Let's be mean in game terms!

Because people are away next week and we finished this bit of Rifts last week, we decided to play some light boardgames, i.e. cardgames, namely Exploding Kittens followed by Cards Against Humanity.

Meanwhile, we tried to figure out what we want to do after the Christmas and New Year's break. It's looking like we're starting out by trying the Doctor Who roleplaying game, so that should be interesting. We're all going to be inept companions, no doubt ...

I can't kill my character, I'm the Chosen One

We were on our way to a town we were supposed to be investigating when Booker got distracted by some lights. Turned out that Hecate wasn't keen on him going there, but we ended up going anyway.

Encountered a Shemarrian, who informed us that reinforcements were coming and that we couldn't enter the town in question because humans are puny, even if they're the Chosen One. Gorbash went anyway. Alistair got fed up with the Shemarrian and went to a nearby nexus point.

The town was full of dead people. The Shemarrian wanted to add Booker to that pile, but Jayson intervened and she skidaddled. Apparently she had trouble seeing the Cyber-Knight and kind of thought Booker managed to stop bullets in the air.

The nexus point was full (oh well) of necromancers. Alistair called for backup, and we rushed to his aid. By this point, both Elyssia and Alistair had managed to get soul tag-alongs as well, and after getting rid of the necromancers, everyone except Booker was about to be sucked through a portal to Nxla.

Booker, now having come to terms with being the Chosen One, put his gun skills to good use and severed the soul links and thereby saved the rest of the party from being sucked through the portal.

This was not quite what the GM had in mind, and we ended up actually finishing this chapter of the adventure. Oops? We did it in an epic fashion, though, so points for that, surely. We set it up so nicely for the next season ...

Whose side am I supposed to be on?

So what happened was ... Hecate showed up in Ulmolf's head and sang her siren song again. For character replacement purposes, Ulmolf said "alright then" and had Odin show up in town, asking him wtf he thinks he's doing. They both disappeared through a rift back to Asgard.

Ulmolf's replacement is a demigod by the name Elyssa. On the plus side, Elyssa is a good person, so maybe we can keep Gorbash on the straight and narrow for a while yet ...

In the warehouse where we found the necromancer last session, there was indeed a necromancer. She had a half-dead bloke tied to a wall and she was very pleased to see Booker.

Apparently it was all some sort of ritual to give Booker all the knowledge in order to fight what he needs to fight as the Chosen One, but we didn't really know this when we may or may not have conked her over the head and having her dying on us and completing the ritual.

A lot of people in town (whose HP were powering the spell) died in the process and because the spell sort of backfired because Booker was supposed to be the only one present in the building and not the entire party, Alistair let Gorbash and Jayson know they ended up with a soul each tied to them ...

Why are we so atrocious?

We went to a town called Angels and were going to use Booker as bait. After much arguing about this point, Alistair and Ulmolf had enough and decided to go check out the town by themselves. As Gorbash and Jayson also went to have a look around, Booker decided he was going to agree to the bait plan all along. Following on from this, Booker went around various hotels checking in but not actually making use of the rooms.

Gorbash, trying to fit in, decided to make himself nicely inconspicuous ... by copying Jayson's looks, and because dragons are supernatural and therefore supernaturally beautiful, the end result (looking like Jayson's more attractive brother) did not go down very well with the Cyber-Knight, who's used to being Mr Fanservice.

Cups of tea were had. Stalkings were done. In the end, Booker got a message from a six-year-old girl to please help by rescuing her mum in a warehouse. Booker, being the nice chap that he is, decided to use her as a meat shield.

The child's mother wasn't in the warehouse, of course, but a necromancer was, so he bravely ran away.

I've missed the harassment and forgotten how to roll dice

After a whole month's worth of not roleplaying, we decided to change Tuesdays into Mondays so we could continue.

The party ended up going to the Temple of the Grey Seers. We had to remove our weapons, which made us slightly uncomfortable, and then a room exploded. See, there was this guy who was kinda psychic and he bombarded us with messages to the point where even the Cyber-Knight started crying for his mother, just before he passed out.

Then there was the Sunaj bloke, Martin, who was responsible for putting Bob the Symbiode on Booker's back. He died. The party did try to kill him quickly, but he had really good armour and stuff, so it took a while.

Ulmolf is trying to teach Gorbash how to do rune magic as well, so they considered turning the soul of the Sunaj into a runic spoon.

Basically, Gorbash probably isn't falling from graces, he's more sauntering downwards in a leisurly fashion ...

Morality is overrated in the 'Verse

Again we were a couple of players down so we decided to play the Firefly boardgame with all the expansions again (except the Kalidasa expansion, which we didn't know about until we had finished). This time we actually managed to get a winner, and with a little time to spare! It was a closely fought match.

People were eaten by Reavers, the Alliance space deck was reshuffled an ungodly amount of times and fun was had.

First, however, we start with some "before the session" chatter from Facebook because this is why I love our group!

There are Reavers in St Albans

Again we were a couple of players down so we settled in for another game of the Firefly boardgame. This time we played with all the expansions - specifically, the Blue Sun expansion which we hadn't tried previously.

