RotR, Reapercon, GMing again, MTTC, moving closer to the rules

Rise of the Runelords

So that RotR game I was invited to way back that had the pixie incident. Yeah, it finally ended at 3am this past sunday morning. It's been a crazy ride, at the end Karzug killed one of us, and had several of us below 10 hit points multiple times. Some of the spells we had access to were late book spells, and may have skewed the power in our favor, but in the end it was the longest, toughest, craziest five rounds of combat I've ever seen.

Reapercon 2014

Yes, we went. It was a blast. My brother and I played several warlord games, and painted. I painted up a battletech warhammer that got a certificate of recognition. My brother's Mina won a silver. The new hotel for the event is really nice, and despite my fears, its still the close and friendly feel that reapercon 2013 was. We played some great custom R.A.G.E. games, including their dungeon crawl, and cowboys and gunslingers. C&G is probably the most fun I've had with the rage system yet. We found we were playing the tough rule in warlord way wrong, so we're rehashing our army builds and plan to actually play in the tournament next year. Ben and I have several paint project ideas in mind. Our goals are to both score better than this year with everything we enter. I'm also gonna push for two entries.

GMing again

Well, with Runelords over, and the other GMs I was playing under out of town for 4-6 months, its time to step behind the screen again. I'm looking at three games at the moment. One is online for the MTTC people I've been playing with. Several of them are new to Pathfinder, and one is new to Pen&Paper as a whole. The next is picking up the slot from the runelords GM since his schedule is wonky now, I'll also be adding a kiddo of the players. We'll start with the beginner's box and go from there. The third is continuing the game I was running for Ben and the parents. I've got good notes for that already, I just don't remember how far they got last session.

MTTC

Speaking of MegaTokyo:The Clans, that has indeed started up cleanly again. We're now playing at www.rpgclans.org bewarned though, mature content. Shinyai was just getting adapted to tokyo when things started getting crazy, and the government has put up devices that might as well be anti-magic fields. So even the average thug is an interesting fight. However, someone nasty is about to step out of the shadows and into the fray!

Getting back to the rules

For no good reason what-so-ever, I was stat-blocking Kenshin Himora from the anime Rurouni Kenshin this week. I've noticed a lot of things that have been in games I'm in are actually house rules (nat 1 meaning something bad on attacks, such high stats, CMD for feints). So far these haven't really been problems, but I think I'm going to move my games closer to the regular rules for a while. I think some of the house rules that can kick a player in the chin are actually to "balance" characters with really high stats. So I'd like to see what happens if things are closer to the book after all. It also means toning down my npcs, but hey that's fine, they were built powerful to deal with powerful characters.

Pirates and Council Continue, DMing for Thanksgiving, and other stuff

Oddly we're hitting book two of Skulls and Shackles and Council of Thieves at roughly the same time. In Skulls we survived the first month under the lash of Plug and Scourge until the wyrmwood's first prey came into view. Lysandros (the rogue) ended up leader of our small boarding team. Our team was also made part of the prize crew to send the ship back to Port Peril for sale. However, it wasn't long before we could tell that Plug and Scourge had other plans, which we wouldn't survive.

With support of a handful of NPCs we'd befriended along the way we mutinied and took control for ourselves, only to get swept away in a storm and beached for a few days while repairing the ship and rescuing two NPCs from the grindylows who attacked during that same horrid storm. Now with our new ship afloat, and our new captain (Lysandros, the rogue) in charge we head for the same port Plug was headed for, hoping to complete a crew and squib the ship.

In Council things are a little weirder. Our first few days involved dodging hellknights, killing shadow beasts at night, and goblins during the day. Then, a gang known as "The Bastards of Erebus" pushed too hard, and our little group of less that legitimate vigilantes asked us to do what the guard still refused to do.

