Welcome back to the weekly D&D and Tabletop RPG thread! Here’s a place where we can talk about Dungeons & Dragons or any other tabletop RPGs that you nerds might be into. Tell us about the games you’re playing, speculate about future expansions, recruit your fellow Avocados into new groups, whatever you want.
This week I’d like to take a break from D&D to talk about other games! This thread tends to be dominated by Dungeons and Dragons, mostly because D&D is literally the only tabletop RPG I’ve ever played (and even then, my experience is limited to 5th edition). But I’m told that D&D is not the only game out there, and there in fact many different RPGs that use many different rules systems and dice sets. Here are just a few that I found after a cursory Google search.1
A horror fiction RPG based on H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, in which players take on the role of ordinary people drawn into the realm of the mysterious. It uses percentile dice to determine success or failure of using certain skills, and characters have a better chance of success with each skill the more they succeed. As PCs progress and learn more about the eldritch horrors they’re facing, they begin slowly losing their sanity (represented by sanity points).
A science fantasy RPG that takes place in a fictional world where magic and sci-fi technology coexist. PCs can be humans, elves, dwarves, etc, and play in a world where corporate hackers attempt to steal data from rival corporations, through the use of cybernetic implants, artificial intelligence, and magic. The game is run using only 6-sided dice.
A tongue-in-cheek dystopian sci-fi RPG, in which players take on the roles of ‘troubleshooters’ working for The Computer, an AI that controls the city. Player characters are often also members of secret societies that The Computer views as threat, and as such will often have secret objectives of their own, up to and including killing the other players. Unlike many other adventure RPGs, this one is more competitive than cooperative.
A generic RPG rules system that can be used over multiple settings. It uses polyhedral dice to determine character’s traits and actions, and a standard deck of playing cards to determine initiative order in combat. The game is build to emphasize speed of play and reduced prep time as opposed to realism or detail in the game world.
A sci-fi game where characters journey between star systems to explore, battle (both on the ground and in space), and trade. Characters are created via a mini-game that fleshes out their lifepath up to the time the adventure begins, and some editions allow for a character to actually die in the character creation step. There have been multiple different editions of Traveller published, using various rules systems, like Traveller20 (based on d20 instead of d6s) and GURPS Traveller.2
And there are many more, including some based on popular franchises like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or Marvel comics. Tell us about other games you’ve played, or are currently playing. Which rules system is your favorite? Is there a game that’s better at simulating tactical combat, or conversely a game that excels at social interaction, where D&D might fumble a bit? Or is there something that draws you back into D&D however often you might try other games out?
Our AvocaD&D group is currently running the Curse of Strahd adventure module. Our version takes place in a pseudo-historical 19th century Earth, and the group is playing as representatives of a railroad company sent to the tiny Eastern European nation of Barovia (ruled by Count Strahd von Zarovich) to negotiate the expansion of the railway through the country.
[spoiler title=”Dramatis Personae”]Our Dungeon Master is The Hayes Code, and the party consists of:
- Txan Einreique, a Half-Elf Stone Sorcerer; the Company Representative and nominal party leader (Josephus Brown)
- Kissi Farwood, a Human Fighter; a former solider hired as a bodyguard by Txan (forget_it_jake)
- Edwin Potts, a Human Cleric of Torm; a government agent sent to oversee the deal and make sure the company isn’t doing anything shady; deceased (torn to pieces by vampires) (Nope)
- ENGR-23, a Warforged Artificer; a living machine employed as a railway engineer (our only non-Avocado party member)
- Peter Peregrine, a Human Barbarian; a Professor of Antiquities with a rage-filled alter ego called Kragen Tempest (Doctor Nick)
- Wickerwelt Tanglewood, a Halfling Ranger/Rogue; a Barovian native brought along as a guide (TheCleverGuy)
- Carabelle Longstride, a Halfling Cleric of Lathander; a Southern-accented American on a personal mission of her own (Wafflicious)[/spoiler]
[spoiler title=”Spoilers for Curse of Strahd”] When we ended last week, we had just entered a cursed swamp around the ruins of a drowned village. We had encountered an old woman named Muriel inside a ring of standing stones, who asked us to retrieve a magic gemstone from a witch called Baba Lysaga.
While waiting for nightfall, we made camp inside the ring of stones. ENGR kept watch, along with her mechanical lobster companion, until the sun went down. Wick took over as night fell. As the darkness set in, Wick saw a green light bobbing across the river, then watched as a shape rose up out of the witch’s hut. The shape came a little closer and Wick saw it a was a huge floating skull with someone hunched over on top, then it flew away to the northwest. Assuming this was the witch, Wick set about waking the rest of the party.