We also had another player joining in, as he saw us setting up and hadn't played the game. Unfortunately none of us actually won by the time we had to start putting all the stuff back in the box, but we were quite happy to just enjoy the ride along the way. After all, the Firefly 'verse is pretty darn shiny.

Mansions of Butthurt

A couple of players down, we did a bit of boardgaming. In this case, Mansions of Madness. The GM of the game targeted one of the players first, because he had the lowest stats, and the player wasn't too pleased about it. We all got to be the target at one stage or another, and in the end we all died and Cthulhu took over the world. Oh well ...

It's so dull I’m checking Facebook

Last session we played the Firefly boardgame and I didn't take notes because I was too busy cruisin' the 'Verse. Sooo here's one we prepared earlier!

(It's the last one of this year's Eurovision posts, honest.)

A quick re-cap: Austria won in 2014, meaning the two semi-finals and one final were hosted in Vienna. Brits don't really care much for Eurovision, but it's a massive thing in Sweden (spoiler: they won ... again) and there are two Swedes in the roleplaying group, so commenting on Eurovision is kind of a given.

This session was made up of 50% Swedes and 50% Brits, in 100% snark mode.

Courtesy of Saturday 23 May 2015's Eurovision Song Contest grand final.

“You know if Japan was in it, they WOULD have a mech suit.”

“So it starts off on a bored note.” (Slovenia)

“It would be funny if they tripped on the headphone cable.” (Slovenia)

“You know what she needs, don’t you? A moustache.”
“It may have come last, but it’s still catchier than any songs this year.” (France)

“Well, at least he didn’t end the verse by saying ‘and now I’m going to kill myself’.” (Israel)

“This song is REALLY uneven.”
“YES.” (Israel)

“I remember this. It’s Johnny Cash meets Buddy Holly.” (Estonia)

“He still can’t sing low notes.” (Estonia)

“Turkey basters?!” (United Kingdom)

“They’re no Engelbert Humperdinck, but maybe that’s a good thing.” (United Kingdom)

“You wanna get some ice cream? And heroin.”
“You want to comfort eat?” (Armenia)

“So for this group they chose women who could sing and men who couldn’t.” (Armenia)

“Even the cat’s trying to hide his head more. Look!” (Armenia)

“This sounds like Mumford & Sons used to.” (Lithuania)

“Did they kidnap Florence from her Machine?” (Norway)

“Doesn’t do it for me, but neither did Euphoria and that won by a landslide.” (Sweden)

“What the fuck is that woman on the left wearing?!”
“Diapers?”
“The 80s called, they want their prostitute back.” (Australia)

“WHY DOES THAT HAT NOT HAVE CORKS ON IT?!” (Australia)

“You’re evil! I can’t believe you laughed at that!”

“It sounds even more like a Bond theme now.” (Belgium)

“He looks like Russell Howard trying to be creepy.” (Belgium)

“That piano’s on fire! Health and safety!” (Austria)

“Hey, it’s Cat Deeley!” (Greece)

“He’s got a nature theme going on.” (Montenegro)

“Why’s he talking about his B.O.?” (Montenegro guy pretends to be an airplane) “Oh, THAT’S why.”

“They sing about what they know, black smoke.” (awkward pause) “Because they smoke a lot in Germany.”
“You took the moral high ground there.”
“Someone had to.”

“Latvia is so dull I’m checking Facebook.”

“I would be checking Facebook I if my Nexus was here. I have a cat instead.”
“The cat’s nicer.”
“Than Facebook?”

“EEieEEO? We really needed that translated.” (Spain)

“Is that HAL in the background?”
“You will vote now, Dave.” (Spain)

“Is that Gallifreyan?” (Hungary)

“This song makes me sad.”
“D’you want to get my Nexus then?”

“Meh.” (Georgia)

“It’s not like he’s a good singer either, so it’s confusing AND shit.” (Azerbaijan)

“If Russia won, they’d have to host the gayest event of the year. The IRONY.”

“Impressive.” (Italy)

“Did Ireland have a Latvian invasion that we don’t know about?”

“That wasn’t political. They actually liked it.”

We're actually boardgaming next session as well but I've brought the pad this time.

Save him now and kill him later for the XP

We're back some time in the future! We re-joined the group at the very end of the previous epic battle against Nxla, and the party found that someone was looking at them. It turned out to be a ley line mage called Alistair. New party member!

Rita (a.k.a. Hecate) asked to be escorted back to Stormspire and that's the direction we were going anyway. She didn't waste time trying to get each and every party member to swear fealty to her, by pushing every character's possible buttons. Gorbash and Jayson quickly declined, Ulmolf considered it ... and then considered what Odin would do to him when he finds out Ulmolf's switched deities, and Booker said yes and then tried to negotiate the terms of the agreement. Rita's not really the kind of deity you negotiate with ...

Then there was a party, and then we tried to talk Booker out of going on a suicide mission ... or at least to not go without the rest of us.

