Caroline Pierce Ate A Cat

 

If you know Caroline Pierce--outside of her, ahh, work--pretty much the first thing you know is she's a cat lady. Epic scale cat lady.

But last night she ate a cat.

Ok, technically her character ate a cat, Elaria, the half-elf ranger.

In her defense, it was because she refused to eat a person, so that's a good(?) sign.

I blame Session 2 of Maze of the Blue Medusa.

It went like this:

After last session our heroines wake up in the first room there at the bottom, barricade themselves inside and hope to regain spells etc and heal up for their next sojourn into the Maze.

They are interrupted after an hour by a polite knock on the door from 6 Bondye Reparatè (humans who believe the Maze is heaven and their job is to perform maintenance on it). They would never be so impolite as to bash down the door so they slide a polite offering of two hand-rolled cigarettes beneath the door and move on.

Despite Elaria, being a ranger and all, being able to identify these as ordinary hand-rolled cigarettes, a weirdly lot of time is spent trying to figure out what the cigarettes do (nothing except give you cancer 40 years after making you look cool).

The next hour a Chronomancer (lizard wizard) and a pair of his thrall mammals (ape-morons) show up. They kill one moron and steal the pearl that allows the Chronomancer to control the other and shoot him fulla holes before he can use his time-magic to reverse the damage. The newly-cnotrolled moron thus played an important meatshield/scouting role in the rest of the session.

Also note the girls made extensive use of the wardogs in this fight as they pounced on and murdered one of the morons, though out of deference to a recently deceased real pet Kimberly Kane's was turned into a war-cat.

You might see where this is going.

So anyway after defeating the Chronomancer, the girls went past the living chess pieces (basically a wise decision), used a mirror to investigate the Jade Tiles That Freeze You and inadvertently made them freeze themselves.

(Dialogue in this room:

Michelle: "Uh, I have Trap Sense?"

Zak: "You sense this is a trap.")

 ...and then cast Dispel Magic to make thetiles mundane enough to cross. Halfway through another Lizard Wizard attacks and gets beat up.

All this time Caroline Pierce is taking notes. 

Zak: "You take a lot of notes, CP."

Caroline: "Well the thing is your dungeons are always like a puzzle, none of my other games are like that."

Zak: "I don't know whether that's a compliment or not, but you're still around after 15 years so I'll assume its a compliment."

They investigate some more rooms and pronounce them weird. They are: the room with the snail golem, the room with the light-eating roses, the room with the grape juice.

Then they go into the Gallery section.

Those of you who have played Maze of the Blue Medusa know that in the Gallery section there's a mechanic that speeds up time and spoils food. So the PCs get hungry fast and will start to lose hp if they don't eat.

There are lots of solutions to this--the Create Food and Water spell, moving in and out of the gallery from the peripheral areas around it, stashing food in other places, etc., but a common one among the adventuring classes is cannibalism.

The PCs poke around at the magical artworks, including the paintings that show all the wounds you have, then encounter some cannibal critics! They hate art and want to eat the moron! (Contary to popular belief, Patrick Stuart made these monsters up. They are jussssst this side of too whimsical for me.) The PCs make quick work of them and Michelle's halfling Jinx wastes no time slicing off one's cheek and eating it. Kimberly Kane's cleric of the Great Maggot eats the other. I remind her the Great Maggot has no compunctions about eating flesh.

Elaria, a noble half- elf, abstains.

Soon they find the pit in the middle of the reptile-eye floor mosaic and head inside, down into the Reptile Archive. After accidentally annihilating the Nyctocaust Memorial (a touch-sculpture that is destroyed by light, oops) Elaria takes the multi-lingual warning sign ("please do not use light in this room") to see if she can start to puzzle out other languages from it. Clever.

Soon they wind up in the room with the clockwork needlebirds that tattoo you. They send the moron in first. He gets tattooed to death. Then they send in the pets. The cat gets tattooed to death. Only the terrier escapes.

Elaria helicopters in with her magic morningstar (the Steel Cyclone) and kills the remainder of the birds but it's too late. And she's hungry, losing hit points. She barbecues the cat.

Jinx attached the cat's tail to her hat. "Well we are using every part of the animal".

The rest is conscientiously sliced up into pieces and packaged for later. After a short fight with a chameleon women waiting to ambush them and passing some strips of tattooed flesh and undead bees, the crew winds up in the lair of the Lampen Proletariat, a wax golem who urges revolution against the masters of the Archive.

What will they do???? Find out next time!!!!