After a successful raid of the Bastards hideout, and capture of their Asmodian cleric and leader, we've built a little bit of reputation with the populus. Now we've been approached by a member of the Pathfinder Society asking us to help get back into an old lodge in Westcrown. How? We get to be actors, in a murder play! If we do well, we get invited to drunken debauchery at the Lord Mayor's home, in which we'll get to dig through his home looking for info on how to get back into the lodge.

I'm also the DM for the family and most of these two groups for two thanksgiving dinner and oneshot games. If your not in one of those games and have suggestions, comment here or on G+!

Amtgard has also hit a new state. Skywatch is no longer the infant shire, the new Shire of Nightglade has risen in mundane San Angelo, and along with Ninewillows (midland) we're helping them get on their feet. As one of my household's members said, it's odd being the veterans visiting the new field.

That's about it.

No Kings made, Death's hands changed, off to the Seas, and down with the hellknights!

So here's this random-time-period's news.

First, the Kingmaker game with the sibling meets tomorrow for its last time. The campaign will continue with others, but the DMs schedule means we're out. I would've liked to give it another go, but I'm actually not all that torn up about it. Some other time I'll either run or play through it with another group. The sibling and I aren't without a game to play yet though, more on that below.

Second, the four horsemen game I was running is now finished. The party constantly changed and only settled down near the end. I didn't really finish Famine's arc but kinda needed to wrap up. So the final battle happened in Abaddon. When I had them cross a small section of Styx, they decided to use flight instead of a raft. This was fine, but instead of completing their move to cross they hovered over it and dropped spells on some daemons that attacked them. The daemons in question had dispel magic. The cleric and one sorcerer ended up in the river brain and soul wiped.

The remaining sorcerer and the cavalier ran for it. Came across a pair of boatmen, and went to pay them passage back to the regular world. After some conversation they discovered that Death had the boats and all but a few boatmen destroyed. They then convinced these two boatmen to help fight Death. So when they got to the machine Death and his preferred two boatmen assembled, (pretty much a giant soul blender that pumped energy into Death and his lackeys) it was two boatmen and two players vs two advanced boatmen and Death. (I didn't have a statblock for death, so it he was just a really advanced boatmen with some extra nasty abilities.)

The game ended with the cavalier shouting "I want your JOB!" while dealing the final damage to Death. Death dissipated and the cavalier sat on the throne, and restored things back to before the soul blender. As a final "favor" to the rest of the party he had the two in the river reincarnated and kicked back into the world with no memories and no stuff. The sorcerer he had booted back to the real world with all the other people's (except his own) gear. So now there's a well outfitted goblin dragon disciple somewhere in the world who death owes a favor, and the other sorcerer and cleric have started over at level 1 with no memory but their names in a Reign of Winter game run by the player of the surviving sorcerer.

My witch for Kingmaker got a new name, a little different history, and is now in a Skulls and Shackles game with my brother (run by the person who's cavalier became death, and is the Runelords DM). The party involves her, my brother's female inquisitor of besmara, a female half-orc barbarian played by one friend, and a male human pirate(rogue archetype) played by the dm of my the other game that's now on tuesdays Council of Thieves. She completes a completely gender-bending party, all by chance but her. It's fun.

As for her Council game. She's starting a blog as well. I think the two of us will try and keep consistent posts about that game here and there. You can visit Selvaron's blog here. I'm playing a chelaxian native human freehand fighter (archetype). He's a former member of the Dottari, who decided he'd be more useful to westcrown investigating things on his own.

I've gone from two APs that I'm playing in and one freeform game I was DMing, to four APs. I'm also considering starting Legacy of Fire. I'm pretty sure that this is one of the definitions of insanity, but that's fine by me.

Now for something a little different, the Shire of Skywatch is still doing okay. I'm not playing as hard as I was when it started, but I'm still enjoying the occasional visit. What's interesting is there's another startup field starting in November. So on the 10th I'll be going to San Angelo's Nightglade field's opening day.

Add to all this a free form RWBY game we hope to get off soon, and other madness, and I'm happily lost in too much stuff to do again!