Pro tip: don't play Sushi Dice in a store full of people. For hours. Why? The game involves ringing a bell far too bloody often, driving other people in said store to insanity. Because everything is accompanied by a DING! or even a DINGDINGDINGDINGDING!! if the players are particularly trigger-happy.

Is he supposed to be good?

We were supposed to play a boardgame last session but two people couldn't make it, a third one pulled out last minute and since there were just three of us left we decided to cancel the session altogether and have an early night instead.

So, filler post time. This is the second semi-final of Eurovision Song Contest 2015, because that's the filler post I have in stock at the moment.

A quick re-cap: Austria won in 2014, meaning the two semi-finals and one final were hosted in Vienna. Brits don't really care much for Eurovision, but it's a massive thing in Sweden (spoiler: they won ... again) and there are two Swedes in the roleplaying group, so commenting on Eurovision is kind of a given.

This session was made up of 50% Swedes and 50% Brits, in 100% snark mode.

We need a flowchart at this point

We're doing a bit of boardgaming at the moment because various people can't make the sessions for various reasons.

Last Tuesday, we played Once Upon a Time, which went from a children's game to something along the lines of Game of Thrones, but even more convoluted - hence the need for a flowchard. We followed this up with A Study in Emerald, where the game play was straightforward but the setup was about as convoluted as the previous game's storyline.

The bonus round was written down playing Boss Monster, Runecast and King of Tokyo. There were some spectacularly bad foreign accents during Monty Python Fluxx as well ...

Back to the scene of the final boss fight!

After Orlandis decided it wasn't the best idea in the world to kill the Sister of Battle after all, he and the rest of the ground party carried on into the heart of the icky flesh mountain. They encountered the final boss creature thing and killed it.

I believe there is a big crater in the ground where flesh mountain used to be.

Meanwhile on the ship, the space crew continued with repairs and preparing for the attack of the Tyranids. And then they lived happily ever after ... or at least until we pick up the story again at some point. :)

We had our chance of dying horribly but we failed

Better late than never, right?

Nemiel managed to one-shot kill the demon prince and the group lived to fight another session. Somehow, despite a surprising number of botches around the table, we made it to the end of the session with only minor mental trauma - and a dead NPC, which Orlandis took very hard because they were friends.

Meanwhile on the Arkadius, the ship was being shot at from the ground and had to go into hiding behind a moon. Oh, and a small group of Tyranids are coming our way. Fun!

Well, he's got until Saturday to learn to sing

Last week we were two players down and decided to cancel the session altogether. That's why I've gone through the previously unposted posts and found this one, which is the first of three. It answers the question about what kind of shit roleplayers say when they watch the Eurovision Song Contest.

A quick re-cap: Austria won in 2014, meaning the two semi-finals and one final were hosted in Vienna. Brits don't really care much for Eurovision, but it's a massive thing in Sweden (spoiler: they won ... again) and there are two Swedes in the roleplaying group, so commenting on Eurovision is kind of a given.

This session was made up of 50% Swedes and 50% Brits, in 100% snark mode.

What kind of a spaceship IS this?!

With Steve and/or Dave being a new wallpaper pattern, it was glaringly obvious we had a bit of an Eldar problem aboard the Arkadius. Rusty managed to shoot one to oblivion before Nemiel showed up. Fulgentius tracked down all the intruders for us to take down. There were flamethrowers shot down airshafts and everything!

On the bridge, Orlandis used gravity (or lack thereof) to play Asteroids with dead bodies and a hidden Eldar. Lucius wasn't too keen on being thrown around the place thanks to the creative piloting.

Once the intruders were dispatched of, a team were sent down to the planet below to infiltrate a mountain complex. Turned out to sort of be less of a mountain and more of a problem. A problem which wasn't solved when Nemiel managed to summon a demon prince from the Warp.

But at least we fired a warning flare first ...

Relic is like Talisman, but enjoyable

At very nearly the last minute we realised that the GM had the week off, and so there would be no Rogue Trader that session. Keeping up the 40k theme, we opted to play the 40k boardgame Relic instead, and for once I actually brought the quote pad with me and kept notes.

We're all about the failing today

After the joinage of a brand new player to the group, the crew of the Arkadius now has an actual played Navigator! Lucius of House Brabazon, a.k.a. Eyes.

Most of the party went down to the planet and talked to people, rolled badly and waded around in mud and that sort of thing, while aboard the ship one of the flight crew - Steve - went missing. With Dave sent to find him, Dave also went missing. One of them was found smeared on the walls of his cabin ... and one of them Dark Eldar nearby. CLIFFHANGER!!

If everyone hates you, you have to be clever

Here's another collection of quotes from our Victoriana game, played over a few weeks in July and August 2012. This is part two of the character generation session, so nothing in particular happens, aside from generating characters and talking bollocks.

We were going to be playing Rogue Trader, but unfortunately one of the players called in sick, so we played Forbidden Stars, a 40k boardgame, instead, which I inexplicably managed to win. But, in the words of Orson Welles, "If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story", which is basically what happened.

Can I use the ship's guns to shoot something on the planet from space?