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Return to the Maze of the Blue Medusa

Oh you all know the Maze of The Blue Medusa, right?

It's the dungeon where Andy Markham of the OSR Facebook Group said "It's definitely one of the best looking books ever published for the OSR, or for RPGs in general," (before he joined in on a giant online harassment campaign to frame me for rape.)

...and where Ben Milton from Questing Beast said "One of the biggest releases, I think, in the history of D&D publishing", (before he joined in on a giant online harassment campaign to frame me for rape.)

...and where Ken Hite of Trail of Cthulhu "Let's put it this way: it's a dungeon you actually want to read the prose in. To grown adults." (before he also joined in on a giant online harassment campaign to frame me for rape.)

...and where Tim Brannan from The Other Side blog said "After 36+ years of gaming, precious little seems 'new' to me. This feels new." (before he, too, sadly joined in on a giant online harassment campaign to frame me for rape.) 

...and where Monte Cook said "Clearly jam-packed with awesome ideas." (before he as well joined in on a giant online harassment campaign to frame me for rape.) 

I wonder if they went back to feeling that way now that I successfully sued five times about this bullshit? I recommend asking them. I recommend asking them any chance you get. Anyway, I always liked it.

So the girls were in a spot of bother

After successfully handling the giant shrikes and some adventures in the Scorned Mountains, the girls...

Caroline Pierce aka Elaria, Half-Elf Ranger

Michelle aka Jinx, Halfling thief

Kimberly Kane aka Dr Feargood, tiefling cleric

...were given an assignment by Dr Feargood's Church of the Great Maggot to clear out a fortress full of moon priestesses and werewolves.

To make a long story short, things went poorly, they lost the element of surprise and several henchmen, their pet giant turned against them and they wound up surrounded, low on hit points and in need of escape. Luckily, Jinx had a book containing a ritual that allows you to teleport away to The Maze of the Blue Medusa. They used it, the session ended.

It's been ages since any of the players were in the Maze playtests and none of these characters have been, so its fun to see how it handles after a few years...

1. In the standard Maze, you steal the painting to open a portal to this room. In this case, they were transported in an emergency by a spell so I figured the painting wasn't actually in the room. There's just a space where it use to be.

The girls decided to rest 8 hours and get back hit points, abetted by a magic lock that could lock any door. I rolled 8 hours of random encounters but the only things that could past the door was Torcul Wort, a friendly ghost, and Pellory-of-the-Walls--usually a dangerous plant monster that could've TPKd the party but luckily the ranger had read a book (The Green Opus: Leveling up with this book allows the PC to know all the stats and abilities of any plant monster on a successful Int roll of 10 or better, received as treasure in some adventure) that gave her info on plant monsters, so they made short work of Pellory.

2. After a refreshing sleep behind a barricade they came out met the artifact hoarding dragon-woman Lady Crucem Capilli.

"So she's all blue, and has like, ram-like horns on either side and..."

"Wait, is she hot?"

(The girls always ask this.)

"Yes, she's hot."

So Jinx tries to flirt the Lady into telling her where things in the Maze are but that's not The Lady's way. The party agrees to fetch her some items for some cash-as-xp because they're in need of a motivation anyway so that all works out.

They take a look through the archways:

3. The room where you can fall through shadows into a floor is always fun. The girls think to throw a lantern in their first and notice it sinks partially into the floor. They decide fuck this room.

4. They look down into the vertiginous tangle of the Escher stairs and think well probably also fuck this room.

7. Poking the floor in 7 causes Cyanoxantha, the Living Mosaic, to speak:

The first to cross these coils must dance,

The second, sing to safety reach,

The third must bleed or risk mischance,

The fourth one dies between my teeth,

The next will be the first once more,

And do not cheat, I’m keeping score.

That's an immediate 'Nope' because nothing is more fearful than poetry.

Being like "Ok, we gotta go somewhere..." they eventually pick the stairs.

4. (again) Jinx bravely sends her war terrier, Kevin, to investigate by throwing a biscuit onto the stairs. Kevin luckily rolls a Nat 20 when the stairs violently re-orient midway down which reveals their magic, and allows Kevin to avoid becoming one of the corpses at the bottom of them.

Dr Feargood (played as she is by longtime barbarian Kimberly Kane) briefly considers going back into room 2 and just beating the shit out of Lady CC before accepting that the stairs are are a problem that can basically be solved with rope. They decide the locked door's not worth the trouble and head into the dark fastness of Subfoetens and his Filomel Shell.