Most of the group woke up feeling refreshed, but Peter had suffered from terrible nightmares, much like Kissi had previously. As Peter described his dreams, they seemed to have some common elements with Kissi’s dreams from the previous night. Peter’s also included a circular room with a spiral staircase and hundreds of frogs–which made us all suspect that the hag who had escaped us back at the windmill might have something to do with it.
However, time was short, and we needed to move on Lysaga’s hut while she was gone. We asked Muriel if there was an easier way back across the river (as opposed to wading and being attacked by leeches), but she said the only bridge washed away ages ago. We were stuck wading across again, the halflings carried by the big folk. When we reached the opposite side (and de-leeched), Wick cast Pass Without Trace on the party, and we proceeded to sneak towards the hut, trying to avoid the scarecrows set up around the ruined village. As we approached the hut, we could see 2 cages full of ravens on either side of the open doorway. Wick inspected the threshold before we entered the hut, and noticed that the mud around the tree stump that the hut was on was churned up, with trails leading off some of the roots, as if the whole tree stump had crawled along the ground.
We went inside the hut, which was small and packed with furniture, wardrobes, chests, a rusty, blood-covered iron tub… and a crib with a child inside, looking at us. Underneath the crib a green light glowed from beneath the floor boards. ENGR tried to pick up the baby, but her hands just passed through the baby and the crib. The baby just giggled. Txan tried to open a chest and set off a trap, getting blasted with a bolt of lightning. Luckily, he was able to use an Absorb Elements spell to reduce some of the damage, but something else was coming out of the chest, something with clawed fingers!
Four clawed hands jumped out of the chest and began scurrying around the room. Peter, acting fast, swung his maul at one of them and crushed it like a spider. Wick pulled his shortsword and impaled one more of the hands, then sliced through a third. Kissi’s Sun Blade vaporized the last one. With the hands taken care we took stock of the chest. Inside we found 1300 gold pieces, plus 5 expensive-looking rubies, a stoppered vial, and a pair of scrolls, a pouch that seemed to be full of stones (slingshot ammo), a set of wooden pipes, and a polished agate.
We grabbed all the loot, then inspected the green glow coming from under the illusory crib. The glow was coming from under the floorboards, which were pretty rotten. Carabelle quickly gave Kissi a Protection from Evil spell, then Kissi smashed through the boards. Beneath the boards, we found the gem we were looking for, embedded in the tree stump–but suddenly the floor beneath us shuddered, and the hut pulled itself from the ground! The hut started lumbering across the ground towards the river, with us still inside. Wick tried to grab the gem, but the hut started lurching violently and he couldn’t hold on. The rest of the party scrambled to get the gem–Kissi was thrown into a wardrobe, but Peter managed to grab a hold of the stone and yanked it free! The hut stopped and dropped to the ground just a few feet from the riverbank. We dusted ourselves and left the hut, pausing to free the ravens from their cages on the way. The lock was more complex than Wick expected, but ENGR managed to get one cage open, and the ravens took off. Behind us the trail of the hut was obvious, and one of the scarecrows had been knocked down–but was getting back up. Luckily, the birds descended on it and started tearing it to pieces, but more scarecrows were coming. Kissi decided to circumvent the lock and just destroyed the second cage, and the rest of the ravens joined the battle, knocking the stuffing out of the scarecrows. Two more very large ravens suddenly came from across the river and joined the fray as well (we figured these were Muriel and her friend Danika).
We made our way back to the standing stones across the river. Txan inspected the green gem and discovered that it was a stone of good luck (giving whoever holds it +1 to ability checks and saving throws). As we wondered what to do next, one of the ravens flew into the hut, that was beginning to sink into the river. The bird came back out holding an old book, which it then dropped by our feet. ENGR picked it up and opened it, revealing it to be ancient diary, mostly faded and illegible, but with a couple of interesting passages:3
We didn’t want to hang around and wait for Lysaga to return and find her hut ruined and ransacked, so we set off following the river north back toward Vallaki. About an hour into our walk, Baba Lysaga flew by us heading south, cackling with glee. She didn’t spot us, though, and we continued on. We saw some bats and wolves in the woods, but they didn’t attack, and we reached the gates of Vallaki in the early morning, though the gates were still closed. Peter knocked at the gate, and the guards let us in after recognizing us as the group that had cut off Izek’s demon arm. We made our way to the Inn, and that’s where we wrapped up our session this time.[/spoiler]
You must be logged in to post a comment.