Arranging a visit to the planet down below, the Captain and the Librarian were very nearly ambushed by some Chaos beings. Fortunately, the Chaos beings were taken care of by the cunning use of the Arkadius's onboard guns, blasting the Chaos to bits from space. A warning flare was totally fired beforehand, honest guv ... *cough* There's a fetching new crater on the planet now.

The actual, human, residents of the planet were much nicer.

Then some Dark Eldar came along, but umm, we may have shot them slightly - using the bigger guns of the derelict ship and a blatant disregard of the laws of physics. But hey, at least they weren't pirates out trying to steal the ship (again), and hopefully the Explorator won't have picked up the super virus from a transmission he listened in to.

The 40k universe is lovely

Here is a post containing quotes from two sessions: first, the character generation session and then the first actual session.

The crew are aboard the Arkadius, and went to look for a derelict ship that disappeared around 50 years ago but appeared to have been stranded near a planet for thousands of years.

Most of the player characters decided to have a look outside the Arkadius, except for Rusty, who sent Brian the trainee instead, because s/he didn't want to risk another ship getting stolen from under his/her nose.

The player characters are as follows:

• Fulgentius Sophus, Explorator and mostly metal
• Nemiel, Librarian (not the Syfy channel or Dewey decimal kind, the Deathwatch kind)
• Orlandis of House Dravonica, Rogue Trader and Captain of the Arkadius
• Rusty, Voidmaster of unknown gender who is a leaf on the wind

I'll use a spell-checker if I have to!

Last week we generated characters for Rogue Trader, but that didn't generate a lot of quotes, so I figured I'd put it together with the first session instead.

Here's one we made earlier.

In fact, it's not roleplaying at all, but instead it's boardgaming during this year's International Table Top Day! #ITTDatChimera

Life is too short to remove safely

Finishing off the Rivergard Keep, the party came out victorious. Lo-Kag, being a noble paladin, decided to dig graves for all the slain cultists as a penance for having killed them. When Kyla and Aial tried to help (using magic instead of shovels), he got a bit upset at their blatant disregard for honour that he'd rather they not help at all.

This worked out well for the rest of the party, who went to check out the rest of the castle in case anything had been missed off. They went back to the hidden boats and found that going in one of them and rowing into the darkness meant some kind of creatures trying to capsise them.

When the creatures in question were eventually returned to death and the whole party were assembled, they rowed all the way to the main water cultist temple, because this is what roleplayers do. That's not what the adventure book thinks should be done for another couple of levels ...

Making your own gunpowder sounds way too methodical

This is short, but let's face it, it was a continuation of clearing out Rivergard Keep of a bunch of water cultists.

The party stormed the main keep, killed a wereboar, found a secret staircase and a hidden room, and really went to town on those cultists. They should now be considered a threatened species, soon to be extinct. As a GM, I'm very proud of them, of course.

This is completely unrealistic!

A player couldn't make the session last week, and instead of continuing the raid on the water cultists, we decided to play some boardgames instead. However, I didn't bring the quote pad, so here's a little something we prepared earlier.

Still D&D, just a different group and a different adventure. This group is doing the Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and while most of the players are different, the GM is the original D&D GM in our regular group, and contrary to popular stereotype, I'm not playing the Cleric: I'm a Forest Gnome Wizard! The GM described a Forest Gnome Wizard as "a little like Radagast" and went on explaining further. My comment was "YOU HAD ME AT RADAGAST". :D

I think these two session excerpts are the very first two sessions of the campaign.

Can we loot now?

There's not that much to say about this session, aside from that the party got busy attacking the water cultists in the keep.

Aial did his thing in one of the towers while the others attacked the people in the harbour area.

Hearing a female chanting in the chapel, Schnick had a Trauma Flashback and attacked the chapel with fire. He was quite successful.

Kyla stabberised a guide, and even the noble Lo-Kag got in on the murderising.

It was like watching a gory hoover in slow motion.

You can definitely feel the d4

Carrying on up the river, the threat of having his li'l Captain forcibly removed made the keelboat captain sing like a canary. Not that he had that much to say that the party didn't already know, but still.

The unconscious crew were set ashore a few hours upriver, while the party then moved on. After stopping off at Summit Hall to rest up, have a meal and dump the keelboat captain in a dungeon, they continued further upstream to where the people from whom Shoalar obtained a certain set of books had been ferried across. They then found the place of the ambush and made their way to the suspected hideout of the water cult.

It’s a very entertaining scene

The party respectfully relieved the slain cultists of their earthly possessions before moving on down to Womford.

When investigating the village, they came across villagers who wanted to be left alone, a number of ruffians, and a jolly sea captain who had some interesting books to sell. Later that night, Kyla entertained the people from the ships which gave the other party members time to search one of the keelboats for clues. It seemed very likely that at least one of the boats was water cult-related.

After all the sailors having gone to bed drunk, an attack was made. The crew summarily slaughtered, the party tried to interrogate the captain ... by promising that Aial would do very bad things to him indeed. Then they stole the boat and headed upriver, horses and all.