8. Since the girls aren't carrying much treasure, the Shell is perfectly happy to let them pass while it tries to keep Subfoetens asleep. 

Jinx tries to talk to it. It goes "Sssh!", points to the sleeping baby, and keeps singing its lullaby.

Frustratedly, she mimes uselessly for a bit, then threatens "Let us pass or else!" with sword drawn at which point I remind her the Shell is not in the way and they can just walk past to the next room and they do. 

9. On the rope bridge through the next passage, I roll a random encounter and its the Decadent Waste--a valuable mechanical hummingbird that leads you into danger.

They remember they have a net, catch it in one round, and then try to figure out how to get back to Lady Crucem C to sell it.

7. (again) They prod the living mosaic again, this time from the north end. It delivers its second spiel:

You didn't listen to my rhyme

And talked amongst yourselves like fools

You’ll pay attention more next time

Now risk your death to find my rules

It's deal with this shit or go back the way they came, so they opt to deal. Jinx tosses a dust that distorts magic onto the mosaic, making the serpent only partially able to become three-dimensional. Dr Feargood using a potion of being invisible to reptiles to sneak over and deliver a Nat 20 to it while Elaria bashes it with her magic morningstar. After getting bit twice, Jinx coup-de-graces it with a silver rock hammer she picked up somewhere.

2. Back to Capelli to get paid for the hummingbird, more flirting.

1. Back to the start. Door closed. Magic lock in place.

They try to sleep but after 15 minutes there's a pounding noise--six chameleon women start trying to machete the door open. 

Dr Feargood lives up to her reputation and Causes Fear to one of them and Elaria takes the rest--luckily these were the first Chameleon Woman encounter so they were just 1HD hatchlings. 

The girls close and lock the door again. Maybe next time they'll be lucky and no more random encounters? Maybe KK won't have a migraine? Who can say? Find out in the next episode!

Starting to think 4chan's not a reliable source of information on games

This Is Why D&D With Porn Stars Was Necessary

Click to enlarge

Last night I read the strangest comment I have ever seen.

But then, given all the stupid people I now know who got mad about this blog, and all the stupid things they've done since, I guess it's to be expected.

Transcript:

Joe Reiter

Men vs. Women

I never, from day one as a dungeon master did I let any female player character dress differently in armor than the men. Sure, perhaps there armor may be shaped a little different to accommodate them better, like Roman commanders had formed brest plates. But I never allowed the fantasy skimpy chain mail broads running around like they just got gang raped by rust monsters. Never liked the look 🤣

Zak Smith

Are you saying when a female player said what she was wearing you'd sometimes go "No, sorry, you can't wear that?"

41m

Joe Reiter

yes

2m

Zak Smith

That's one of the strangest things I've ever heard in my entire life.

1m

Those of you familiar with a world full of chatty gamestreaming, OnlyFansing e-girls and hot girl cosplayers bragging out what big nerds they are may not remember this but when I started this blog it was a remarkably common belief that girls don't play RPGs and all the ones that do were part of an online Indiegaming monocult of concerned mothers dedicated to stamping out boobplate.

I disagreed with that, everyone in my game was living proof it wasn't true and we said that on the internet and while a lot of people vocally agreed, all of them got called names about it until they agreed to lie about rape. Now many of them have decided they were wrong but are still scared to admit it.

This is because we live in Hell.

Meanwhile:

In our game the sea elf player formed a dreampop band called Seafoam and they played a benefit show for refugees from the war nobody knows the party itself started. 

The catgirl rogue opened on fiddle, rolled a 1, got in a fight with the crowd.

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I Love It When They Make It Easy

 

The PCs are supposed to be finding a dragon because the Half-King of Broceliande wishes to talk to a dragon.

They decided to look for Naga Malicinda, worshipped by the Jade Fang of Tiamat.

In part of the dungeon--the Temple of Naga Malicinda, they find a baby. In with the treasure. Just a baby. Now they're carrying a baby.

They finally meet the dragon.

Again, I get to do my favorite thing: in order to show the scale of the dragon to the PCs using the miniatures, I get put a real life puppy on the kitchen table. Thank you for your help, Tallulah.

Now I'm thinking: this is going to be otherwise a boring encounter, because the dragon is wise and chill. The dragon listens and agrees to meet the Half-King in two full moons in the Golden Lagoon.

A little anticlimactic after 3 weeks of like "We're gonna fins a dragon!"

The PCs leave. Or do they?

Bleezy the sea-elf wizard notices, like, hey--this dragon is in this massive flooded hall full of jade columns and there's like, a lot of treasure down there.

