Describe your last RPG session in more than 5 words.

Last session was disappointingly short, with the pcs basically finishing a big fight that started the session before and calling it a night. They were crossing a jungle, near some bubbling hot mud pits, and a group of mudmen (converted from 2e) rose up to attack. After a couple of rounds, a chimera flew in, attracted by the noise; and a few rounds later, three girallons were also drawn in to the fight.

My favorite part was when the hadozee druid polymorphed into a giant ape and pounded his chest to scare off the girallons (it worked!).

The pcs are actually in the middle of an interesting quest, where they are gathering exotic gourmet ingredients and foodstuffs for a halfling lich named Yudo the Ghostmaster. Yudo has magically preserved his lips, tongue, and esophagus to enable him to continue to enjoy food and has replaced his teeth with stainless steel. When he eats or drinks, he chews and swallows, at which point the food in his mouth drops out the bottom of his torso. Because of this, his robes are always wet, and gross little bits of chewed up food are scattered all around his lair (and so are cockroaches and ants and the like).

The pcs are doing this job in order to keep the ghost wagon, a haunted halfling war wagon with impressive magical travel capabilities but that tends to draw ghosts and other undead. Yudo created it and has shown that he has great influence over it; in return for fetching him a series of delicacies that he has never had, he will stop messing with the pcs, let them keep the wagon, and even tell them how to refuel it.

Three more sessions in to the Sentinel Comics game I talked about back on June 14th, and even after the whole table talking with the GM the tone just keeps drifting to something much darker than it was pitched as. Not sure if there are going to be enough players sticking with it to keep it alive - the system doesn't work as well with small numbers (4-5 is what I'd call the sweet spot). There's only one player who's really happy with how things have been going, and even with me that's not enough.

I'm not even sure I want to go grimdark and stick it out myself. Stumbled into a couple of PbP games that will scratch the itch for supers gaming since this started, but if I do leave it'll be the first SCRPG game I quit entirely voluntarily. It's just weird how the GM cannot seem to keep things light, especially in this system with its "death is a player choice" approach. This campaign wasn't sold as the Boys or even Wild Cards, but it sure keeps feeling like it.

Dinosaurs at the Alamo! By JC Connors.
A vision of two-legged carnivores, their tongues thirstily lolled out, creeping down the stairs to this very room!
I don’t know if I’m going to fool anyone, the adventure being titled what it is, but I hope I can add some intrigue.
Early March, 1935.
Gambler Penny An’Te, farmhand Elliot McCaffrey, and detective JP Diamond were boozing it up at a San Antonio cantina. Grandpappy McCaffrey relied on strangers' kindness after the mysterious torching of his old farm. And of course, he stuck Penny with the bill. Paps argued that letting a woman pay the tab wasn’t selfish, it was enlightened.
The group, minus grandpa, decided to sneak into the Alamo. It was remarkably easy. It was soon clear why: Thaza O’Rourke had done it first! The group’s sometime rival, the cat burglar raised by apes, was stealing the Onyx of Oaxaca. Elliot's attempts to apprehend her broke the gem, sending everyone through a portal… And ending up in the same room, but 99 years earlier.

Yes, the group was at the Alamo… mere days before the battle!

Elliot, a true patriot, volunteered the group to help the Texans. An initial convoy raid revealed something fascinating: three Mexican cannons were lost in the nearby valley. If the players could recover them, it could turn the tide of the fight… into one they might, possibly, survive.

And as you’ve probably guessed, the valley was a prehistoric paradise. Everywhere was evidence of dead soldiers, from 1830s patrols to early Spanish settlers from the time of King Charles V. And despite all the quartet’s skills, it was a pitched battle for survival. Thaza was an expert in overland travel. Penny was an ace shot. JP Was able to repair all the broken equipment… And perhaps most importantly, Elliot was able to calm and rescue the horse teams. No horses, no way to move the huge cannons, no way to beat Santa Anna.

There was a pitched battle against Utahraptors, and a fight with oars against a lake monster. But the most perilous was against a giant T-Rex named Duckface!

JP, used to mouthing off, lured the creature out of its lair. Being semi-dead, he survived a bite from a creature with teeth the size of bowie knives. Meanwhile, Penny and Elliot snuck into the cave, loaded the cannon… and realized they didn’t have a clear shot!

Thaza rolled past the creature, grabbed some vines, and swung in front of the cave entrance. She could feel the creature’s hot breath on her back… Then heard a tremendous explosion! Penny and Elliot were able to launch a cannonball right through the creature’s skull. Duckface became no face.

The players took the cannons, attached the horses, and exited the valley… Arriving right next to the Alamo an hour before the battle! Detective Diamond searched the room they arrived in, finding the Onyx… Slowly filling with color. The artifact they needed to get home would only be fully formed after the battle!

Even with the cannons, survival wasn’t guaranteed. Elliot gave a rousing speech, telling everyone there that they couldn’t imagine how important this fight would be in the history of Texas. The “Cannon Man” wowed the crowd, even earning the admiration of the wounded Jim Bowie.

In actual history, the Battle of the Alamo was a slaughter. But with the cannons, the speech, and Thaza’s traps, it became the narrowest of victories. The Mexican dictator was routed. The players were able to get their hazard pay, grab the Onyx…
And arrive back in 1935! A security guard yelled them, asking how they got past the electronic locks. By saving the Alamo, it became a much better funded place.
The players, except for Thaza, found themselves just as drunk as they were before their excursion. After sleeping it off, they returned at noon the next day to look over the exhibitions, and see how they changed history. There was a small section on The Cannon Man, and the two “deadly Texian women”. JP was unmentioned.