I’m making my own rules

Having come across reviews of the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign, the GM (i.e. me, who has never really run a pre-written adventure before) was happy to conclude that feeling like a shit GM was less about actually being a shit GM and a lot more to do with a poorly edited and very confusingly laid out adventure book where the reason you can't find something is because it's spread out all over the place, and not necessarily in chronological or alphabetical order, or any other kind of order you would expect.

Anyway. The characters continued the partying at Feathergale Spire. Aial decided to check out the commander's private quarters while no one was looking, and then set it on fire to hide evidence. The order lost all of their initiates in the ensuing fire ... but of course the party wasn't present at the time the fire went off. Kyla, who earned a gold star with the order for killing the manticore last session, was taken aside and got the "hello, my name is Elder Knight and I would like to share with you this most amazing cult" talk. She later helped out with healing the wounded to show that yes, she's definitely initiate material. (As if.)

After a night when the party was randomly attacked by jackalweres (why they're not called "werejackals" we have no idea), the party headed down the road toward Womford. Stopping for a bio break, they came across some water themed soldiers that were suitably skewered by Lo-Kag and then turned into kebabs by Schnicktick.

You know, it's like there's some sort of elemental theme going on here ...

This conversation has ceased to make sense

After examining some shallow graves, the party headed over to some kind of tower that they could see in the distance. We were intercepted by ginormous insects that tried to eat us. Adventurers, like we are prone to do, dispatched of them. Kyla took some of the meat with her, because it seemed a good idea at the time.

The tower was full of knights and things. They had a kitchen full of new recruits trying to make dinner, and Kyla wanted to cook the insect meat. There was only one initiate who didn't consider the underground-dwelling ankhegs to be too "spiritually dirty" to eat, but he was probably just starving.

The party was invited to stay for dinner, and the entertainment of the evening turned out to be manticore hunting. Again, the monster was dispatched. There's clearly nothing odd about this order of so-called knights. Nothing at all ...

Whoever dies first makes a tank

The new party lineup for taking on the Princes of the Apocalypse (Elemental Evil) campaign are as follows:

• Aial, Aarakocra Rogue
• Kyla Therian, Asamar Bard
• Lo-Kag Skywatcher Katho-Olavi, Goliath Paladin of Tyr
• Schnicktick of the Crystal Fist, Deep Gnome Wizard

The party started out looking around the town of Red Larch, trying to find out more about a party from Mirabar who were supposed to have passed through the area recently, but never made it to their destination. Investigations eventually led them to some shallow graves.

This is how the apocalypse starts

Having taken down the zombies posing as nice medics, we decided to head into the basement of the ruined compound, based on an intact power line leading down there. Duke fitted himself through a custom-made hole in the floor and had to step out of the armour in order to fit with the rest of us through an airlock.

On the other side was a laboratory with a couple of undead and a lady who turned into midges when confronted. It was difficult to do any damage to her, seeing as how she just disintegrated herself into a swarm of flies if we tried.

In the end, through the cunning use of roleplaying, we found some wasps and discovered they basically eat the pestilence midges, so we set them on the fly lady and when all was said and done, took the antidote and set the wasps free to remove the disease in the wild. And then we probably had a proper wash off, seeing as how some of us were covered in sewage from the last shower we had ...

Are we dead yet?

Last week ended on a cliffhanger - a plague bear was coming right for us, along with some well-dressed dude. This session started with the well-dressed dude getting into our van while the rest of us took the bear down.

The dude didn't get to steal the van, which is what it seemed like he'd be doing. Instead, he told us he was trying to find some kind of lab that used to be in the area. That sounded like a good idea to us, seeing as how we might find a cure for whatever disease we'd manage to acquire last session.

We drove through the woods, following the tracks of the abandoned vehicle, and found a large log cabin. The people inside were doctors and quite friendly. They even offered us (Maggie, Vincent and the NPC) to freshen up. Meanwhile, outside, Jack patched up the two holes in his windshield and Duke stayed put in his mech suit. A black rainstorm hit, which was only a problem for Jack - luckily, he managed to avoid it.

Thanks to Duke deciding to switch his heart monitor on, and realising the only heartbeats were those of us, shit kicked off. Apparently the friendly people were in fact undead and everything around us was just an illusion ... The showers were basically just mud. So now, not only are we infected with icky plague, we're also covered in mud. Great.

Is now the time to botch?

Let's start by introducing ourselves:

• Duke Carpenter, junker and wannabe Space Marine
• Jack Burton, road warrior and van owner
• Maggie Murphy, lawdog
• Vincent Gordon, psyker

We kicked off the adventure by driving along in the van. There was a tree blocking the road and a military vehicle. It looked like an ambush, but we weren't the ones ambushed. Getting out (Duke only after putting on his mech suit) we investigated the place, and found dead bodies with flies all over them.

Later, we found a camp full of sick people. Luckily, they had nicked a device that allows you to check your health status. Turned out to be an infection of unknown origin. As it also turned out, some of us had become infected. (So that's why you shouldn't use Vigor as a dump stat. No wonder my character was the first one infected!)