"Hey," says Bleezy as the other hastily leave through a stair in the rock, "could I, like, just get some of that?"

"Ohhhh," now the great Naga Malicinda is amused "are you a beggar? Or a gambling man?"

"A gambling man!" says Bleezy.

Naga Malicinda offers a game of chance and skill: if Bleezy spends 30 seconds in there--gesturing to a gazebo-sized dome like a massive teapot--then he can plumb the dragons' treasure for 12 seconds.

He agrees.

What's in there?

Dragon eggs, about to hatch.

Before the end of Round 2 Bleezy is down, bleeding.

The other wizard, Wyatt, who stayed behind to keep an eye on Bleezy, runs in there and quite responsibly teleports him out along with--somewhat less responsibly--one of Naga Malicinda's eggs.

Now, instead of me having to think up what to do next, they're in Vornheim having pissed off a maxed-out ancient dragon and the violent reptile cult that worships it like a god.

Couldn't have gone better if I'd railroaded it myself.

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Playing D&D With Porn Stars and Also The Founder of the OSR and The Head of Lamentations of the Flame Princess

 

Two very short stories from playing D&D last week:

So if you know anything about Caroline Pierce you know...

Wait, let me rephrase, if you know anything about Caroline Pierce playing D&D, you know she has terrible luck. Like: the worst. Dice you should throw away. Whole characters you should throw away.

However, last time she tried out a new set of dice someone gave her. It has always been my feeling that gift dice roll better. These seem to. They have cats on them. She is currently playing an elven ranger named Elaria who is beginning to not be a total fuckup.

Also important to know Kimberly Kane is playing a cleric of the Great Grub--usually worshipped by goblins but there's no accounting for taste.

So the job is this:

It's an investigation. A number of travellers have been found dead along the pilgrimage route to the Cathedral of the Infinite Maggot--the party is asked to investigate and solve the problem.

After a day's travel, they come upon the first corpse, dead on a high branch:

Elaria, being a ranger goes up to investigate.

"The pilgrim appears to be human, it looks like its impaled on a thick branch and then had the skin peeled off in strips on a branch.

"So it's like a giant shrike or something got them?"

"Ummm, yes, pretty much exactly like that."

There's no point in making someone roll when the player skill is just right there.

"What's a shrike?" Michelle asks.

"They do that," says Caroline, "they're birds that kill other birds by impaling them on branches and stuff. The call them butcher birds. I found one in my back yard when I was 5!"

Well that's the end of the investigation part.

"I'm just gonna show you guys the name of the adventure"

--

As you may know, I also play a weekly game with Jeff Gameblog as Referee, two trans gals, a war refugee and Lamentations of the Flame Princess head honcho James Edward Raggi IV, the man who wants to bring you gritty horror solidly grounded in the real world 17th Century.

As usual, if you miss a session it just goes on without you. And I missed last session.

I log in and James looks soooooo excited.

Jeff starts talking--and James goes "Can I tell Zak what we're doing!??"

And I roll my eyes because whenever I'm not around things go real sideways real fast.

"Ok, what are we doing tonight James?"

"We have to go to the moon to mow the lawn!"

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Weekday Side Quest

Since I have a large game group with players who shift in and out week by week I've been experimenting a little bit with what you might call solo side-quests.

The idea is they keep players up to date when they miss a session or two, plus they deepen that players' connection to some part of the game world relevant to their PC.

For instance:

A few weeks back, Dave's cleric of the Black Grip-Olaf--lost his arm. This is a big deal as spellcasters need to be able to gesture freely and that's hard with one arm that isn't actually, like, there. He asked if there was a Temple of the Black Grip nearby that could regenerate his arm.

The standard choices would be:

-Mean DM says No

-Nice DM says Yes

-Make Dave try to convince the whole party to go on a Quest For Dave's Arm even if Dave won't be there for weeks at a time in the middle of the entire continent being invaded

Instead, one monday evening I set up some miniatures on a table and just texted Dave this:

I further texted some details on the tactical situation:

The general mechanic I'm using for this mass battle is: 2 guys square off and each roll a die, high roll wins, so big dice are good, small dice are bad.

Dave texts back:

Dave further elects to hide his D30 giant skeleton guy underneath the giant skull thing on the left of the map and have it spring out only when goblins roll up.

Further, once the fight starts, he carefully deploys some Fog Cloud spells to confuse the goblin advance and channel them into places where they're easy to take out.