Then it was time to sell the historical artifacts they had pocketed. Because of course.

Vibing Cats Take on Cultists - Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition encounter
The magic knight (Magus) or custom class for DnD 5e by Benjamin Huffman summoned three cat familiars to cast spells through. The Magus was a zombie knight that could not get too close to the Cultists’ magic crystal so summoned 3 cat familiars using the spell flock of familiars to cast spells through to damage the magic crystal. The magic crystal was being used to summon a genie to make the BBEG more powerful. The battle music being used was this: so the players decided the cats were vibing to the music.

The party composition was a Reborn Dragonborn Magus, Half Off Vengeance Paladin, Hill Dwarf Moon Druid, custom race (Pompup) Valor Bard and Variant Human Storm Herald Barbarian.

The party decided to bust the door down to the entrance as the bard used dimension door to get to the roof of the building to scope out the area. Battle ensued and the Paladin and Barbarian took heavy damage.

John Dallman said:

AD&D1e, Avalon Campaign:

Found tomb predating current population.

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Avalon has a rather fractured planar structure: all of the current populations have arrived through assorted portals from other worlds. The oldest known events are about 4,000 years ago, when giants, dragons and the fay were already present.

About 3,500 years ago, a group of fay lords were expelled from their homeland and went in search of someone who'd exiled herself. They gradually got killed along the way. The PCs in the Monday campaign, among other things, have been recovering their bodies from the various places they were buried and bringing them to an ancient wizard who looks after their spirits and tries to prevent them manifesting as the Wild Hunt, because that's really bad, and tends to result in magic becoming uncontrollable.

Today we found the tomb of the second one to die. It's clear that it considerably predates his death, and was built by former inhabitants of the world. The chap was killed close by, and the other fay lords used the existing tomb. There have been general hints that there had been previous inhabitants, but now we have some clearer evidence, mostly from castings of Stone Tell.

Two out: Swimming and Minecraft

[Dragon AGE solo]
- Character creation and background details.

Voadam said:

Do you pull the lever?

Alternatively

Rebuild characters after FG update

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So after three weeks of the group not getting together due to not enough being able to make it I updated Fantasy Grounds Thursday night for my Friday game as normal.

Friday I load up FG and notice there are monster tokens where I left them on the map last time but no PC tokens which was odd. I shrug and read my PDF of the module to refresh myself before the game.

We start and when I pull up the combat tracker it is empty, no PCs and none of the monsters I had loaded up and modified weeks ago.

And none of the PCs can find their characters on FG. Just gone, including all of the work on the mods we made and all of the custom loot. All of my FG modules are there and still loaded but the stuff we created for this campaign is all gone.

So we spend a bit recreating characters (level 8 stuff from the 5e PH and Eberron) to close enough to use the website functionality and I recreate some reskinned monsters that fit the dungeon (I am running the Pathfinder 1e Iron Gods adventure path using 5e) then we jump in.

* * *

Exploring the haunted technodungeon tower they toppled over and already dealt with the major boss monsters including the technomage ghost, they are now just looting the broken dungeon for possible tech stuff and data points (one PC is a robot archivist whose ambition is to be Google and be a repository for all knowledge).

They come upon multiple labs and investigate peering in the observation windows from the air sealed entry chambers and deciding on most of them nah, not going in there to recover broken stuff. Contained dangerous stuff is now let out in the labs after they toppled the towers and they can choose not to. Then they decide to carefully and quickly invisibly loot one room of lab notes by misty stepping in and out and do so without disturbing and activating the nanobot hive swarms they see in that lab. Then there is a lab with a big gyroscoptic equipment with controls in the observation room, but also a big nasty air suffocation bat like elemental creature they can see.

The kobold bard Acme cultist's character concept is literally "I push the button." So I ask if he pulls the levers. He asks if there are any buttons and I say no so it is a difficult choice for him. If there was a button he would instantly push it, but this is his choice. He does and I have him roll to see what effect it has. Part of the gyroscope engages moves a little then grinds and dies, agitating the elemental that flies and presses up against the glass eyeing them angrily.

The kobold flips off the elemental, taunts it trying to work it up a bit more, and then decides now is the time to leave, so I ask for a die roll to see if the air seal keeping the elemental in the room is still intact even after the tower toppling, he rolls and . . . it is.

John Dallman said:

GURPS Occult WWII, India campaign:

The Confederation of Mountain Kingdoms?

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The characters are in Kabul, Afghanistan, in September 1940. They were sent there because a member of the Afghan royal family suddenly switched to supporting Germany, after having been anti-German. Since they readily found out he has a magical effect on him, and the Cultural Assistant from the German embassy, who had many conversations with him, is accompanied by spirits, the cause seems pretty clear.

The more difficult part is getting the German thrown out, and the royal de-afflicted, but the cover story (which wasn't just a cover story) suddenly comes in useful. One of the characters is a Sikh prince, and the cover is that he's here, with the rest of the PCs in his entourage, to negotiate a declaration of fellowship between the people of Afghanistan and the Punjab.

He's actually dead serious about that. It is clear that the British are going to have to leave India, and he's concerned about the prospects for war and disorder. Getting a pre-alliance understanding in place seems worthwhile, especially if they can get Kashmir and other North-Western Indian Princely States to join.

After talking about that, the King of Afghanistan and his uncle the Prime Minister were willing to talk about the way their relative suddenly switched his political line, and to declare the Cultural Assistant Persona Non Grata. Another PC is a devout Muslim with healing powers, so he may well be able to remove the effect, next session.

Player welcomes second petrification death.