Now we just need to find some kind of cure, before our skin melts off our faces too. Yay?

I like my character but I don’t like my dice

One player down, we had a session where we couldn't start the Hell on Earth adventure, but instead of doing a boardgame like we'd normally do, we had a one-shot Dungeons & Dragons adventure. Or part of one, at any rate.

Our usual D&D GM would like to get to play the game as well as GM it, so I volunteered to do it, but having never run an adventure from a printed book we thought maybe I should give it a try first and see if I was comfortable doing it. Turns out I was so comfortable that I nearly wiped the party on their very first encounter. ;)

The players rolled up new level one characters to use going forward (that way they could get to try them out as well) and then we did as far as we had time for of part one of the 5th Edition starter pack adventure - being ambushed by goblins, finding a cave and so on.

Stop turning me into a Space Marine!

We didn't start the campaign this session either, because we were too busy continuing the character generation. This is serious stuff!

On the plus side, the GM had made a mistake with our Veteran choice, which meant that we had to do some rejigging of points and Edges/Hindrances. On the plus side, my character didn't have to have a major phobia against cold, tetanus and sitting down. Only getting one fate chip is probably going to prove inconvenient, but not as inconvenient as those phobias. So yay for that!

Corsets are like Chinese finger traps

Here's a collection of quotes from our Victoriana game, played over a few weeks in July and August 2012. It's what's known as a filler post, as we boardgamed last week and the week before that.

Nothing in particular happened in this episode, because basically, we were just generating characters. It means that things are pretty sane, as opposed to what happened when we finally started playing.

The demonologist didn't end up joining the game in the end, but anyhoo.

I've never been so tense to start a boardgame

After finishing Hunter, we've had a couple of sessions of boardgaming. The first one was zombie survival game Dead of Winter, and yesterday, we played the XCOM boardgame - which is a very stressful (yet fun) experience.

We also started putting together characters for the next roleplaying game we've got lined up: Deadlands: Hell on Earth. It's like Deadlands, but in the FUTURE. With MUTANTS. And RAD POISONING.

Are you planning to wrap up the end of the world?

Dungeon crawling continued, although Zolistagol decided to stay back - which, admittedly, was down to the player unexpectedly being absent. We found a tied-up accountant/lawyer who turned out not to be so mundane after all; he was actually a mage. Emphasis on was, because he died suddenly, ahem.

We also encountered a strange spinning room with gargoyles, but luckily only one of them was not a statue but an actual gargoyle. Again, emphasis on was.

Then there was that werewolf again, and Alex bravely sacrificing himself in order to kill it with explosives, so that's another monster dead - or two, seeing as how Alex was apparently a serial killer as a way to unwind. o.O

Then there was a big room with a bonfire that had featured in both Eddie's and Tilly's dreams. There, David Hayes (a.k.a. guy hired to keep Trevor's mad sister safe) was pointing a gun at Agatha (a.k.a. Trevor's sister). Long story short: she started the Burning Days, and since Eddie stood closest to the bonfire, he ended up becoming the Burning Man.

Meanwhile, Trevor was stuck in expanding foam (that he insisted on bringing with us), and Tilly made the mistake of freeing a tied-up Rommel (the person), who promptly knocked her unconscious as she turned her back for a moment. Curse his sudden but inevitable betrayal. Who'd have thought you couldn't trust a Nazi? Basically, he tricked us into starting the Burning Days because he enjoys ethnic cleansing or something ... problem is this time around, it's not Jesus or Richard the Lionheart that's the Burning Man, and there's no new religion or Crusades ... it's a zombie apocalypse. And we, plus what remains of the Nottingham crew, are now Hollow Knights (again in Eddie's and Tilly's case) and saving the world is our job. Insert list of expletives here.

Okay, duct tape bandage it is

This is the episode in which we get tooled up - at B&Q and a local garden centre, of course, we're not savages - and begin a dungeon crawl. The end of the world - and the campaign - draws near.

The cave system somewhere outside Leamington Spa had baddies in it, like a vampire and a werewolf and a Russian bear, and they had also abducted Eddie's brother. Things that generally put us in a bad mood. Armed to the teeth (in Rommel the pseudo-dog's case literally, he was carrying a knife in his mouth) we went after them.

Having found a chamber which split off in three different directions, we split up the group - with all the PCs going down the same route. There, we first found a table with chairs and some very familiar mystic symbols. Trevor, Zolistagol and Alex sat down by their respective symbols, and immediately zoned out. Worried, Eddie and Tilly quickly jammed something between the table and two of their party members' hands (well, there was just the two of them) ... leaving Alex connected to the table and thus able to hear the vision presented to them. A vision from a long, long time ago, and which might possibly be helpful when we find the Burning Man.

The abductees were drained of blood, but we managed to find Eddie's brother and heal him a little before he expired. There was a vampire there. Heroic Molotovs, axes and other weapons came in handy. Then we heard a scream, and discovered one of the other groups in trouble. One of them got stabbed in the back by Eddie's axe (he was aiming for the Russian bear), but on the other hand we also managed to get the Russian bear after a number of Molotovs, shots fired and grenades thrown.

