's D&D game is about as interesting as hearing someones dream from last night.
If not, I'll happily relay a few tales for you all.
All my pnp sessions (2nd & 4th ed) have been single class players. The major difference I've found is its more miniature based with combat which I actually prefer.
@ajwz I love hearing about other people's D&D experiences, it brings a smile to my face almost every time. Awesome Laharl by the way.
@Metal_Hurlant D&D 3 and 3.5 especially treated combat more tactically than 2ed in my opinion, but I certainly feel like they through the baby out with the bathwater when they overbalanced 4th edition. 3.5 in particular in my opinion perfectly accounted for both in and outside of combat scenarios. I've heard that 4th edition breaks down when you get off the combat field, is that the case in your experience?
For some reason, I have always had an aversion to pnp systems other than D&D. The alternatives just lose all the magic for me. D&D will always be my first and best love of an escape from real life.
Some of my best story memories from my high school and college days:
I played a conflicted character who struggled with magery versus holy magic. He started as a mage, and rolled a 100 on the dice to get psionic ability, and he rolled psionic blast and hypnotism for his extra powers. He dual classed to cleric before making second level, and stayed a cleric from then on. The DM didn't really understand dual-classing rules, so he let me keep my first level mage spell slot and my psionics while levelling my cleric. He had *very* slow advancement in his game, since he had written reams of material for character levels 1-3.
I was secretly in love with the party thief, both in real life and in the game, and I wound up using the game to sublimate a lot of my feelings, even though I didn't consciously realize it at the time. I was lawful good in the game to his chaotic neutral. I kept having a horrible time justifying why I would be in his party - they were all playing a chaotic neutral game, with lots of parody actions. Yet they seemed to enjoy playing their types against my tormented, serious, lawful good nature, so we all had fun and enjoyed each other's company most of the time.
One time, in the game, all my friends started fighting along a river bank, and trying to kill each other. Massive pvp broke out, unintended and unwanted by the DM or me. I decided to use my powers to stop it, and I used my sleep spell on my own party. My thief friend, the party leader, was an elf, and ninety percent resistant, yet the DM rolled a 96. Good grief, you've never heard such arguing! "I'm immune to sleep, I'm an elf!", he kept yelling. The DM kept calmly saying over and over "you're only 90 percent resistant. I just rolled a 96."
Another time, upon another one of those disasters of sudden pvp by the other players, I used hypnotism on the party leader to make him say "Stop the fighting." To his credit, my friend the player, went along with it and role-played it very well. And the other guys said "Arrrgh, he's hypnotized!", and they got really mad at me, but they still stopped fighting with each other so we could get on with our game.
My young friends gave me a lot of the famous "mages are useless, why do you want to play that?" speech. Before that fateful dual class to cleric, I almost never got to roll to hit, while my friends were obviously enjoying the dice-rolling aspects of playing the game. Yet I took great satisfaction at certain times when I finally got to cast my one spell. Our DM was notorious for throwing a dozen or more goblins, hobgoblins, and wargs at our level 1-3 gaming group. Very often, the other four or five guys would be beaten to near death, with two or three unconscious and the other two or three on their last two hit points.
Then, they would give me their undivided attention all of a sudden, yelling at me "Augh! Cast your sleep spell! Cast it now!" And I would feel enormous vindication and pleasure when the DM would roll dice behind his cardboard screen and say "all ten of the remaining goblins, and two of the three remaining wargs, fall". Ha! I love playing casters!
I think sometimes in retrospect that the DM may have been inflating some of the monster troop numbers in his boss-encounter areas just so I could feel useful and enjoy my playing experience. This was a *very* talented DM. The poor guy "grew out" of his interest in D&D right after high school and became a banker, never playing D&D again. What a waste of talent!
I can think of a lot more cherished stories from my pnp days, but this post is already *way* too long. If this thread comes to life, I may share some more of my stories later.
I kind of always liked the idea of having PnP sessions over skype.
She is taking classic D&D modules and running groups of six players at a time through the modules, with all of them roleplaying BG characters.
It's really a very interesting read, if you're into online pnp inspired roleplay, and probably a lot of fun to join, if you're of the right disposition.
Currently we are playing 1st edition L5R table top and having a lot of fun, went back to the old setting and our actions currently have made a huge change on the normal story progression for the game world, its been pretty cool some of the things we have pulled off, like my Crane managed to, through a series of circumstances he never could have planned himself, arrange a marriage between Matsu Tsuko and his little brother as part of a peace agreement between the Lion and Crane. The agreement was she would become a Crane, and well, I am going to stop unless people are actually interested, because none of this probably makes any sense if your not familiar with the setting and know the story.
Personally I'm running a high fantasy game using rewritten L5R rule, it's bin going on sens last winter and we are currently up to 11 sessions. I'm really happy with that campaign, it's bin RP & story heavy and only 3 fights so far.
The idea of the campaign is that there's no more “evil”, i use the term loosely, in the world and the players have a special type of power that grows in power the more evil deeds they commit. Each player is also bound to one of the seven deadly sins and if they do evil deeds that are associated with that sin they gain double the amount of evil power. If any once interested i could tell it.