We can watch the battle progress round by round, with the goblins (mostly on square white bases) coming up from the bottom:

The Grip sends the bulk of its forth to the left of the screen and a few elite units go right:

A detachment of goblins probes to the right and gets wiped out by the elite forces. A fog cloud covers the goblin left.

This channels all the goblins through the center...

And they get wiped out as undead pour in from both directions!

The Black Grip wins!

Olaf gets a new arm (but it's a skeleton arm).

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The Trial of Tor Gunnar Magnuson

 So when last we saw our heroes they had rolled on the Carousing Table and all had gone sideways.

I actually made a diagram to keep it all straight

So this time, I set things up to deal with the consequences:

Olaf, halfling cleric of the Black Grip shows up with a skeleton arm, a replacement for an arm he got torn off a few sessions ago, he is hanging with, Bleezy aka Cargin, the sea-elf wizard—who is hungover. They’re in the sumptuous apartments of Arvikk, a humble dealer in silks who they rescued from some toad demons a while back.

A servant comes in and tells Arvikk they their pal has been hauled into the courthouse.

Tor the barbarian starts the session hauled into the Port Gobelins courthouse, charged with arson. 

The good news is: he has a witness in his defense—Bob the Ranger!

The bad news: he’s a pig.

The magistrate asks Tor who his attorney will be—he can name anyone in the city. He names himself!

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Horg the half-orc wakes up in bed next to…the court wizard!

The court wizard thanks Horg for a wonderful evening but says “Look, sugar, I gotta go, I am expected to testify agains that rapscallion Tor who burned down the entire port district!”

Horg casts Charm, the court wizard rolls a 3 and so they get back in bed--thus missing out on opening arguments

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Glutenberg the half-elf and Oni-Baba the witch are in yet another inn, having both been absent last session.

Oni-Baba decides to go buy some armor. But….the door to room is locked from the outside.

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Tor’s opening argument is powerful: he speaks of the Magnuson family’s long history of…something? I forgot, but he rolled well. A dissenting NPC cries “I lost my home and all my children were burned alive!” but nobody listens.

-

I call up Christoff, who has a cold, and put him on speaker.

“Hey Christoff, you’re a pig. But you’re the only witness at Tor’s trial for arson. What do you do?”

“Can I talk?”

“Um, no.”

Then I squeeze the pig toy

“Is the witch who turned me into a pig there?”

“Uh…(roll roll)…yes!”

“Ok, I’m going to hop off the stand and go over to the witch and try to, like, charm her.”

“Roll Charisma”

“19!”

“The witch looks into your piggy eyes and feels sympathy for your plight! All eyes fall on the witch!”

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Meanwhile back in the bedroom, the court wizard, under the influence of Charm, reveals that he framed Tor because he (the wizard) is secretly colluding with the chaos hordes outside the city gates preparing to overtake Port Gobelins and burning the Port District clears the way for the raiders to enter.

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Glutenberg and Oni-Baba discover they’re just one of dozens of folk locked in their rooms by chaos cultists who are preparing for their fellows to invade. Fighting begins in the streets!

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Eventually most of the other party members make their way to the courthouse. Olaf secretly gives Tor a potion granting him 18 Charisma. Tor’s doing great up there, lifting up witnesses and impressing the entire crowd with his strength.

Suspicion then is thrown on the witch!

The witch throws suspicion on the Court Wizard!

Bleezy says fuck it man! and casts Dispel Magic on the Court Wizard, revealing him to be a creepy goat-headed cultist!

Horg is really mad at Bleezy because this also ruins her Charm hold over him which she was gonna use to manipulate him into…something…

This dramatic moment was captured here:

Several other members of the courtroom rabble reveal themselves to also be creepy chaos cultists.

They start just killing citizens.

A general melee begins

-

After getting past the initial wave of chaos warriors, the players are finally all together and have a big argument about what to do.

Save Port Gobelins?

Run back into the dungeon?

Become exporters of fine silks?

Steal a ship?

Which ship?

Eventually Tor get sick of all this talk, runs up to one of the chaos warriors’ ships and goes “Who do I have to kill to take over this ship?”

He still has an 18 Charisma so the chaos rabble goes: “That guy!”

They have a fight using the Red & Pleasant Land duelling rules, Tor takes a wound to the leg but the other guy gets both his arms cut off.

The chaos warriors cheer their sexy new captain “TOR! TOR! TOR!”

Where to sail?

Given an ocean’s worth of options, the party sets sail for Nephilidia, the continent of aquatic vampires.

No accounting for taste I guess.