To be honest, it's a surprise we're all still alive. Just-IIIICE!

Is your hoover covered for supernatural ash damage?

The Derby crew had an interesting morning. Tilly woke up with a bed full of cats - and only two out of nine were her own. Instead of being weirded out by this, she thought it was lovely and promptly fell back asleep. Later on, trying to film them, they didn't show up on the recording, and as she mentioned this over the phone to Trevor, the friendly cats turned into a mass of black goo that went all horror film shock moment on her, causing her to pass out.

Worried, Trevor, Eddie and Alex went to her house and confronted the black goo, dragging the unconscious woman outside in her PJs for all to see, and ... when seen through "The Sight", the black goo was a rather pleasant druidic entity who could remove the curse from people. Eddie and Tilly are therefore no longer cursed, and are off the menu when it comes to both being the person who sparks Armageddon and being the person you sacrifice in order to stop it.

Meanwhile, clues pointed to Weymouth, Stonehenge, and Codnor Castle, with Leamington Spa somewhere in the middle-ish of the wonky triangle, so that's where we reconvened with the Nottingham crew. In a Travelodge. Trevor just had to finish being interrogated by the police because his doppelganger had been seen causing all kinds of shenanigans. Good thing Zolistagol spotted this on TV!

Silver bullets always work in the films

Eddie and Zolistagol's mobster family made some kind of deal, in which they divided up the north of Derby into two territories. We were asked by the mobsters to go and take out the rival Russian gang, eleven different targets, and because we have a military man in the party now, he was the one doing the work, with Zolistagol driving and Tilly bringing Rommel for the forensic cleanup.

Everything was going fine until we hit a house with werewolves. Then shit happened.

But on the plus side we now have 21 boxes of Nazi gold, only some of which are hollow and contain a horrific zombie-making goo.

The Secret Life of Zolistagol Bagridan

Eddie and Tilly have dreams involving people throwing themselves into fires. In other news, pancakes were made, and one player had to cut the session short because he was feeling so unwell he didn't even fancy cake.

The rest of the session went by with the rest of us learning that Zolistagol isn't the only Russian in town. Half of the Bagridan clan appear to have set up shop in Derby, and they're all some kind of relation to him or other. There is also a rival Russian gang, because why not? It's a roleplaying game - any similarity with any form of reality is purely coincidental.

Right?

I'd apologise but this is hilarious

Ahh, our first Hunter session since May 2014. It's good to be back, even though we're technically back in Derby.

So, the world's about to end in about a week's time and apparently, there is some old Japanese legend of people who bear the mark of a curse that go through a sacrifice of fire in order to cleanse the world of the curse. It looks like an orange circle, this curse mark thingamajig, and is currently occupying the skin of both Eddie and Tilly.

Since May, we have of course lost Tommy Crane's player, but we've instead gained Alex Surname, a 30-35-year-old war veteran who spent a couple of years in a mental hospital being treated for PTSD after coming back from a tour in Afghanistan. There was a werewolf, and there are no werewolves in real life, that sort of thing. He also made friends with Keles Moriton (formerly known as Rommel) in Afghanistan, and now he told Alex to make friends with us lot.

Alex also has an Alsatian, but an adult version called Karl. He pointed out that Tilly's 10-week-old puppy wasn't a puppy at all, and despite the party's best efforts at gesturing him to STFU and not trigger the Russian, Zolistagol finally realised that Rommel (the puppy) wasn't a puppy and freaked the hell out. It almost ended badly.

Not as badly, however, as things ended for Eddie's "chemical analysis lab" in a generic warehouse. The hollow Nazi gold bar we found turned out to contain something that turned people into radioactive barf zombies (!), and they're hell-bent on spreading themselves upon Derby like a bad case of Ebola. Err, yay?

You see tentacles coming out of the portal

Booker seemed suddenly eager to give his stuff to other people, perhaps anticipating his Chosen One-ness being the death of him. Well, that didn't pan out.

First of all, Gorbash and Booker found Rita's Horcrux in the astral room. It was guarded by something and it was kicking off, so Gorbash got out of there. He'd never explained exactly how you leave the astral plane before the Psychedelic Dreams drink's timer runs out, so he ended up having to go back in to get Booker. Eventually they both returned.

Rita was happy to save the world as she had her little soul urn back, so we headed toward the place where Gabriel had set up the big portal/gate thing. (Did we mention Ulmolf, prior to joining the party, was one of the people working on putting that thing together? *slow clap*)

A big bomb full of shrapnel was dropped on a hoard of zombies, and it got rid of Gabriel as well. Nxla was on the other side trying to get in, we slew zombies, held the gate together (ohai Ixchal!) and were generally very distracting until Rita could finish her magics.

World: saved. Party death toll: zero. We win! :D

Are you SURE you're the Chosen One?

After complaining that it's really complicated and soul crushing to generate a Rifts character, we got the show on the road. Booker managed to officially get in Ulmolf's Grudge Book (it's a book in which he notes down all the people he has grudges against ... obvs) after having a morality discussion with young Gorbash. The discussion went along the lines of "all people look the same to you, but you know that if they're wearing red headbands, they're bad and should be killed, even if they're not actually Rakshasa bandannas?"

We also went back to the Crow Bar and had Baradhi corner Granite the gargoyle in the astral plane room thingamajig again. (Yeah, he was outside around the corner, seeing as he's actually barred from the establishment.) Granite wasn't pleased. Especially not when Baradhi blew up the room again. Fortunately, we didn't care, and moved his body elsewhere. He dropped a compass and an earth elemental.

The compass looked suspiciously like the compass Booker's had in his mystery chest for some time out of game, which he (and we) conveniently had forgotten all about. Hey ho. It could be used to find the urn containing a part of Rita's soul (THAT'S RIGHT, IT'S A GODDAMN HORCRUX) and we're running out of time fast. Did we mention we only had 48 hours left, and it takes about 24 to get the astral room back up and running? Eh, woops?

A symbiote is for life, not just for Christmas

First session of the new year, woo! We started by having a chat with Rita, who we found out last time was the goddess Hecate. Or a part of her. Or something like that. She found our party to be very interesting, seeing as how we're such an eclectic mix of people ... and other entities. Booker with his new back parasite, for instance, smelled particularly intriguing.

We brought her along to see Rolf, a.k.a. the guy who hired us to find his "wife" Rita. Booker showed him the list of expenses (which were previously agreed in the contract drawn up on accepting the mission), which was about ten times more than the 100k base fee. After deductions. Well, at least he paid up before Rita killed him.

On the plus side, we made a new friend: a Norse dwarf called Ulmolf, a Runesmith, who is a welcome addition to the group.

Needing to stake out the Crow Bar for a gargoyle called Granite, Booker had apparently misunderstood the instructions for this, so we spent a good long while drinking a concoction which took us to a funky cloud room in the astral plane. This "room" was later destroyed by Baradhi and Gorbash, who tried to find a door out to the normal astral plane. No one has ever been barred from the Crow Bar before, but umm ... we might be the first. Possibly.

We were only meant to stake out the place and wait for Granite to show up, so we could persuade him to give up some information. No need for astral plane stalking. Oh well. While we did that, Gorbash turned into a dwarf and went drinking with Ulmolf and Gorbash. Jayson, who didn't have time to get jiggy with Maria earlier, found some time with her now. Baradhi waited down the road from the bar and when Granite showed up, followed him back to what appeared to be Gargoyle Central. Oops?

The person who comes last can be Wil Wheaton

For the past few years we've hosted a New Year's boardgaming extravaganza at our place. This New Year's Eve was no exception.

We warmed up by playing Dixit, then Cards Against Humanity, and Betrayal at House on the Hill - which saw in midnight - and the next day, we rounded off by a few games of King of Tokyo.

That's right, we sure know how to party! #wearehorriblepeople

Happy new year!

Sorry for the lack of posts in December - we had our last session on the 9th, and then the Blogkeeper went on holiday - which wouldn't have impeeded preparing a seasonal JPEG or putting together some other kind of post, but the entire holiday was a blur of nursing a bad cold, so ho hum never mind.

While we're waiting for normality to resume on Tuesday (yay!), we'd like to welcome in the new year by some random Facebooking:

"Only 3 more days to the tactical moustache... and cake!!"

Rifts GM: "What are we doing on Tuesday by the way - is it me?"
Player: "Rifts according to the calendar"
Rifts GM: "I better prep a bit then - hehehe"

Player 1: "Unfortunately X has lost his tactical moustache"
Player 2: "O.O No tactical stache.... shocking!"
Player 3: "Lost?!"
Player 1: "X has coiffeured his moustache and beard, so no longer has his tactical moustache."
Player 2: "I have bulding a theory - X found a threat to the world and the only way to stop it was to deploy the tactical stache permanently - as a barrier against evilness, so he can't bring it with him anymore."
Player 1: "Lol"
Player 2: "I like my theory better"

"What could be so evil that it needed a tactical moustache to stop it?!"
"So, I was thinking along the lines of USA finally realising that Sweden has 3 more letters in their alphabet than the English one has. Under pressure from the senate, USA decided to accuse Sweden for mass-alphabetication and was mustering forces when X deployed his tactical stache to protect the homeland of his fellow role players. USA, trembling in fear of the stache at their borders, decided not to go for it at the moment, as they have no matching stache to counter it."
"Thinking about it most US superheroes are clean-shaven! Wolverine's sideburns are probably their best bet."
"Wolverine is canadian!"
"That explains it!"
"Also, I am sure that sideburns would only compliment a tactical stache, not counter it - so even Wolverine's sideburns would be of no use against X's tactical stache.."

"I'm guessing their best bet would be Hagrid - Y is more the expert on him, so she will have to say if he would assist USA in their evil deeds or not"
"It depends ... will there be a dragon in it for him?"
"As far as I know, USA do not deploy dragons, so I would say no."

We're starting up Rifts on Tuesday, if that wasn't clear enough already, so see you in the next week with new posts!